If there ever was a reminder of my own disappearance, it is here. Right here, looking straight into my eyes. This line ends with me. No progeny. No genetic propagation. No continuation. No traces.

Lines on the surface of water.

This is a kind of liberation from the complexities of life, the noise and the karmic debts, whatever they might be. Nothing to give. Nothing to take. Simply another life, here and then, gone. After Saagar, the inevitability of my own demise is the most obvious fact. It doesn’t evoke fear or dread. Inescapable. It puts a smile on my face. Ah! To be human. What a ride!

 In the grand scheme of things, we are momentary bubbles riding on a wave, arising out of the ocean, assuming a separateness from its waters.

Grand and then gone. Like Saagar.

I see folks with long bucket-lists spending their days and nights doing soulless jobs, brothers defrauding each other for a possible gain, couples frantically buying houses in every city while the ulcers in their stomachs bleed and proliferate.

Sitting at the table next to me in a posh Bangalore café, a mother is fretting over the fact that her child doesn’t yet know the names of all the months in the right order and he’s already two years old. While I sip my coffee, I watch this young mum obsessively chase her son around the place with an antiseptic wipe, cleaning his hands, everything he has touched and is about to touch, repeating, January … February … March …