Why do we live? It is a question I’ve asked too many times for comfort. While I understand the philosophical bent, I look for an answer which is not completely vague or evasive. I see from people around me that a routine burns the day, events become milestones, and the years we spend take us closer to eventual death. What we achieve or lose is insignificant on any scale of time.

For an Indian male, the life expectancy is just a little more than 68 years. Adjusting for my thankful privilege, it could reach 75. I did dream of my death recently, and the calendar on the wall was of 2068. That is, weirdly enough, when I’ll be 75 years of age. Of course, this is a pretty massive assumption, considering there’s so much wrong that can happen in the meanwhile to quicken the goal – you know, the brutalities of Detention Camps, for example.

Nevertheless, what is the point. Sure, a lifetime will have many struggles, joys, and all the boring void in between. But again, what is the point. What difference would it make to anyone if one were to simply end it all, right away and right now. Why does one have to reach the feeble weakness of old-age, with barely any physical or mental strength, to die. What is will become what was. And what was will be forgotten as those who remember was will become were.

What is the point.

Those who ask this question are often accused of looking at life as a blur. A mess that has resulted from poor mental health which has complicated and entangled too many things without any energy or help to straighten it all out. But aren’t they the ones who see it more clearly than anyone who comments on them? They’ve fully understood the eventual end of life and actively sought it to avoid much pain and trouble.

This does not mean I am contemplating suicide. Not now, at least. I have learnt to create a façade where I pursue happiness and pretend to have found a purpose in life. I’ve heard that there is so much to cherish and enjoy. I’ve been told to value things in their fullest. Evidently, when you look at all the good things in life, you tend to get too busy to think of death. And anyhow, I don’t want the embarrassment of dying a virgin. Sex is a lot of fun, I heard.

I don’t know what to write now. And, do I have to? Why can’t I end this here and click ‘post’? Just like life.

But I won’t end it here. I’ll push through. I’ll find something to write. Just like life.

Do the rains over the oceans matter? The water that evaporates from the seas returns to the seas. The process is quite simple and short. Liquid to gas, gas to liquid. Evaporation and condensation. These are surely the lucky molecules. Luckier than those which evaporate from the sea, get pushed by the south-west monsoon to the land as far as the Himalayas, drop as snow, wait for the summer to liquify them, flow through the creeks, valleys, streams, and rivers, only to eventually join the sea. It’s a cycle. A process.

Neither of these molecules find my sympathies. If the goal is to re-join the sea, both have managed to do it. Those that rain over the sea had it easy, while those that took the longer path found it complex. What I feel for are those molecules which are stuck in a limbo. An odd bunch which hung around over the mountains throughout the summer. They found the winter and sublimation converts them straight from gas to solid. A freely swinging molecule in the air is made to turn to snow, without even being liquid – not even for a brief while. The hope of joining the seas is delayed, almost permanently. Even when it has the audacity to fight through the terrain, it cannot. It will not. It shall remain the snow it never wished to be. And it shall never get to flow an inch, let alone join the sea.

Just like life.