One sentence that will always remain with me from Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” is his referring to photographs as something stolen from the suitcase of death – an attempt to preserve memories of those who will eventually move on.

But if life is a mirage and death the only truth, then isn’t every breath we take, every moment we live something stolen from the suitcase of death? I don’t mean this in any morbid sense. What I mean to say is that once we know and accept this, we can live each moment fully.

I am also aware that it is impossible to do this every waking moment. We are blinded – only momentarily, if we are lucky – by ambition, hate, anger, frustration, love, sadness, jealousy, guilt, greed, in fact, by the whole rainbow of human emotions – every hue and color. That makes it difficult for us to experience the present moment, that compels us to be in the past or to worry about the future but not be in the present. I think we are doomed as humans to not always being “present”. However, as long as we think of death’s suitcase in a positive way we will be able to grab more and more moments out of its suitcase.

I am going to start this stealing game by recalling some of the best moments I seem to have stolen right from under death’s nose:

Coming home on the last day of the exams to grab the latest copy of my favorite kids’ magazine

News of topping the class after hours’ of nail-biting wait for the result

Excited packing of suitcases for a trip to my grandparents’ place during summer holidays

Cooking something that actually tasted great

Debating the end of a movie with a friend on the steps of my engineering college while the evening shadows gathered

Coming to college on a Saturday for a buddy study and chatting endlessly about movies instead

First shooting with a new camcorder

Every developed film roll

Para-gliding in Pattaya

Feeding a tiger cab nestled in my arms in Thailand

A pair of yellow and white tigers reclining majestically in Bannerghata

Walking through the mist at Lonavala

Reading Harry Potter

Reliving history at the light show at Golkonda Fort

Pressing yet another flower in an already over-flowing book

A completed jigsaw puzzle

Watching a path of moonlight carved through the night seas

Sunset cruise on Mandovi river…………

I am just warming to the game Mr. Death. I am ready, are you? :-)