Fear

People have many kinds of phobia in life. Fear of heights, fear of water, fear of closed spaces. There are many weird phobias in the world. My biggest fear in life is the fear of loss. I am scared to lose. Not in winning and losing kind of way, but losing something that is yours. It takes a lot of effort, time, energy, good luck to acquire, find, get something. And then to lose all of it in one flickering shot, is a scary scary proposition.

I was a very sentimental kid. I remember, I must be 10 year old, in the middle of a happy shiny family moment when everyone is laughing, singing, talking I would be all teary eyed, sitting quietly and sobbing. Reason being- “All this will be gone one day, we won’t be laughing like this, we all will die one day!” and I would burst into a crying spell. I would be made fun of or hugged and reassured and distracted with happy things in life. But what could they tell me? It is life’s ultimate truth, how could anybody defend my fear.

I clearly remember the moment when I got to know that EVERYONE has to die. I must have been 6 or 7 years old or maybe younger. It was summer vacations and our grandparents had come over. One idle afternoon, I was playing with my granny- teaching her A,B,C,D. . .when she remarked- “Oh, why do I need to learn all this? I am so old, I will die very soon, what’s the point of this now?” not really meaning it. It was just one of those things that old people like to say. And very sweetly I told her that she wouldn’t die, because she was such a good human being, my grandma, how can she die! To my utter shock and disbelief she told me that EVRYBODY dies, irrespective of everything. With a broken heart and thinking that my uneducated grandma didn’t know anything, I ran to my mum who was working on the computer. I was very angry when she told me that it was true. I think ‘angry’ is the right word to explain what I felt. It just made no sense to me. Why do people have to die, even if they are good? So you are behaving yourself, being a good girl, minding your business, not fighting with anyone. . .and then one day it’s all over? Without any rhyme or reason? Shouldn’t there be an explanation to why I must be pulled away from all the good things?

People have recurring nightmares, this was one such nightmare which haunted me in living daylights. And then at the age of 13, for the very first time in my life, I came face-to-face with death when my grandfather died. That is another tragic story, for another day. Although I didn’t quite wail and get depressed, the first feeling that hit me when I saw his corpse lying on the bed was that of hopelessness. Death is such a permanent, irreversible thing I realized. What can you say to someone whose loved one has died- “everything will be alright” ? coz it won’t be alright. Nothing you say can appease the loss.

As I grew up, I stopped thinking about deaths. There were more important things that drove my attention. But the fear of loss stayed with me. Even if it is a pen or a paper or a t-shirt I never wore or an ear-ring or a document or a book or a relationship. . . I have the greatest paranoia buried in the abyss of my heart, to lose.

I recently lost two acquaintances to bad road accidents. What wrenches my heart is that both the girls had an infectious zest for life- they were the kind of people you would remember having met them once. I would call them ‘full of life’, ironically, for their mad dreams and passions. Would they have ever thought, in their craziest of imagination, in their bluest of moments that they would die so young?

Why are we afraid of dying? Why are we conditioned to think that dying is bad? Not like the life we are living is great! There are so many problems, so much injustice, cruelty, hatred- perhaps after death you do actually go to heaven and things are great there. And people who die young in life are the ones who get a shortcut to that heavenly kingdom. God says, “You don’t have to endure the pain of life any longer, come to the party up here.”

God has a lot of explaining to do.