Cycle of life

We had gone to two opposite coasts in the last two weeks to attend two different family functions - my nephew's thread ceremony and my older nephew's wedding. It was absolutely wonderful meeting old friends and also meeting all my siblings at both events.

I couldn't help but feel at times like there was a part of me that sort of sat back and observed all that was happening even if I was a participant myself. The introvert in me wanting to just sit back and take it all in. I looked at my nephew as he recited the Gayatri Mantra during the ceremony and I couldn't believe there was a time when I was a student when I used to play ball with him or chase after him and hug him. And there were other kids who were just eight years old when I last saw them ten years back and suddenly they were tall, voice changed and looking so grown up and in college.

At my other nephew's wedding, I couldn't help but wish my father had been present. He would have relished the novelty of it all - the first person in the immediate family to marry a non-Indian, a very creatively done small wedding unlike the big galas we were used to in our family, no priest what so ever - just an old man, a family friend who officiated the wedding...and my father would have been so proud of my handsome nephew in his wedding suit...we all missed him yet no one really said anything to each other - we all just talked and laughed and teased...every now and then I couldn't help but pause and think about how the cycle of life just keeps on moving, stops for none. Every birth feels like a miracle to me each time to see a newborn baby...and yet when I distance myself and look at the relentless cycle of life - a child is born, he grows up and goes to college, gets a job, gets married, has kids...it seems a tad ordinary. The trivialities that form knots in our heads and keep us up at night seem so...futile, irrelevant in the big picture of life. Petty remarks, hurt feelings over small things all seem so pointless in this big picture. And yet it is these atomic details that make the experience of living so real and you just cannot skip over these to the end. When you step back, both the miraculous and mundane seem so beautifully intertwined.

Now for the mundane reality - I am falling asleep on my laptop - I need to stop and go to bed now!