Invaluable Life’s Lesson from an Old Woman in Tahoe

Swaraj tells us about a frail old woman, with an oxygen mask, who taught him an important life lesson. Find out what was it? An exclusive for Different Truths.

I met her in Tahoe city, in California, in the summer of 2015. She was an utter stranger. We met at a most unusual place. Many times encounters with strangers teach us more about life than most sermons or books. The lesson she taught was that living life means loving life even to a fault.

Accompanied by a friend from Sacramento, I was visiting Lake Tahoe. I wanted to watch and photograph birds of the lake basin, raptors in particular. It was a hot day for August. Failure of rains in California since 2011 had led to severe drought-like conditions. Temperatures had shot north. Since it was a weekend, the beach was full of revellers.

Frantic Birding

With so many people around, there was little chance of encountering birds. We found only gulls, American Robins, a pair of Blue Jays, European Starlings, Ravens, and Common Grackles. We saw no raptors. Frantic birding for three days at Sacramento water bodies had aggravated my heel spur.

The painkillers were also proving ineffective. Walking even on the sandy beach was hurting me badly. I was cursing myself for my ailments that had put paid to all my birding dreams. Unable to drag along any further, I gave up and requested my friend to return. But smiling impishly, he insisted on taking me to a temple.

I protested that there was no scarcity of places of worship in India. But he did not relent. Protesting beyond a point to a generous host is always uncivil. I could not but acquiesce, though unwillingly.

Drove to a Casino

To my surprise, he drove straight to Montbleu Resort and Casino in Tahoe city.  He remarked jokingly, “More Americans visit such temples than churches, and you have to see one. You know, Las Vegas is perhaps the holiest city for many Americans?”

It was to roil me and enjoy my discomfort, for he knew about my aversion to gambling and casinos. I considered these to be places of sin. I objected to being taken to one. He brushed aside my objections with his characteristic indifference. I have known him to be a prankster capable of doing anything bizarre when in a mood. On such occasions, he is impervious to any protest or request.

Near the entrance to the resort, I saw a very unusual sight. A slightly bent but stout elder, his face pockmarked, was pushing an electric wheelchair. An old lady was sitting on it. Her hair was all silver. Her face was a crisscross of wrinkles running deep like the bark of an ancient oak. She painted her lips deep red and wore an oxygen mask. An oxygen cylinder was on the wheelchair.

A Betting Kiosk

On entering the casino, the old man wheeled the chair to a betting kiosk. With her hands tremulous but not uncertain, she started gaming. She did not even remove her oxygen mask. All this while her old man sat by her side.

The sight of that old woman gasping for breath and gambling filled me with disgust. To me betting was a sin, an addiction, the disease gamblers are afflicted with. More so in the case of this lady, who had already entered the sunset boulevard.

In fact, in my mind, betting and gambling had always been associated with disaster. Whenever I thought of gambling, my mind always wandered back to the Mahabharata. I remembered that tragic moment when the Pandavas lost the dice game to Duryodhana and Shakuni’s cunning.

What followed the defeat of the Pandavas was their utter humiliation and exile. It all ended in a long internecine battle from which no one emerged unscathed. The eighteen-day Battle of Kurukshetra signalled the descent of humanity into Kaliyug, the Dark Ages. To me, gambling in any form was a symbol of moral depravity.  

Gaming is Legal

My friend knew that I was not amused at all. He said, “Do you know gaming is legal in America? It’s a source of huge revenue for many states. It is also a source of happiness for those who come here.”

“Happiness? Do you call it happiness? It must be only a pervert’s way of seeking happiness. Just look at her. She can’t even breathe. She is gambling with her feet in the grave. No, none of this nonsense for me!” I retorted with vehemence.

“Do you think she isn’t aware of the fact that she is dying?”

“That’s the whole point. She has vices even at this age.”

“What vices? Why are you being so judgemental? Is life itself not a gamble? Is deciding a career, not a gamble? When you decide on a career, you put everything at stake. You cannot even undo that. The road not taken once will always be the road never taken.”

