While reading the autobiography of Samuel Langhorn Clemens aka Mark Twain,  I came to know that while he was a cub reporter in a newspaper, he had ran his own obituary in the paper, just for kicks!  I wondered then and I still wonder as to how one can find humor in what is so clearly a morbid topic.  While a lot of people talk about death and dying in the lighter vein, few are those who haven’t squirmed when discussing death of their own selves or that of loved ones. 

I got to know today that a colleague’s brother-in-law and mother-in-law were killed in a road accident early yesterday morning while she herself, along with her husband, are in the hospital with multiple fractures.  How often have we heard about accidents on the highway and just shrugged it off with an absent ‘People must take better care on the highways’ line?  Yet, today, when it was a colleague who was the victim, things were just not the same.  And it set me thinking about impermanence of life. 

When I left my apartment for work today, I definitely had plans of returning back in the evening, just as my colleague and her family had plans of coming back to the city from their vacation over the weekend.  While I’m not the kind to get paranoid about death and impermanence, I did think a lot about last messages and obituaries.  In DasVidaniya,  the character played by Vinay Pathak plans in advance for the printing of his obituary in the newspapers.  What I realized was that one doesn’t need to be afflicted with a terminal illness to plan for a few basic things that would roll into play after our deaths.

In times like these, I realize the importance of my father’s work.  He is a financial advisor working for an insurance company and has in his own words, secured the futures of the dependants of a lot of people.  While finances are very important, there are other things, like messages for loved ones that cannot be purchased against currency. So, should we have a book/journal in which we write down the last messages for the people we care about and update it whenever we feel like it, so that a fairly updated message-book is ready for public release after our ‘tragic’ demise?

I’ll start with my obituary/epitaph, which will be about how I would like to be remembered after I’m gone. The challenge in writing such a piece is that it is damn hard not to sound too self-centered/self-obsessed and still be happy with the piece! Lemme try:

Prashanth Chengi. In his own words, a quarelsome & headstrong but loving son to his parents, a caring brother to his sister, a doting uncle to his nephews, an insignificant and egoistic nothing to his relatives, a loyal friend to his friends,  a spouter of heavy (and often unwelcome) philosophy to his ex-girlfriends, a talented, at times even brilliant yet underperforming asset/liability mix to his boss, a self-declared connoisseur & critic of food, movies & books and a die-hard fan of Michael Schumacher & Formula 1 racing.  May his soul rest in peace!