A strange request.

My immediate neighbour is a retired Air Marshal who also happens to be a senior from my school, though I must confess that he'd passed out much before I'd joined. Over the last couple of years, we've become friendly thanks to the numerous conversations we've had over the telephone coupled with the common bond of being from the same school. His only daughter is married and is based at Bombay, busy with her work and family.

In our conversation today, he'd informed me about his mother-in-law being seriously ill and fighting for life in a local hospital. He sounded quite worried and vulnerable and it took a while for me to put him at ease - or was I really successful? What surprised me was that a person like him who must have gone through graver crises in his professional life and come up trumps on each of those occasions seemed to be forlorn and directionless during the time of a personal crisis.

And then followed his strange request. He pleaded I must ensure that he be given a decent funeral upon his death. Though I'd laughed it off was a crude attempt at humour and said that he'd overtake me in longevity, his fear had lingered in me much after the conversation had ended. I live day to day and try to take in the essence of life and therefore, when I come across people who think far ahead in life, I'm left thoroughly confused as to whether I was doing it right.

Reminded of that famous line from Charles Lamb's 'Essays of Elia', "Men fear death as children fear darkness".