High noon every second

Last Saturday a super-busy lawyer friend from Chennai was in Delhi and where would two Southies go for a breakfast meeting except to the loc...

Last Saturday a super-busy lawyer friend from Chennai was in Delhi and where would two Southies go for a breakfast meeting except to the local Sagar Ratna, to bond over a restorative rava dosai? Suddenly, the overhead fan fell on our table, narrowly missing my skull. Obviously it hit one yet again that everybody8217;s life is full of just-missed-it moments. One day our luck runs out and we cop it. But actually, death goes hand in hand with life, doesn8217;t it? I mean, you8217;re headed for death from the second you8217;re born.

We can8217;t see it, lost in our ant-like scurryings at our low level of existence, but since 1999, astro-scientists have been calculating that a large asteroid named AN10, which is one km wide, could narrowly miss Earth on August 7, 2027. The closest it could come is 38,000 km the moon orbits ten times further but new calculations indicate that Earth8217;s gravitational pull could affect the asteroid8217;s trajectory and may lead to an impact in 2039. If it strikes, it would destroy continents and change our climate. This loose galactic cannon will apparently stay 8220;dangerously close8221; to our orbit for almost 600 years.

So our very planet continues to rotate and revolve under threat. It8217;s weird to think that this might some day be described somewhere as 8220;Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away8230;8221; Saints and realised souls keep pointing out the fragility of life, urging respectful co-existence as the only antidote to the angst of this realisation. Stuff like the work ethic, like civic sense, like thinking at least three generations ahead when you plant and build. Is this futile with an asteroid waiting to hit and fans falling on hapless heads? I guess not, if we consider the Kalabhairava Ashtakam: Kashikapuradhinatha kalabhairavam bhaje, kala kala ambujaksha. Hail Kalabhairava, the Lord of Kashi, the Lotus-eyed who is the Death of death. This verse is from

Varanasi, the world8217;s oldest continuously inhabited city along with Damascus. You8217;d want more panache and cleanliness wouldn8217;t you, in somewhere so Awfully Ancient? Don8217;t they want to live up to it?

The lesson, perhaps, is that humanity needs to keep renewing its covenant with itself. There is really no other way to give meaning to our lives except through our behaviour with each other, through the way we treat Earth, our physical space and through the acts of space we commit. As for the rest, listen to the Victorian poet Swinburne: From too much love of living/From hope and fear set free/We thank with brief thanksgiving/Whatever gods may be/That no man lives forever/That dead men rise up never/That even the weariest river/Winds somewhere safe to sea.