To Eternity with Bucket list

 

2007 Hollywood film starring inimitable Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman was path breaking in many ways. The idea so far unheard on the orient caught up like wild fire so much so that everybody on this side of Suez Canal started preparing his/her own bucket list though the concept was alien and too much time was still in the store to really kick the bucket.

Most of the times either it’s a vacation to a place you have longed for years to visit, or a feat you could not do because of physical constraints like bungee jumping, or taking a pilgrimage because you have promised to your mother but did not take it you being atheist, but you wanted to do only because your mother wished so. Or mending the relations which were snapped years ago. They always were on the back-burner because either you did not have money or were short of time. And suddenly you become aware that time has come and at any cost you have to have your bucket list now!

And how many things are you going to pack in your bag fit for a day’s travel, that’s your life! If you are lucky to visit Antarctica, North Pole becomes a distant dream, if you participate in Durga Pooja of Kolkata; Carnival at Rio de Janeiro goes on without you for years. If you are served 10 wines at Napa Valley vineyard while tasting the wines, you lose on tasting freshly made Edam or Gouda Cheese at Alkmaar. You end up reading P.G. Wodehouse with a chuckle on the lips but Kokoro by Natsume Soseki is lost in translation for you.

I have seen umpteen happy and pseudo happy people saying, ‘We did France last year, this year we would do Lagos!’ Eh? Is Globe that a small place that you ‘Do’ it in your limited time, most of all with limited money? Amazon Forest if you enter from one side, you may not come out from the other, for your life time!

Or this term, I have completed Brodovaskey [Who?] may be Rabindranath Tagore next time! Is any author, any artist any performer can be done away with in ‘ONE’ life!

And it very significantly applies to the relations too, once snapped always snapped. Tons of so called heartfelt ‘Sorrys’ haven’t ever made the relations that they were once upon a time. The crack always remains like a glass once broken!

 If you really are well versed with the rationale on which the world works, the best policy should be ‘Enjoy’ what ‘Your’ life has to offer, NOW! And at that juncture, the moment may not come back again!

Why I do not understand the concept because it is for someone who has limited number of days at his/her disposal. So how many of us are really lucky to get the whiff of it?! So, that we can plan to do the things from the bucket list! And would our body allow in that ailing condition? On the contrary at one level you are continuously living under the threat of that proverbial sword, endlessly hanging on your head and you are making plans!? Of what, for whom! I don’t know when and where it will strike you. May be you are in the midst of melee of your so called near and dear ones and it strikes you, not allowing to say even goodbye! Or one is on one’s deathbed for months together and apart from everybody around him in their minds of mind, including oneself is actually waiting for the dreaded moment, in fact it may not be so dreaded at all because it could be the moment of final realization, ‘It is over at last!’ Peace of heavenly order for everybody around you, including you and where is the place for the bucket list here? May be sole item here could be, The End, peaceful end!

Does it really operate like this? In my opinion life has to be lived simultaneously. Don’t leave anything for bucket list. And if you could not do it, it was not meant to be! Simple, by the time you have ample time, more importantly monies, 90 out of 100 times you are old now and your body goes on protest telling you, it’s not for you, the world is for the young ones!

 

Dedicated to dear Friend Bhalchandra Lele who lived life king-size but simultaneously and departed so suddenly that Bucket list for him was immaterial!