Getting the answer is easy. Old age is coming and will soon be over. Perhaps you are already old, and all those telltale signs of your decline are all around you. You don’t like what you see or feel, but you can’t ignore them. You are home alone, which is quite normal. But then something goes wrong with the heart.
It pounds inside you once, twice, or even thrice. Something tells you there is cause for alarm. It’s not that you’re afraid of dying, but you certainly don’t want disaster to strike right away. There is a life partner to think about. There are siblings whose welfare matters to you. There are children in the family whom you would like to see grow up to become urban adults.
That’s why you don’t want to die. Furthermore, if death comes, no one will know, unless one has the intelligence to break down the door stumbling upon the truth. You have all the keys and no one is with you. The fear is very real—that your beating heart will explode when you least expect it. In old age all these fears arise from the depths of the soul. You are getting old, really old. It’s time for you to go. And even as you try to contemplate a world that remains after you’ve passed away, a message from home tells you that a close member of the clan has passed away.
His last rites take place in the dark of night. You remember your last conversation with him in your village. You remember all the details he gave you, when he and you sat sipping tea, about the roots you spring from. He promises to give you more. Now he is dead. Secrets about those roots of life, additional secrets have gone with him to the grave. News filters in again, of another who is struggling for life, even as death, hooded and dark, stands at the door. Death emerges as the winner.
