'Life is silly. It is just that we make a great deal of it.'

This was something my manager recalled yesterday, reacting to
the death of a colleague of ours. A relative of his had remarked similarly when the latter lost his sister to sudden illness.

I did not know this colleague, but the silent reactions of several of her 'batchmates', some of them in my team, were palpable. The fact that she was only 23 is as unfortunate a dimension of loss as the circumstances under which she lost her life. With her team, she had been to Shivasamudram waterfalls about 90 KM from Bangalore celebrating a project party. We get this opportunity to celebrate on company's expense once a quarter and to avoid monotonous parties, sometimes some short trips are planned, which this time brought her to her water
grave. She lost herself to the, rather furious at this time of the year, rush of the water. The surprisal of how she lost everything to the water fury is but a scary thought. The body was found only few hours later with help from locals.

It brings back memories of my cousin brother who became, a few years back, just another casualty statistic on the Mumbai-Mangalore highway. He was a Sales clerk for TVSS and was
riding his mobike between stores when a speeding bus hit him from behind. The impact catapulted him into air and he landed on his head, crashing on to parapet of a bridge. He was taken to a hospital with a cracked skull and twelve hours later he was gone. That he had a helmet resting on the tank of his bike offered no solace.

My manager recalls how he sees warnings such as ' Twenty people have already lost their lives. Do not be the twenty-first. Do not get close to water' and how people conveniently ignore the
silenced voices. It is easy to forget that one can have a brush with fate when one least expects it. Several cliches about safety only surface when accidents happens to people. When the incident is forgotten, so are the vows of safety people would have taken in reaction to the accident.

I cannot swim, at least I am not trained, yet I pride myself to be an 'aquaphile' if you know what I mean. Have I been just lucky or was there something else I did that has protected me?
I like thrills so I went skydiving. I liked that and the offer so much I did it again. Sometimes, I find my mother's, and of late sister's, fear for escalator silly. Am I been silly in doing so?

From extreme to the mundane, dangers that we flirt with daily ought be consciously weighed. It is easy to take life for granted. At least as long as I am writing this and you are reading this, let us remember that we get to live only once.