When Life Takes an Untimely Exit

It was a sultry evening, not long ago, when my phone buzzed with a breaking news alert: Air India Dreamliner crashes. 241 feared dead. In an instant, life took an unscheduled exit for hundreds of unsuspecting souls. Just like that, the sky transformed from a flight path into a graveyard. Alas, an ordinary day became their final farewell and the nation gasped in horror.

Only days earlier in Bangalore, jubilation had turned into horror. After 18 long years, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) finally clinched their maiden IPL title -a long-awaited celebration. But outside the cricket stadium, a stampede claimed the lives of eleven young fans. Cheers turned into cries. Victory wore a black armband.

Up north in Pahalgam, death arrived in yet another form - terror. Unsuspecting tourists, untethered to any cause or conflict, fell to bullets - victims of a cruel ideology that values blood over brotherhood. They did not die for a cause but for someone else’s hate.

What binds these and many such tragedies together (irrespective of wherever it happens in the world)? They are all unnatural deaths -sudden, violent, and unjust. They offer no time for last words, no dignity in farewell and no closure for the living. There was a time when death was imagined as a gentle departure in old age, surrounded by family, with mantras or prayers marking the end of a life well lived. That image has now faded as we come to the close of 2025.

Today, death can strike mid-journey, mid-celebration or even mid-sentence. From road mishaps to climate disasters, stampedes to shootings, our ways of dying have multiplied, as if catastrophe has joined our daily routine. In this unsettling new world, dying of old age feels like a privilege.

India’s history with untimely death is long and bitter. Mahatma Gandhi was felled not in war, but in prayer. Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own sentinels. Rajiv Gandhi, the voice of a modern India, was reduced to smithereens in a blast.

Globally, the narrative is no different. John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963 while John Lennon was killed in New York. Princess Diana died in in an alleged car accident in the Paris tunnel. Basketball legend Kobe Bryant was claimed by a helicopter crash. The list is almost endless. When fate strikes with such surgical cruelty, we are reminded that no one - however beloved or famous - is immune from it.

And what remains in the aftermath of such absence? We speak of fate, divine plans, and destiny. Yet, the truth is stark -life does not always wait for your story to end naturally. Sometimes, it tears the script in half.

We mourn in public: lighting candles, posting hashtags, participating in televised debates, demanding justice. But soon, the media captures the next story. What lingers are private voids -the empty chair at the table, the half-read bedtime story, the unread message on a silent phone.

The true toll of unnatural death lies not just in the physical absence but in the emotional wreckage. Families are left with unanswered questions and unfinished stories: the child who never came home, the mother who never landed, the husband who became a widower before his wedding album even arrived.

Grieving such loss is like chasing smoke. Whom do you blame -a reckless driver, a failed system, a negligent authority, or a silent god? And through it all, I ask: Have we grown numb?

Do we still grieve, or are we just performing ritualised mourning? Perhaps numbness is our way of coping. And what we stop feeling, we stop fighting for. While we cannot eliminate every tragedy, we can learn. Improved safety protocols, better crowd management, enhanced intelligence sharing, training, and responsible governance -these are not luxuries; they are essentials.

One can’t accept death-by-negligence as life’s daily refrain. Demand accountability from our systems, and ourselves. Unnatural death must remain the exception. Even in death, there must be dignity. Even in disaster, there must be lessons. And hashtags certainly are not the right recompense for this. It is my humble prayer to those who read this that please do not normalise horror.

My 100-year-old mother once said: “Death - let it happen. Don’t make it happen.” Amen to that.

(The writer is a retired Bengaluru-based banker. Views personal.)