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Trafford Publishing - K.B. Chandra Raj

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64 pages

English

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A propos
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Extrait

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K.B. Chandra Raj was born and raised in Malaysia with firm roots in Sri Lanka (once known as Serendib and later Ceylon) is an accountant by training. He served a five-year period of articles with the prestigious firm of chartered accountants, Turquand Youngs and Company and has worked as chief accountant in Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone as Accountant General, Liberia and the United States of America.
Chandra and his wife Siva have been blessed with two loving grandchildren – granddaughter Neela Chandraraj and grandson Deeran Vermeij.
He presently lives in tranquil retirement with his wife Siva in Hamden, Connecticut, U.S.A.
His seven previous publications:
1. For the Love of Shakespeare
2. Your Sense of Humor – Don’t Leave Home Without It
3. Mining my own life
4. Reminiscing in tranquility of a time long gone by
5. Itty Bitty Tiny Tall Tales
6. Rhyme to Pass the Time
7. Poems Please

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Publié par	Trafford Publishing
Date de parution	13 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781698712802
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

I DON’T NEED NO ROCKING CHAIR

JUST YET

K.B. CHANDRA RAJ

© Copyright 2022 K.B. Chandra Raj. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1279-6 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-6987-1281-9 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-6987-1280-2 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022918246
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
Trafford rev. 10/12/2022
www.trafford.com North America & international toll-free: 844-688-6899 (USA & Canada) fax: 812 355 4082

Contents
Introduction
Poetry
“On Aging” by Maya Angelou
Age versus Youth

1. Crossing the Bar
2. What goes faster every time I turn around
3. To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
4. On A Fly Drinking Out of His Cup
5. Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5)
6. Antony and Cleopatra (Act 2, Scene 2)
7. For the Fallen
8. Let Me Grow Lovely
9. Evening Pastimes
10. Cymbeline (Act 4, Scene 2)
11. Sonnet 66
12. Nature
13. When I see the young men at play
14. Growing Old
15. To His Coy Mistress
16. Forgetting to Remember
17. That’s Not Me
18. Long Ago
19. Let Me But Live
20. The Last Leaf
21. Growing Old
22. Old And Young
23. Age Is Opportunity
24. Even Such is Time
25. Father William
26. Fat Lie
27. King Lear (Act 4, Scene 7)
28. All the World’s a Stage from
29. I look into my glass
30. Death, be not proud
31. On Himself
32. Sound, Sound the Clarion
33. The Old Man’s Complaints. And how he gained them
34. Written in a Carefree Mood
35. Parody based on “My Favorite Things” from “Sound of Music”

Some Parting Thoughts

This book is dedicated to: THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
From the cosey comfort of an arm chair, cool in sultry summers, toasty and snug during frosty winters, at the public libraries in Colombo (Sri Lanka), Shelton and Hamden (U.S.A.) I have wet my feet in the holy waters of the Ganges, witnessed Moses crossing the Red Sea, listened to Marc Antony’s oratorical bombast, “Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears,” watched Saint Teresa work her heart out in the slums of Calcutta, accompanied Edmund Hilary and Tensing Norgay on their ascent of Mount Everest and much more too numerous to enumerate.
In all my peregrinations across continents whenever I saw the words Public Library plastered on a building, like a duck to water I was attracted to it. A safe place where I was certain to read, relax, and ruminate.
All this with a plastic card given to me at no charge.
All the public library requested of me was just this: while you are in the library keep your mind open and your mouth shut.

My Salaams to Doug Hawthorne
Once more unto the breach pal, once more.
Thank you for readily undertaking once again the prosy tedious task of editing my work.
It has come out of the wash clean and meaningful.

