1. I remember Dr. Win Wenger, Ph D and his book The Einstein Factor, in which forty years of age was given as some kind of benchmark. I don’t know if ‘life begins at forty or ends.’ I don’t know if sowing of wild oats stops completely at forty.
2. It was this statement “sowing of wild oats…” in the context of “Genetic Study of Geniuses” by Catherine M. Cox quoted by Win that was somewhat difficult to interpret for me when I was reading this book. I asked Arun Sipani who was living in the same building I was living in. He interpreted it for me. It was 22 years ago.
3. This year seemed the most difficult in comparison to all previous years. It seemed more difficult even compared to COVID 19 pandemic years peak. I visited the village where my parents were working when my primary education began. I remember the room where my mother wrote first couple of English language words and drew couple of pictures to illustrate them. I visited the village after two decades. The banyan tree has disappeared. Its descendant is there. Some structures have remained, which sometimes raise doubt if I was at the same place.
4. The journey was difficult. It was as difficult as events preceding the journey were. Then I started walking frequently to escape the daily grind of household. It wasn’t easy out there, yet it seemed it was some source of change, some comfort, perhaps finding new job opportunity to change my lifestyle.
5. I started working in a cafe after meeting some acquaintances from pandemic years. Young entrepreneurs. As I started working I found out how much had changed. Being a regular patron of their services was completely different from being an employee. I thought I deserved respect, I thought I deserved fair treatment from educated enterpreneurs. I even dedicated a weblog to it.
6. The work gradually got hectic. I needed to pay for commute and it exceeded the earning. Almost no balance left. It was merely being employed for the sake of being employed. Their business was faltering. It seemed as if odds were against us. Against me.
7. It wasn’t a wrong interpretation. Soon after quitting the only job which might have meant regular source of livelihood my father who  recently got his retirement from a long career in government service met with a tragic accident and got admitted into a hospital.
8. After a few months I was supposed to be admitted into the same hospital with a similar procedure as if it was due for a long time. Prior to that I had to undergo injuries multiple times. Injuries which seemed strange and inexplicable at times and took longer to heal than before.
9. My mother got transferred to a new work place which only aggravated the situation. There was a birth in the extended family.
10. It rained like never before and roofs were leaking. It was a consistent source of concern without any escape.
11. The tuition jobs were also lost as students disappeared on some excuse or the other. I was supposed to get psychiatric treatment which only aggravated the situation. Students didn’t even pay fees and I kept hearing rumors.
12. Under medication or by design I went through worst kind of conditioning which made me re-evaluate my entire lifestyle. It wasn’t polite. It was as abusive as it gets. It might even qualify as description of purgatory or hell. Though I have already used these for similar upheavals before.
13. I was trying to make sense of the trauma and disaster. Trying to find out if there was an acute famine which necessitates giving up on all sources of comfort. There were no clues. People were keeping up appearances like before. There was no news of a world wide disaster. I thought maybe it was the end for me and after a few days of fasting I would get Sallekhana ( Jainism), Paryopvesh (Hinduism) or Euthanasia ( European English term). It might also have made sense if it was consistent. I kept working on Free Rice website which was supported by United Nations World Food Program. I was working on a difficult project which was supposed to be completed by the end of this year had there not been as many tragedies within a single year as happened in this year or in the last few years.
14.  I was supposed to keep working and following the new code of conduct without going to previous diet or comfort level.
15. I finally got over the forty years mark without getting to see the end. The clearly defined end meant not having to see similar identities or not going through similar events all over again. That criteria was clear even during the acceptance of all the trauma. It didn’t get fulfilled. It wasn’t a typical Sallekhana or Euthanasia.