Choices and changes

Its a fine monday morning. For a change I wake up early at 6.30 am. Its been drizzling since an hour. After an hour of morning chores and lazing around I am struck by a thought that I cant recall the source of...I think it was AsExplainedbyaJunkie...that gets me thinking. When we were young...there were infinite possibilities to our lives. You could choose professions...a new one each day. Probably the Doctor's Set that was a gift from Uncle J kept you longest at one profession during those juvenile years. You were a Kapil Dev at bowling and a Gavaskar at batting...and well....nobody liked fielding...Maradona at the midfield...and Boris Becker or Agassi even when u never played tennis. You were Aamir Khan after you watched Qayamat se Qayamat tak and Salman Khan after Maine Pyaar Kiya....probably Amitabh Bacchan after Shehenshah with the Rishte-mein-toh-hum-tumhare-baap-lagte-hain style whenever you were in a fight with some other kid from another section at school. The only choices required were choosing notebooks and pencils and crayons and sketchpens....bats...balls...shoes...etc.. But then a point of life comes when you choose a college...a coursework...better college....exams...subjects...etc..And with each successive choice after this point....you limit your possibilities. With each further choice, you are further away from your Boris Becker...or maybe Federer. And then you meet Rentboy who doesnt wish to choose...bcos there's heroin...sensational. You were confused about how things have changed over the years and how nothing is as it seems...that were meant to be a part of the system and a Floyd or a Doors song will just hit the spot...expressions that give you some room for your situation. Your words find representation on celluloid with Tyler Durden coming over with his Project Mayhem...phenomenal. And you swear by every word that comes around by the artists of the beat...rock n roll connects to your soul...dreaming of an alterego living it out in Woodstock 69. At the same time you need to carry on with your life...choose more coursework...get a job...explaining to your friends that you are not cut out for this shit...limiting your choices to the bare minimum...your anger for the system...the betrayal of dreams...the loss of a prayer.....denial. And then one day you are hit by death. The death of a friend...a brother..and for a long moment there is a silence.. there is no anger here... no choices... a lot of questions...no answers.. just unfathomable....death. As you try to get a grip....the anger sets in...it alternates with sorrow...the music ceases to be anything more than entertainment. Some of the words fail...and all that is there around is a lot of what-ifs. Which brings me to the idea of choices and possibilities... when someone dies....his loved ones are all hit by the what-ifs. for him...there are no choices to be made....and hence infinite possibilities. Every single person close to him contemplates these sets of infinite possibilities and the realisation of their failure brings about further grief. From the point of his death, each year on....the time and the choices made by the loved ones takes them further way from the event ...reducing the no. of possibilities ...and after a long time all that remains is a speck of memory...of the loss of a friend. - In memory of Manas.