Organized chaos

I have been thinking about death for the past 10 days.
No. Not my death. But death as a concept.

In my earlier post, I had explained about a thought process on death that had taken birth when thinking on the importance of bus drivers. 
Strangely, I happened to come across an accident few days after the post.
The collision of a car against a lorry. 
Having no other alternate route available, I had to walk past the accident scene. Two dead victims had been laid down on the ground, covered entirely with a white cloth.  
I should have crossed the spot as quickly as possible but for some reason, I stopped and looked at the crushed car and the dead victims for a few seconds. I couldn't take my eyes off the victims. 
Something made me want to look at the victims. Something made me want to look at death.

The accident spot and the dead victims occupied my mind for the next few days. And it made me think repeatedly about death. 
The day of the accident would have started like any other normal day for the victims. They would have cracked a joke or two with their family or friends in the morning. They would have had a hearty breakfast. They would have shared an intimate moment with a loved one. Would anyone have expected that the day would be the last day for those victims? 
How great a pain would the parents and friends of the victims have suffered on being made to face the sudden loss?
Why is death of such a random nature?!

The last question troubled me the most.
Death and its random nature.

I let my thoughts flow and they chose to show me the deaths of two close relatives I had been made to come to terms with in my childhood.
It pained me a lot. 
It also reminded me the voids the deaths had caused. In my life as well in the lives of my family members.  
And I halted the thought process there. 
A new related thought had suddenly taken birth. 

****

"When I give you a problem, why do you always rush to the solution?" - This is a question my team leader used to ask me frequently in the initial 2 weeks, after I had been assigned to an account/project in my office.
"A problem needs to be understood first. Only then can you think over it and reach a solution. And when do you understand a problem clearly? Only when you have a proper visualization of it. Try to put it down on a paper. Get it out of your head. Then, you would be able to think with clarity. And the solution would present itself easily."  
I never imagined that a piece of advice I had received regarding data analytics would help me look at death from a new perspective.

****

Let us consider that a person X has died.
X's death is sure to affect the lives of his close ones. The death is sure to create an irreplaceable loss.

The picture below shows a small circular network. 

The dot in the middle represents the death of X and the arrows surrounding it represent the lives of X's family members and friends. The dots in each of the arrows represent the loss created by X's death.

This is how we have been perceiving death for a very long time. 
A death occurs and it causes a loss in the lives attached with it. 
And the overall picture - Death is of a random nature.

Now, consider the next picture. 

Here, we take into account only the lives of X's family members and friends and the loss caused due to X's death in their lives. 
Representing each of their lives one below the other shows us how each of their lives had been affected by X's death at different stages. 
But we know that X's death did not occur at different stages.
X's death occurred only once. 
Which brings us to the next picture.

This image shows a representation of the lives of X's family members and friends in such a way that the losses are aligned. 
And what insight does it offer?
The lives of 8 different people need to come together in such a way so as to suffer a loss at the exact same point.

So, is death of a random nature?! Or not?!

****

I came across a beautiful article that explained how the colors present in a butterfly were a result of the pigmentation of each individual cell. 
Let us consider the example of a butterfly with orange-colored wings containing three black dots on each of them. 
Of these three dots, to possess even a single black dot on its wing, the butterfly would be required to contain a circular group of cells - all the cells exhibiting the same color - which becomes more interesting considering the fact that the pigmentation is not predetermined. 
So, a circular group of cells would have to exhibit the same color - out of pure chance - to combine and produce a beautiful black dot / a beautiful pattern. 

Now, isn't this similar to the way death works?!
Umpteen number of lives align themselves in such a way as to suffer a loss at the exact same point.

And this similarity makes me want to label death with two words borrowed from the butterfly-article's title.

Organized chaos.

The label fits perfectly for death.
But on second thought, the label also seems perfect for life.

Leading an invisible life...

Imagine.
There are no vegetables left at your home for preparing a meal. You are required to go to the market to purchase the vegetables. But if you step into the market, there is a very high possibility of the Border Security Force arresting you citing the reason that you are not a citizen of the country. And there is no real way for you to protest. 
For, you really are not a citizen of the country, or for that matter, any country. And it has been so for the past 68 years. 
If going to the market presents such a threat, I need not elaborate further on the near impossibility of having an education or holding a job.
What would you do under such circumstances?
What would any person do?

When I read an article last week about the 14,000 odd residents of 51 Bangladeshi enclaves who had officially become Indian citizens after 68 hopeless years, I was affected greatly.
I couldn't even imagine the amount of desperation accumulated by those people leading a life filled with fear day after day after day.

How would you feel when you realized you were country-less?!
How would you feel when you realized you were identity-less?!
How would you feel when you realized you had been leading an invisible life?!

****

The KSRTC (Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation) bus I had boarded at the Shanti Nagar bus stand in Bangalore had reached CMBT (Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus) after about 7 and half hours. The bus had stopped for the passengers to get down and I slowly walked ahead in the aisle of the bus to reach its footsteps. An old lady who was climbing down the steps was finding it really difficult even with the help of two other women. Knowing that I couldn't help her in any way and having been made to wait for a minute, my attention turned towards the bus driver. 
He was a young man, sporting a french beard, dressed neatly in an all-white uniform. And I couldn't help smiling looking at him. 
After all, I had been subjected to top-3-buttons-unbuttoned-in-the-khaki-shirt-and-collar-a-few-meters-behind-the-neck bus drivers all through out my life at Tamil Nadu.

A minute later, my feet touched Chennai ground and I turned to look at the bus driver. He was looking at me. I don't know what prompted me to do it but I quickly raised my right hand to my forehead and did a short salute. The bus driver reciprocated.
I then joined my friend who had gotten down from the bus earlier and inquired if he had noticed the bus driver, especially the french beard. My friend gave me a puzzled look. I repeated the question again. 
"Who pays attention to bus drivers?!", he asked me.
I did not have an answer and remained silent.

My friend and I then parted ways, boarding different MTC (Metropolitan Transport Corporation) buses to our homes from CMBT. Having seated myself near the window in an almost empty bus, I started pondering over the question my friend had asked.

There had been about 70 passengers in the KSRTC bus I and my friend had traveled in. The age-wise split-up of the 70 odd passengers went like this - 1 new born, 3 kids of 7-10 years, 2 people above 60 years and a majority of the rest falling within the 20-30 age bracket.
I then started imagining something which shook me apart.
The first thing I imagined was the death of the 2 elderly people - the loss of moral support and much more for 2 different families.
The next part of my imagination revolved around the death of the 3 kids - the loss of innumerable dreams and much more for 3 different families.
The imagination then shifted to the death of the new born - the loss of a new hope and much more to an entire family.
And I decided to stop my imagination.There was not a need to imagine further. 
The responsibility that our KSRTC bus driver had shouldered became crystal clear.
70 passengers. 
Hopes and dreams and moral support of those many families.

Having realized this, I closed my eyes, leaned against the window of the MTC bus and let my friend's question bellow in my head repeatedly.

"Who pays attention to bus drivers?!"