Life

'Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days" "Where Destiny with men for pieces plays;" "Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays," "And one by one back in the closet lays" [The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym]

A dead man was asked what the life was. His ghost stood up and strangulated the questioner to death and then asked him the same question. He could now easily know the answer to his own question. Since he was dead, he could realize the meaning of life without an iota of doubt. Well dictionaries define life as the property or quality that
distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. Well the dictionary meaning of life can never be final as there are thousand s of definitions of life put forth by the philosophers, clerics, politicians, poets and the like. Even a common man has his own notion of life. Where for a common man life is an endless struggle to end his hunger, for a philosopher the same life is an ultimate search for the ultimate truth. For a poet it can be composition of beautiful and technically sound verses and for a cleric it can be the total submission of wills and wishes before the mighty creator. Why such a complexity in defining a single word life. Factually it is another dimension of life that it is interpreted in as many ways as there are minds and intellects. When we talk of life we come across the fact that man is not only alive but conscious as well. It is this consciousness that gives different meanings to life. On

perusing the diverse meanings and definitions of life, we come to know that life though seeming physical is actually something metaphysical and beyond common mans jurisdiction of intellect. It is commonly said that life is the interval of time between birth and death. Isnt it quite confusing? If it is an interval between birth and death then what was before the birth and what would be after the death? Again Rabindranath Tagore says, .. Life, like a child, laughs shaking its rattle of death as it runs. Yes it is philosophical because philosophers talk the same way. There is always a hidden meaning in every word a philosopher utters. Life laughs but at the same time shakes the rattle of death too. The holy Bible says, Our days on earth are as a shadow. It is again inexplicable for a common man because shadow never lasts longer. Again man is reminded of his mortality. Again he is reminded that every tick of the clock pushes him towards death. Then what is life, a mystery, a miracle, a puzzle, a suffering, . none of these or all of these. Well life is life. It means we live and simultaneously we accept death as an inevitable event in our life. It is actually death that gives meaning to life. And what is most important is that we shall not brood over what was before the birth. However, it is essentially significant to know what would be after the death overcomes us. So, life actually is a fixed period of time for man to prepare himself for the life after death. Storm Jameson says There is only one minute in which we are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is - a miracle and unrepeatable" ISAAR KASHMIRI 1722004@gmail.com