In a span of 24 hours 39 people have wished me well for a whole 366 days (this is a leap year, if you remember). That’s a load of wishes, I guess; and from a lot of people. When you are young, you generally have a lot of friends. It is also a general rule that, as you grow old the number dwindles. By the time you are forty-four like me, you have very few left. Having 29 people to wish you happiness, prosperity and wellbeing is an achievement at my age.
I ought to be happy, yet I could not be. Because I know, not a single one of these people actually care for me. While for some I am a compulsion, for others I am just another number in their mobile devices or the e-mail address book. There were two exceptions though – they called me and wished me a happy new year. For a long time to come I will remember them even if their calling was actually accidental or incidental. Sometimes, you need excuses to be happy.
In contrast, Kabir is happy always. He loves everyone and everything. He does not know to fight, not even know to stand up for himself. As a corollary to not knowing to fight, he does not know to hate. I think he is in serious disadvantage for not knowing to fight. A man who cannot stand up for himself seldom can stand up for anything.
Unfortunately, as he will grow up and the pretensions that make the world a stage will fall apart; as the people that he now puts in a pedestal will fall like shooting stars; as the things he love so dearly now will be swept away by the current of time, the number of things and people that he dies for will gradually shrink. By the time he will be of my age, there will be very few of them left.
In my case, there is only one left.
