Life Death and Beyond

in this temporary world alone, completely ignoring the eternal life of the Hereafter. He lives in such a way as if the Hereafter is a mere myth. Wise is he who lives in awareness of the Hereafter. Foolish is he who is heedless of the Hereafter. The Countdown has Reached Last but One One day, I began to think about people who were once my contemporaries. These were people who were born around the time when I was born (about a century ago), people with whom I had travelled through the journey of life, people I had walked with. I had seen Mr. A alive, but today he is not in this world. Mr. B, Mr. C, Mr. D, Mr. E—all these people too have met with the same fate. In this way, I recalled many people I knew. I realized that all these people had died, so much so that I recently heard that Mr. Y, too, has also died. I fell into deep thought. These words issued from my lips: “The countdown has reached the last but one letter of the alphabet!” Then, I thought that this isn’t just a personal affair of mine, something that applies to me alone. The fact of the matter is that it applies to everyone else too! Every day, we see or hear about other people dying. But, surprisingly, few people seriously think about their own death. No one thinks that he could die that very day or even the next moment! People’s minds are constantly occupied with issues of the life before