There always is an appropriate time to embark upon important tasks. Time (and tide) wait for none but the task in hand always ought to wait for the right time. You do not barge into your boss's office and start asking for a raise when he is nursing a bad cold and his famous capricious mood is at a new low. In the same vein, one doesn't ask the wife when her parents, who have originally come on a short visit, are leaving, especially if it's not even a month of their arrival. The timing has to be perfect for all tasks - mundane as well as momentous.
What can possibly be the most important milestone event in a person's life? Graduating from college? Marriage? Birth of a child? Retirement? Yes, there are several. If important events have to coincide with appropriate timings, then almost all of these can be engineered to happen at the precise time best suited to us or at the most auspicious time, if one is astrologically inclined. And that includes child-birth. Engineering a child-birth is almost child's play nowadays. (the deluge of 11.11.11 births is just behind us). But we all conveniently hide under the carpet and refrain from discussing the single-most watershed event in our life - which is death!
Of course, death is an event that is part of life, who is saying no? Event-managers may manage without much fuss the important events just prior to death but with death itself, they are non-plussed. Life just does not start from a non-event and end in a non-event. The starting point of life is, we can say with pride, in our hands, as far as the time of birth is concerned. The doctor diagnoses a probable birth time at which moment the planets don't see eye to eye? No problem, a caesarian section a day or two earlier would ensure the baby pops out when the planets have made up. Landed your first job and asked to report for duty at Rahukalam? No sweat, ask for a day's extension. Fallen in love, decided to go the whole hog and tie the knot and your foolish friends have fixed up registration of the wedding at the Registrar's office exactly at the time when Saturn occupies the 8th house and looks askance at any one sitting in any other house? No issue at all, report to the Registrar's office an hour later (though some might argue the real Saturn has just embraced you, what's the big deal about its less dangerous counterpart in the heavens!!). But death? It's a different ball game altogether. How one wishes one can pre-fix the goldent moment, the death moment! The culmination of a life-time, the breasting of the tape after a marathon, the crescendo of a musical symphony, death is all rolled into one and should it also be not left to the humans to decide as to when, if not how?
Imagine for a second the wish is granted. Then at what moment would man like to die? Perhaps for some at 4 at dawn, when the world is still sleeping, the birds have just begun their chirping session and there is a comfortable nip in the air. Or for some, perhaps at 11 in the night, lying on the bed comfortably and gently swaying to soft music on the FM or at 6 in the evening, the 'ponmalaippozhudu' of Vairamuthu.... Can any other time-slot be apt for dying? Can dying at any other time sufficiently bring out the poignancy of the moment? At least for me, no.
Death may be painful. Or may not be. Death may be a mystery. Death evokes fear. Death is an outcast all are loathe to discuss. But death is certain. The only certainty in life. The dying moment can be beautiful too. If only we have the wherewithal to decide on its timing. Cometh the moment, cometh the man, they say. If only we could say with conviction, "cometh the moment, cometh death..."
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