I Can’t Sleep

Sometimes, I happen to be the only person awake during deep dark hours of a silent night, and everytime I feel the same thing. It gets more prominent and pathetic every night specially if I have just finished a movie which ended with someone’s death or had a miserable ending.

When my parents are asleep, I look towards them, totally unaware of the thoughts which wobble in my mind. I try to recall how they looked 10 years ago. They seem to have changed a lot. Their face is ridden with wrinkles. Their legs and shoulders have shrunk. Their skin over throat appears like a twisted rope. What all I see on their forehead are lines that define the cluster of tensions and exhaustion of the day which got spent in earning a living and finishing all household chores. Nothing else! This is what they had done all their lives. And one day, they would be lying in front of me – lifeless. Will I be able to face it?

I start crying at the very thought and all of a sudden, I want the time to stop here and let their life continue. Suddenly, I want everything to stay as it is right now.

But change is inevitable. They are growing older everyday. Every minute, a micron of their hair is turning white, a nanometer of their skin is going dead, and thousands of their body cells are dying out of which just hundreds re-grow. Their bodies are decaying very slowly but continuously. I almost shudder with fear to think that death is approaching fast. It’s like the big bang theory of the universe. We don’t feel it but it’s happening.  At a very high pace!!!

I am not able to sleep in tears. I am not able to avoid the reality that will happen someday. That, I won’t be able to stop anything, like time. That, things never remain the same. They change constantly.

I start patting my own hand on my head just imagining nani.  I wished if it were still her hand. I wished if the person could be there forever who keeps patting your head until you fall asleep and forget that time is running. That life is limited. That death can happen anytime.

Sometimes, mom might feel that I am turning arrogant, that I am no more attached with them. But it’s rather other way round. I feel so helpless that I want to turn towards her, hug her and sleep. But I don’t change my position, my back towards her, because I want to learn sleeping without them, because they won’t be there forever.  Nothing can be forever.

I feel one day they will be gone. Gradually, we will get old too, develop wrinkles first in our face then all over. We would not remain as pretty as we are now. Our hair would turn grey and then white. And one day we will die. I get worried to think will my children miss me like I have already started missing my parents? Will my grandchildren ever get to know about me? What if I die even before having a child?

Is everyone born to earn their living and complete the daily household chores, grow old, and die? No, no. Every one of us is born with a mission to accomplish. There should be something more to leave behind you apart from money and property. All their lives, people keep stashing away something they would leave behind to their children. But not to the world, even though their children would earn their living themselves and forget them and their deeds after a few years.

That’s the moment when my urge to write, share and do many things gets highest. Suddenly, I feel like getting up from bed and start doing some work, while the world is asleep. But I rather pat my head faster and unknowingly drift to a long slumber.