Introduction
I was young once, confident, participated actively in sports -- cricket, soccer, badminton, table tennis – I carried away prizes. By my own measure, successful.
I am now 87 tremulously looking forward to 88 and beyond, what I would describe as the waning days of my life. Growing old means seeing our place on earth shrink bit by bit and watching our shadows begin to shrivel. It means in the end we will vanish completely. With age comes a growing thoughtfulness: what was it all for? What have we made of our lives, and how do we come to terms with our going?
As in the case of Tolstoy’s classic, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” toward the end of Ilyich’s life, ambition and vanity disappear and priorities change. Like Ivan Ilyich I too look forward to comfort and companionship.
Learning new things or remembering familiar words have become daunting. The things I used to do with ease now require effort and it is by no means getting better. I walk more slowly than I used to. I have to be more attentive to where I’m putting my feet lest a momentary imbalance pitch me into a fall. How many times a day I stand in a room slowly scanning the furniture for a clue about why I am there? My equanimity is lost when my password is denied again and again. As they say, “Everything goes south.” Energy, reaction time, muscle tone, the body itself – they’re all headed into the earth, as far south as it goes. The change from then to now is tectonic. In other words, I am aging. I have reached a chronological milestone.
Aging – a multidimensional process of psychological, mental, and social changes that have occurred over the course of a lifetime.
Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief, Saint, all will go through the aging process.
Old age is often described in such dismal terms that we could almost feel ashamed of growing old – to such an extent, indeed, that we might feel that we have to do everything we can in order to make it look as though we are not advancing in years.
Aging is dying slowly. Some die early, others take longer. Abkhazians, living in the Caucasus Mountains, have a reputation of living long and healthy lives. Claims have been made for a life span of 150 years and marriages at 110. Even they die, eventually. Methuselah, the Grand Old Patriarch of the Old Testament, did eventually die, albeit at the age of 969.
There are those who never grow old because they are taken too soon. There are those who grow old without worries, enjoying everything life has to offer. There are those who desperately try to slow down the ticking clock.
As for me I don’t want to grow old because I don’t want to. I don’t want to have diabetes I don’t want to have pain in my body every single second of the day. I wish I could be young for ever so I don’t get arthritis. As I have written:
Young I was (true) but now am old
Not yet
Aching, shaking, creaking old
I can walk and I can talk
I can see and I can hear
From afar or near
Thank God
I can read and I can write
Like a bee’s sting or a mosquito’s bite
Who can ask for more.
When we’re young, death and those approaching it seem to have little to do with us. Old people don’t look or act like us – they might almost be a different species. As for death, we don’t want it, of course, but why worry about it? It seldom happens to young people. We can freely do dangerous things.
When you think about it, our time of aging is perhaps the first time in our life when we have an unknown termination point. We know when we’ll start school, when we’ll get out of college, when we’ll start our new job, when we are getting married, when we’re going to retire.
I am fully aware every hour I’m closer to death than I was the hour before. I stand perpetually on the brink of the rest of my life. All of us draw closer to the end all the time, but rarely with the acute awareness that comes when old age or calamity reminds us of where we stand. I’ve watched one who was dearly loved die at peace. As to when we are going to die, we have no exact knowledge. Ay! there’s the rub.
What you are about to read are my musings on aging. Call it my sticky journey from Diapers to Diapers. It offers no cure to aging. The book is not a “guide to” or handbook for getting old. I am cognizant of the fact “aged” is a broad category. It includes people who are very active and healthy, those with some limitations and those confined to bed or who are homebound.
Our society favors the young and devalues older people. In first encounters age is one of the earliest characteristics we notice about other people. Conscious or not, noticing age drives our interactions with others. How should I address them? What are their political views? How slowly should I talk? How loudly?
Many people approach age with dread. Today in America, we no longer see our elders as sources of wisdom but as feeble yet lovable doddering dears. The days of wise old Solomon are long gone.
Once Julius Caesar took control of the Roman empire Cicero, the famous Roman orator and statesman, could not support him. Rather than sinking into his wine cups or committing suicide as his friend the younger Cato had done, Cicero turned to writing. Cicero addressed the subject of old age in a short treatise entitled De Senectute.
Cicero, as far back as 45 BC while in his sixties and in a time when life span was short, was of the opinion the qualities that make the later years of our lives productive and happy should be cultivated from the beginning. The excesses of youth are more often to blame for the loss of bodily strength than old age. A wanton and wasteful youth yields to old age a worn-out body. Moderation, wisdom, clear thinking, enjoying all that life has to offer--these habits we should learn while we are young because they will sustain us as we grow older. The senior years, he believed, can be very enjoyable if we have developed the proper internal resources.
Mr. Cicero was out of touch with reality, I think.