As a child when one begins to be aware of one's own existence and that of the world around, it also dawns on the baby being that individual life has an end. I remember consciously thinking about life in years and decades in two different centuries, 19th and 20th, at the elementary school in Bahowal, India. All of us took turns writing the day's date on the main blackboard in the school. In grade two I remember writing on that blackboard the date on a particular day in 1954 and thinking back to 1869 the year Mahatma Gandhi was born. He was the most important man in the mind of independent India. The distance of years between his birth and my writing of that date on that blackboard seemed too much to imagine for my young mind. I wondered then how so many decades and years would have passed. Time always seemed still to my young mind; the years at school interminably long.
No, I was never bored. I lived in wonderment at the years of the freedom movement when giants appeared to have descended on the troubled and enslaved land of India to liberate it. The chief among them of course was Gandhi. I had learnt in grade two he had been killed in 1948, just six years before I was writing that date on the blackboard in 1954. The six intervening years between his death and 1954 seemed like a long time. He had lived only for 78 years on this earth. But to me in the elementary school they felt like 78 centuries.
Now I am in my late sixties. I have lived in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Putting it that way makes my lived years seem ancient; that they are not. Be that as it may, let me resume the narrative. After I entered my twenties my perspective changed. I was no longer a child looking at the dates past and current. Life picked up speed and never slowed down. Having lived on three continents, Asia, Europe and North America and having experienced the ups and downs of life I am no longer that little child trying in my mind to connect the dots of the days gone by to the present day and writing today's date on that blackboard. Now I wonder where and why so fast have the sixty plus years gone.
Intellectually like all other men and women I have always known the truth about my mere mortality. However in the unconscious and ignorant recesses of my being this truth had gone into oblivion. And then I had a heart attack in 2007. My existence shuddered and awoke to this reality. By then I had already lived sixty years of that short life. No I was not afraid of death but I had much else I wanted to do. Despite wanting to do other things I ran in the 2008 and 2011 federal elections because I thought it a duty to do so when the Liberal Party was down. The 2011 loss liberated me from the 'crutches' of electoral politics. Now I live totally liberated and very much in the present moment. I do not want the next however many years I have to go fast. The only way to slow them down is to live here and now.
I have much to do. Writing an autobiography, currently in the works, though important, is the least of it. I owe Canada much. It has been good to me, my wife, our sons, daughters in law, grandchildren and extended family. I will continue to write and speak on Canadian issues and hopefully spend with my grandchildren lots of interrupted playtime.
India too has been in my thoughts. It gave me birth. It is the home of my ancestors. It is home to my proud heritage. It too has a prior right over my labours. I shall dedicate my life's remaining years to wage war against scourge of corruption, caste and poverty in India.
Let the next chapter of my toils begin.