Death. And me.

I realised that I have graduated from reading to chess to golf to squash to motorcycling and now am thinking of taking up paragliding as my preferred sport.

That means that as I get older, I am realising how close I am to death, and instead of running away, am attempting to embrace the risk of hastening it, as long as it allows me that one moment of ecstasy, a single rush of adrenaline, or half a minute of an elevated heartbeat.

It was, if I may say so myself, an epiphany to realise that by doing so I am only adding years to my life and not taking any away. Or rather, the ones I am adding are worth adding, and the ones I run the risk of cutting short, aren’t deserving of my effort anyway.

There is a Hindi movie called ‘Safar‘ in which the character played by Rajesh Khanna observes very pithily that ‘मैं मरने से पहले मरना नहीं चाहता…’ (I do not wish to die before I die).

Yep. That.