A Game of Dodgeball

If you are still reading my title and trying to figure out what i am trying to say, then here is the answer. I am talking about “Death” as it is referred to by a character JD in my favorite sitcom “Scrubs”. Recently i watched a movie, one of my all time favorites, ‘The Brave Heart’ and that started me thinking about this post. My guess, and also my gut feeling is that any human being in this world would have at some point of time thought about death, Whether it is the sheer fear of it or the complete curiosity of it, or even the attempt to reason with it, whatever that is, people go through a phase thinking about death.

For those who have not seen this movie, my first suggestion is to stop reading this blog, and go see the movie. It is a must watch movie and one of my all time favorites. It is based on a true story about a Knight, Sir William Wallace from Scotland who lived in the 12th century and fought for the freedom of his country men against the English. The movie has a remarkably crafted climax. After being caught by the English, Sir Wallace is threatened to be tortured if he does not plead guilty in front of the English King. Now, the protagonist just refuses to plead guilty and takes all the torture that is given to him as he believes that is the only way his life would prove to be meaningful. This part of the movie forms the basis of the title which reads as “The Braveheart”. It takes a brave heart to stand by their principles and ideologies in face of pain and torture.

All my life i have been interested in putting myself in different hypothetical situations which require critical decisions. I find it intriguing as it gets me into thinking and analyzing those problems without the actual fear of reality, in other words losing something. Getting back to my point, I started pondering over this climax like I have done the last thousand times I had seen this movie about how would a person react when facing death? I would like to quote another one of my favorite movie dialogues here. In the first scene of the movie Rang De Basanthi, a Jail Warden in India during the British rule starts off by saying “There are two kinds of men, Men who go to their grave in silence, Men who go to their grave screaming, and then I met the third kind” By this he refers to the legendary Bhagath Singh who elegantly bid good bye to his life by kissing the rope in which he was supposed to be hung to death. Now, all this sounds very inspiring and nice to see in a movie or read in a book, but we all know it is no fun in real life to die for a cause.

What kind of strength do these people posses to face death and yet not drop a sweat about it? And what is it that really matters to someone at the time of their death? Can we stand up for who we are and what we do? Or would we succumb to the pain? My guess is that most of us would choose the latter. For many, it is not really necessary to face death, just thinking about it will give them the shivers. My point is, I only wish that in front of a gun point, I would still only do or say what I believed in all my life and nothing but that; I only wish that I will fight all the pain in this world and have the courage to live and die for a cause like these brave souls did. In the end one can never really know, those who went through it are not around to tell us the story and those who did not go through it, never really understand and keep writing blogs about it….

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