When Existing Is Enough : Ud Jayega Hans Akela, Jag Darshan ka Hai Mela

When Existing Is Enough : Ud Jayega Hans Akela, Jag Darshan ka Hai Mela

Sometimes when I looked at her, she reminded me of an old bird. It is an image that my mind always brought up. Without any prompts, and almost always uninvited. It is the way she would sit. The way she would hesitate before any action. And almost always the way her eyes kept blinking as if they were checking and rechecking the world before doing anything.

She had brought me a parrot when I was young. The bird had lived long. Long enough to teach me what old age looked like when there is nothing left to hide behind. We had taught it how to say, “Pretty Poppy Holder”, a phrase which the bird would keep repeating. In the beginning Poppy was loud. Always talking, always fretting. A total busy body.

Later he became quiet. Still.

Those feathers which earlier he groomed so much were never in order. He would sit for hours blinking, slowly watching you as you watched him. No doubt he was alive, but participation had become optional.

Existing now seemed enough for him.

I would think of him when I would see her.

We sat close to each other in the same room. Together but not exactly connected. Communicating but not talking anymore, but not separate either. Sometimes I noticed her drift off as the mind loosened its grip on time. Her body seemed slower and heavier than her intentions. But it was the blinking that always caught me by surprise. That slow, deliberate blinking that you cannot unsee once you have noticed it.

Sometimes that image was funny and but most of the times it was borderline sad. The humour in my mind was always brief, but the sadness always profound. Sadness that stems from the precision of the image. What broke my heart was not the suffering. There is no suffering in any obvious way. What broke my heart is the absence of drama. There is nothing to fix. Nothing to rush towards. Aging is no longer problem waiting for a solution. Instead, it is just a condition to live inside. Quietly. Patiently without any protest.

When you see this, it leaves you unsettled because it demolishes a myth. The myth that we constantly tell ourselves that wisdom ripens into grace and that old age brings clarity and fulfilment. Sometimes it does. But most of the time it does not. Old age instead brings gradual thinning of the self, less urgency, and even less appetite for engagement. Old age allows you to sit quietly and let moments pass without claiming them. And blink more often.

There is an honesty in this condition. Life no longer demands constant proving. Ambition finally loosens its grip on your ego. And when both of these are stripped away, what remains is a calm, bare presence. A willingness to be where one is without any embellishments. Perhaps this is the real wisdom she taught me, although it does not look like the beautiful image of “wisdom” that we have in our minds.

There is a gentleness in this stage of life. A gentleness that we tend to overlook in our mad pursuit of grand gestures. Meaning here is quieter. Meaning that lives in routine, silence, and a simple fact of showing up the next morning. Meaning which gets measured in endurance rather than accomplishments. That’s it.

Now when I see this, I don’t see it as a realization. I see it as a trailer. A rehearsal that is playing out in another’s body. My parrot taught me this earlier. She, as always, only reinforced that lesson. A lesson which is hard because it is honest, and when honesty arrives without any consolation, it breaks your heart.

But there is comfort too. Comfort in the fact that when the good fight is fought and done, when one has raged enough against the setting sun, life does not simply disappear. It changes its stance. It slows its pace and asks for less. And it is in this “slowing down” that life presents its most wonderful gift — a permission to exist without explanation; to give without demanding; and, blink more to photograph the images of this beautiful life.