Three differing experiences within the span of 24 hours can make someone think so much. Standing on the edge of a local train whizzing by stations at 80 kph, hanging out, feeling the wind in your hair and between your palms, death is only an instant away. One jump and none of it would matter, none of the worries for the future, regret for the past, joy at small things, angst at everything that seems unfair. One can easily be one of those numbers that get thrown about often enough. Of railway accidents, of youth suicides, or mystery accidents, or aged parents left fending for themselves, of youth and big city blues...just about any of them. And then one thought keeps it all at bay. That of life being a gift from a supernatural force that is well worth living through. It has to mean something, doesn't it, that you were conceived from an act of love and that a woman bore through the pain and weight of 9 months that culminated into a delivery worth long hours of pain.

And then happy memories follow, when one is ambling through the streets of childhood, where one took long walks on the pretext of brushing teeth and taking an unpolluted walk in the open lands near the house. Of how an year was planned around the routines of school, a few festivals and the season, which guided what you wore, what games you played and how inclined you were to study. And how one learnt the art of holding the cricket bat and whacking the ball so hard that it shot through the sky like a bullet and landed on someone's tin roof like a mortar shell. Well, at least in your imagination, you wished that happened. When you remember the brother you learnt it from, who, now can probably gain sit in the best seat possible for any international cricket match...from up above, so high, like a diamond in the sky.

And then, talk to a terminally ill relative, alongside an irresponsible out of work drunkard and the responsibility of two kids to boot, one of them quite inclined to follow in his fathers footsteps. A lady whose throat pipe blocked with a tumour, rendering even the simple act of drinking water seem like forcing a fork through...and yet, find an immeasurable sense of strength, the will to survive inspite of all odds, yet realize, that wishing something so hard does not always mean that really much. Death, followed by a strange act of good luck, as if He, up there, wishes to serve a consolation, His way to telling everyone of how hard some jobs are, yet they need to be done and if at least in a small way, He tries to be fair.