“Well, in a way, you’re right but then ….” 

Gambled Away One Day 

“What, but then? You go out looking for a particular bird in a remote area and wait endlessly. But your bird gives that place a miss. Haven’t you gambled away one day of your life? Just for the joy of watching one bird who doesn’t materialise? Aren’t you addicted to bird watching?”

“But watching birds is not gambling.”

“This is what it is! My dear, every crucial decision is a gamble. Is a wedding not a gamble? Is falling in love, not a gamble? All adventure sports fall into the same category. Risks and thrills are inseparable.

Stealing Life 

“O, Man! That lady wants to make the best of whatever time she is left with. She is stealing life from the approaching darkness trying to enfold her in its embrace. She is trying to live the way life makes sense to her. And you are blind to all this! She could’ve jolly well accepted her inevitable fate and resigned to it. In that case, don’t you think that she would be dead before her time?”

“Acceptance of death is what we’ve to learn.”

“This is what I’m trying to tell you, buddy. She has accepted this fact. That’s why she is trying to squeeze whatever life there is from each passing moment.”

“But isn’t gambling a vice”.

Sanctimonious Rejection

“Will you please shut up being so rigidly self-righteous? People don’t and won’t live according to your will. Your sanctimonious rejection of ways of life other than yours won’t lead you anywhere. You’ve to accept life as it comes, without ifs and buts. Open your eyes, man. There are diverse ways of living. You’re no God to judge people from your high standards. The fire that drives us all is the same, yet different.”

I knew he could be brutally frank. But his tone that day was bitingly waspish and disconcerting though his argument was incisive. It shook me, nay I was undeceived. He had challenged me to rethink my priorities about what was right and wrong.  

For a while, I was at a loss. I turned towards that woman to look for some justification for my position. But I found none. I just realised the falsity of my stance. I remembered Tennyson’s Ulysses. She seemed to have the insatiable hunger of Ulysses, who wanted to ‘drink life to the lees.’

Hollow Moralism

I realised the hollowness of that staid moralism, which deters us from living in the present. She rifled away some precious moments from the precarious existence. Despite full awareness of the transience of life, she engaged with life with gusto. Awareness of her ephemerality had not paralysed her into inaction. She transformed her vulnerable condition to her advantage.

That we don’t get another life is the idea that sank deep. We are not here to just live out our allotted time. Life is beautiful as long as we accept it, love it, warts and all. She was an object lesson in how to live life. She knew the poetics of existence. Her conduct was a living praxis of this poetics. She was a symbol of hope infusing hope in others.

“The fire that drives us all is the same, yet different,” this is what my friend had said. And rightly so. I remembered Dylan Thomas’s poem, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” in which he says:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

Ambiguities of Life

Dylan Thomas foregrounds the contradictions and ambiguities of life. That woman’s conduct epitomised the celebration of life with all its contradictions and polarities. Unable to restrain, I just walked over to the old couple and greeted them. I requested them to allow me to take a photograph. My request was granted promptly.

She lowered her oxygen mask for a few seconds and smiled. Her beautiful smile lit up her face and dispelled whatever misgivings I might have had. I found myself short of words to thank them.

While leaving the casino, an old film song was playing on my lips. Penned by Jaan Nisar Akhtar, sung by Mahendra Kapoor it goes like this:

“Kab tere husn se inkar kiya hai maine

 Zindagi tujhse bahut pyar kiya hai maine.”

(Never have I repudiated your beauty

 Achingly have I loved you, O life!). 

Love Madly

Life must be loved madly, achingly. The beauty of life’s fleeting smile has to be lived and loved passionately. I thanked my friend for prodding me to open my mind’s shut doors and windows. 

I wanted him to take me to the lake again. Birding was not yet done, pain or no pain. We spent a lot of time at the lake. Around sunset, a Red-Tailed Hawk, a raptor made a brief appearance like a flash in the distant horizon. I went back humbled and enriched.

Photos by the author