So he, the regal old man, embracing
his age with fragile but tight grip, lives happily as the tail-end of a great
life lived. He has weathered the tempests of youth: the force of beginning,
starting and acceleration! And now the path of letting it go; losing the pace
slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration. Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop
finally. It gives him as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the
final rest. Now, during the slowing down phase, his time has become slow, the
world is a small puddle around his feet. He lives like in a dream. A slow-paced
one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months
like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, he lives equal to a dozen
lives lived in the beginning mode.
He enjoyed the choices which fate
sieved for him. Just grabbed his share. Now he picks up and plays among those
things and coarse, discarded chaff which remain unwanted above as the fine
particles, much in demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, he tells with
mischievous gusto:
“In youth, we just think that life
means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. But life can be equally enjoyable among
the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and chaff. Now
I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the
youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the
rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone,
without that competitive drone.”
The old reveller, away from the
fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth touch his
old bones before moving into the cold darkness.
