Rahul’s grandmother slipped quietly from this world on the evening of the 6th of June, in the year 2009. By ordinary telling, she died. But to say merely that would be to omit what truly occurred. For she did not vanish alone into that good night. Her husband, having walked beside her through the long passageways of life—through youth and ageing, through childbearing and loss, through the commonplaces that lace the days of the married—found himself, within hours, a solitary figure in a house now grown cavernous with absence.

On Saturday, he sat in a corner, rigid and still, like some ancient statue whose purpose has been lost to time. On Sunday, his sorrow found voice; he wept openly and without shame, as a child might cry for its mother. “She should not have gone,” he kept repeating, again and again, as though he could call her back by the sheer ache of his longing. By Monday, the refrain had not changed. His eyes wandered, dazed; his voice trembled with disbelief—as though he had not yet learned how to be a man alone. And by that very evening, he too was gone. But those who beheld him in death did not see the grimace of struggle or the clench of agony. No. His countenance, they said, bore the strange and sublime stillness of a man who had at last come home.

It is a common saying among the sentimental that one can die of a broken heart. But it is not only sentiment. Medical science, that ever-unfolding ledger of what the body can bear, has shown that such a thing is no mere poetic conceit. There exists a condition—Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, they call it—where the heart, upon suffering intense grief, weakens and distorts in a manner mimicking a heart attack. The brain, flooded with the chemistry of despair, alters its messages to the heart, disrupting rhythm and function. The immune system too is impaired; inflammation takes root; appetite and sleep are fractured. In short, the whole person—mind, body, spirit—staggers under the blow. It is, in essence, not only a death of the heart, but a death by the heart.

Yet the question must be asked: Is it not fitting that those who have lived in union should long to depart in union? What greater evidence to love than the soul that refuses to tarry long where its other half has gone? We are told in sacred Scripture that “the two shall become one flesh”—and perhaps, when one part is torn away, the other simply cannot remain. Love, rightly understood, is not a fleeting sentiment or a pleasant arrangement of companionship. It is a joining, a knitting together of spirits so deep that even death is not always able to unravel it.

I confess, after the shock had passed, I felt a strange loveliness rise within me. It was not a soft comfort, but something closer to awe. These two, bound by decades of joint breath and burden, had crossed the threshold together. If ever there was a picture of true unity—of soul mates, in the deepest and most reverent sense—this was it.

And then came the quieter, more unsettling question. Can such a love be found today? In a time when love is often bartered like a commodity, when affection is fleeting and fidelity is mocked as naïve, where does one even begin to seek a love that survives not only time, but death? I do not mean merely romantic fondness, which burns brightly and fades quickly. I mean the love that weathers all things, believes all things, endures to the end. The kind that turns even the grave into a rendezvous.

Perhaps such love is rare now not because it no longer exists, but because we no longer believe it possible. Our culture, awash in distraction and irony, recoils from the vulnerability love demands. But somewhere, quietly, in the hearts of the faithful and the brave, it still burns. Not loudly, not showily—but with the steady flame of eternity.

And should one be so graced as to find it, let them not clutch it selfishly, but rather live in it as one would live near the sea—with reverence, wonder, and readiness to be changed by its depths.

On the Folly of Superiority Between the Sexes

I have never quite understood the impulse—so persistent and yet so ill-founded—that leads men and women to speak of one sex as superior to the other. Such talk strikes me not only as a category error, but also as a profound failure of imagination. It is as though one were to declare the violin superior to the piano, or the sun to the moon—not recognising that their powers are not in competition but in concert.

The sexes are not identical; thank Heaven they are not. They are not even symmetrical, as though cast in the same mould with minor adjustments. They are complementary: each possesses what the other lacks, each is weak where the other is strong, and each reaches its fullness only in union with the other. It is a great pity that modern thought, so often enamoured with notions of equality, forgets that equality does not mean sameness. A lock and a key are equal in value, but their functions are not interchangeable.

To speak of superiority between man and woman is to miss the point entirely. It is a bit like asking whether the heart is more important than the lungs. The question betrays a deeper ignorance—not of biology, but of purpose. For the design is relational. One gives what the other receives; one begins where the other ends. They are halves of a whole, reflections that find their meaning only in relation to each other.

And is it not the height of folly—indeed, of arrogance—to compare where one ought to cooperate, to boast where one ought to bless, to dominate where one was meant to delight?

When each humbly acknowledges the glory in the other, when man and woman cease to be rivals and begin to be allies, then—and only then—do we catch a glimpse of the harmony intended from the beginning: not a sameness of roles, but a oneness of purpose; not uniformity, but unity.

Ah, but when was the last time you truly let yourself go—wholly, unapologetically, gloriously yourself? Not the polished, presentable version you parade before the world, but that inner child who once laughed without permission and danced without music. I confess, for me, it was a long time ago, at one of those parties where the air is thick with the stale scent of adult concerns. The conversation meandered grimly from one sorrow to the next: sickness and scandal, the frailty of economies, the looming shadows of war and death, and the general conclusion that the world was teetering on the edge of some vast abyss.

And just when it seemed we might collectively dissolve into a puddle of solemnity, an old man—white-haired and wonderfully unbothered—rose from his chair, lifted his glass, and cried out, “Play time!”

Play time.

It was not merely a declaration but an invocation. At first, of course, the room recoiled. Whispers rustled like dry leaves—“Has he lost his senses?” “Is he drunk?” “Senility, perhaps.” You see, it is a dangerous thing in modern society to be unguardedly joyful. We have come to equate gravity with wisdom, and frolic with foolishness. But I tell you, there was more wisdom in that man’s outburst than in all our gloomy prognostications combined.

For there is something divine in the impulse to play—something that connects us to the wild joy of being alive, to the eternal laughter at the heart of the cosmos. It is the mad, inexplicable gladness that reminds us we are not machines grinding through productivity charts, nor merely minds churning through data and doubt. We are souls—souls made for wonder, mischief, and glad-hearted delight.

Too many, I fear, have forgotten the value of a little holy madness.

So let us ask ourselves—not with guilt, but with a wistful sort of hope—when was the last time we allowed joy to take the reins? When did we last leap before looking, sing before speaking, or dance when no one else heard the tune? And if it has indeed been too long, then perhaps, like that old man, it is time to stand and declare, without shame or irony, “Play time!” again.