Legacy

My friends often complain when they see me laughing to myself as I stare at my phone.

It's not entirely their fault, I don't think it is appropriate to start giggling out of the blue without proper context.

The truth is that for many years now I have been working on a list of jokes that have made me laugh out loud, I have them saved on a file in my phone.

While people tend to worry about losing their contacts and pictures when they replace phones, the first thing I do when upgrading my device is making sure 'The List' is safe.

It dawned on me one day that the older I was getting, the more scarce the moments that made me laugh till my stomach hurt became.

This realization, like many others, came to me in my final year at medical school.

I will never forget the day 'The List' was born.

My memory of that moment is pretty vivid, even though it occurred more than 8 years ago.

This is probably because it was the hottest day of summer that year in Bangalore.

The bright sun beat down on us mercilessly that sultry April afternoon.

My throat was parched and it didn't help that the street side 'tender coconut' vendor had decided to take the day off.

Half the class was at the bus station waiting for a ride home.

Even though it hurt our eyes, we stared in the direction of the sun eagerly looking for any sight of a blue/white automobile, the two colors that defined the Bangalore metropolitan transportation corporation.

It was Sunita who saw it first, and she quickly brought it to our attention.

Slowly but surely, a stream of maroon and saffron was approaching us, growing larger with every minute that passed.

'Wait a second'. I said, straining my eyes as hard as possible, 'That looks like monks'.

As they got closer, it became clearer to me, I was right.

We had never seen such a large gathering of buddhist monks in our lives before.

The distraction suspended my sense of thirst.

We watched as the monks passed us by on the highway, walking barefoot, smiling at everyone who saw them as they handed out pamphlets containing information about their march.

They were staging a protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. All the monks wanted was to raise some awareness about the situation in their little country, and this non violent approach worked like a charm.

More on that later.

Mahesh is one of my favorite buddies from medical school.

He is amongst the most effortlessly funny people I have ever known.

Amongst many things that he was known for, perhaps two things that stood out were his goofy expressions and his tendency to come late to almost every single thing.

I cant remember a morning lecture where Mahesh showed up on time, he would arrive at 8:45 for a class that would normally start at 8:30 and try to sneak in without being noticed, his approach wasn't exactly fool-proof.

Sticking close to the wall like a spider didn't necessarily make him invisible, but that wouldn't stop him from trying.

Sachin was his comedic partner and greatest contemporary.

Their back and forth was only matched by that of Sukreet and Shashank, another highly entertaining comedic duo in my class.

I am very grateful that I ended up working with all of these guys during my intern year.

Being on call with Mahesh meant being regularly treated to delicious coastal Indian food, and learning by his example to work hard and manage to smile even at the end of a busy 36 hour shift.

Intern year wasn't all fun and games.

For the first time in my life I was beginning to ask myself questions about the meaning life, our purpose, and the legacy we leave behind.

Needless to say, these questions I asked bummed out all of my friends.

This was the moment we were all waiting for, we were months away from graduating, and a whole new exciting world awaited us and here I was, wondering how anything I ever did was different from what others have done for generations and generations past.

I was really bothered by the fact that nothing I have accomplished hadn't been achieved before, and the possibility that anything I did in the future couldn't be done better later on.

My conclusion after 3 months of depressing deliberation was much akin to King Solomon -  'Everything in life is Meaningless'.

One day I would die, and then, I would be forgotten.

Gone, erased.

In a desperate attempt to leave something behind to preserve my memory I thought about etching my initials under the steel benches of our class.

When I shared my concerns with Mahesh I was pretty sure that I would get the same response as I did from everyone else in my class, but to my surprise, he didn't brush my concerns aside. He needed some time to think about it.

In the days that followed I could see that my questions had started to bother him as well.

That when I realized that the thought of trying to figure out our purpose in this life can be truly humbling.

A few weeks went by and the rotation ended, work got harder and the distractions kept the festering thoughts away.

One unsuspecting evening, my phone buzzed.

It was a text message from Mahesh.

'I have been thinking about what you said Thomas', he began.

'And here is what I think, life isn't too complicated, we do the best we can with what we have and accomplish a few things, some big, some small. Our true legacy though, the things we leave behind are really the ones we love. Our family and friends. It is in their memory that we preserve our legacy, and it is entirely up to us to give them something to keep our legacy alive'.

I read, and then I re-read what he said.

Truthfully, this was the only response that made any sense to me.

I have gone back to what Mahesh said to me several times in the 8 years that have gone by since that evening, and whenever I hear from him it reminds me of that time in my life.

We will never know why we are here, we only know what we have right in front of us, and what we really have is the ones that love us and the ones whom we love. At the end of the day, love is the beginning and end of all life, and all that we can hope for when our time has come is that we have left behind enough love to allow us to linger a little while longer than we would have otherwise.

Coming back to hot summer of 2010.

The mood was quite sombre after the monks had passed by us.

The information in that pamphlet was saddening and our hearts went out to the people of tibet.

No one spoke and about 15 minutes went by.

In the distance we saw a solo buddhist monk walking as fast as he could trying to catch up with the rest of the group.

There was silence as we saw him rush past us.

Sachin seemed fascinated by the lone monk who lost his way and ended up showing up late, he stared at him till he disappeared over the horizon.

We were drawn towards his interest and turned to look at him.

A few precious seconds went by and he finally spoke.

'That must be their Mahesh'. He said.

I laughed so hard I nearly died that afternoon, and the first thing I did when I reached home was write down the words 'Mahesh the monk' and to this day it stands at the top of the list that I carry with me wherever I go, and I will hold that memory close to my heart for as long as I can.

Until next time.

TGV.