bhaskar saikia

Yesterday was a sad day. Someone close to me passed away due to a heart attack. I am not a particularly emotional person, yet at the funeral, I found myself grieving.

I consider myself a borderline atheist and throughout my life, I have held on to two guiding principles—destiny and karma. I believe that destiny is inevitable and resisting it is futile. The only thing within my control is to give my best effort. Similarly, I believe that my good karma will reward me, while my bad karma will destroy me.

Yet, yesterday, I tried to make sense of the grief I was feeling.

Was this the first death I had witnessed?

No.

Was this the first time I had lost someone?

No.

It took some introspection to understand the depth of my emotions.

Grief was natural—family and friends had gathered, sharing their sorrow through tears and embraces. But as I observed, I realized something unsettling. In a week, the relatives would leave. In a month, the neighbors would get busy with their lives. And in time, the departed would only be remembered on the death anniversary. Yet, for the bereaved family, the emptiness would last a lifetime.

How brief is our stay in this world? I asked myself.

In the grand scheme of things, we are nothing more than a brief sparkle.

And yet, how aware are we of death?

We know death is inevitable. We know we are all just guests here.

But the real question is—how alive are we?

Does the awareness of death make us live more intently?

Usually, words come easily to me, but today, my thoughts arrive in fragments, and this piece feels disjointed. Yet, that is exactly how I feel right now—unsettled and searching. I may not be able to shape this blog post into a complete reflection, but still, I will try to find meaning in it.

Grief is powerful. It pulls certain strings of the heart that herald a new note —sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of renewal. But not everyone can see its transformative power. Very few take inspiration from grief and pain, while many are shattered by it.

Why do some people rise from loss while others break?

Here, I find wisdom in the words of Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”