When one thinks of the grim reaper, a sudden chill runs through my spines. I am sure I am not the only one who feels it. But the truth is death is a price that all beings must pay with. Some die a natural death; some perish in a tragic accident; some succumb to maladies; others get killed and the rest choose to take the matter in their own hands and take away their own lives. There are so many ways to die as there are ways to live. Here, I am not being morbid. The sad demise of my friend spurred me to do an article on the subject. I have so many memories of him. We had been childhood friends. We went to the school together. We would play marbles and cotton ball together in the dusts and mud. We would challenge our classmate girls in hopscotch, thought to be their domain. At times we would cut the classes and disappear into the bushes or jungle nearby to savour those wild berries only to get canned in the next classes. I thought we shared so many similarities. We had the same difference, if any. But I must also confess that he was a better person and far brainier than I was or I still am. As ill luck would have it, domestic problems forced him to drop out from High School. He had one too many responsibilities and worries, on his young shoulders, to bear as an eldest of the five siblings. Primogeniture you would rather be without. When he left the school I was there to see him off, as is expected of a friend. I helped him with his baggage up to the Bus stop. We hugged each other. We wished one another luck with our different ventures and the life itself. We promised to be friends forever, whatever and wherever we were to be. And he left me behind in tears, and took away part of me with him. When I think of it I still feel the pang and my eyes well up with tears. 

Studies kept me cut off from him for too long. The last time we met was when I was in a college. I failed to recognize him - almost! He had grown so weak and pale. At best he was just a shadow of his former self. Our rendezvous, after so many years, was as much a nostalgic moment as it was heart wrenching one. We relived those beautiful scenes from our yester years. And occasionally the tales of woe from his life would move us to tears. He had many a sorry story to relate. It wasn't a pleasant sight to see his face, the ever smiling face that I had known, crack like a mirror and break down into millions of tears. It was a bitter pill to swallow, it really was! He said that he was fed up with the world. He felt himself god-forsaken, by looking at the way of the world and the kind of treatment he was meted out with. And told me that world is not for a poor guy like him. In a way, yes, I would agree with him. Someone had rightly said: You sing and the mountains will echo back; you cry and it will be lost into the thin airs.