THE ADVENT OF LOSS

It was a Tuesday night this week and I was returning home. On the way I picked up my clothes from the ironing service boy, placed the bundle on the floor of the scooter near my legs, put my laptop bag on top of it, in between my legs and was driving lost in thoughts. In the midst of traffic I could sense a movement near my legs and slowly I saw the laptop bag fall down on the road. I could not decide to stop immediately on my track as it would have cause some chaos on the road and therefore slowly turned the scooter towards the left and parked it beside the road. When I turned to return to the bag I could not see it on the road anywhere. One man from the other side shouted to me that it got attached to a white colored car and got tagged along and directed me to hurry behind. I started my scooter and ran into the traffic towards the unknown car. I went along for about three kilometers but could not see any bag on the road, even though I saw a number of white cars there was nothing beneath them. I turned back and wanted to locate the man who had directed me to run behind the cars and wanted to know whether he took my bag and fooled me off. I could not find him either. I loitered on the road for a while and then decided to go home. The enormity of the loss then started to sink in.

All my official work, all my photographs, all my personal writings, my downloaded songs,

Of so many years, so much efforts, so much of time invested,

All lost, gone, simply vanished.

On top of it my home keys were also inside the bag and then it dawned that I won’t be able to open the door. I cursed myself. I turned back the scooter and went towards some hardware store to buy a cutting file with which I planned to cut the lock. Oh what a terrible night! Somehow I managed to cut and break the lock, but the whole night I spent thinking about what had happened and why it had happened.

Why it happened, I still don’t know. That a bag which was placed neatly between the legs was to fall on the road and vanish within a minute of falling cannot be a coincidence. It cannot be an accident. All along for the past six months I have always placed the bag between the legs and never I got a thought that it could possibly fall off. The bag had a flat bottom and does not budge from where ever placed. But it fell this time and simply evaporated into thin air, into nature.

I realized some truths during that long night. One day I would soon lose everything that I cling on to so dearly. One day I would lose my health, my sight, my hearing, my flexibility one at a time or even together. One day I would lose my house, my bank balance, my investments, everything would be taken from me at a single stroke. All these physical things which I call mine will be taken from me and given to somebody else, either my family members or somebody else, but definitely created out of nature. My healthy body will wither away and will also be returned to nature. Now whenever I choose to entertain the feelings of me as distinct from nature and mine as belonging to that me, I am certain to revert to the feeling of loss, repeatedly.

Life has ways of teaching, to learn or not to learn is a choice. To feel bad over the loss of an ordinary laptop does in fact mean the advent of loss over every other thing in the future.