Where man is rendered helpless

“ Mom, R.. passed away”, my son called up to convey the sad news. It was a shocking news . I didn’t know he was ill and was in the hospital . It took some time to absorb its reality .I was thinking about R..I remembered his rich baritone voice, now suddenly silenced forever. Who would have broken the news to his widowed mother that her only son is no more. How his young wife would have taken the news ? Theirs was a love marriage. I had attended the function. It was a Tamilian wedding. R.. was a Tamil Brahmin and his bride a Bihari. She looked beautiful in the resplendent 9 yard Kanchipuram silk sari. She married R out of love knowing fully well that he is hemophiliac and HIV positive, something which he got in his childhood during a careless blood transfusion. R bore his condition and its

accompanied problems quite stoically. At least he pretended to be brave. I remember the arguments my son and R used to have as to how R is not taking enough care of himself or some such thing which normally happens between friends. R and his wife did a lot of work for HIV infected people . Things were almost normal in their life or so we all thought. But every time R fell ill his mother and wife must have gone through hell. I wonder if they were ever prepared for the eventuality . Or for that matter, is anyone of us ? At least I am not. As the great poet John Donne put it “Every man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind ….therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” Perhaps I am reminded of my own mortality and the uncertainties of this joke called life.