Hour Glass

"When we are young opportunities are unlimited" i picked up this line from somewhere , and as i pondered about the statement i realized it to be very true.TIME - the biggest change that we witness every hour every minute and evry second, still we ignore this change and we realize it when its late.Here is a story of a man who in his grey days realize the importance of this change the most..........

Few days before, he turned 79 and obviously he was sad.As he opened his store room a loaf of dirt fell on his feet , he looked at his feet but ignored the dust on his feet, he didnot wanted to bend down and clear it ,because if he would then his severe backache would start all over again and would deprive him of half his energy.He switched on the light and thankfully it was working,so what if it was giving only half of the illuminance of its actual capacity.Store room was full of his belongings that he used in his hay days and which were now discarded away as a waste and thrown away in this wasteroom by his more powerful son Ram who now ruled his fathers house with his beautiful wife, but this old men wished if his sons wife could have been half as beautiful with her thoughts then his son wouldnot had moved away from him.

He still remember how Ram used to carry out his smallest orders like a most obedient son, but things changed when he first disobeyed him by moving into a new house.Ram was earning well from the buisness, which he took over from his father few years before. Till the time old man was earning for his family everything seemed to be in control, he happily married his younger daughter to a buisnessmen , and she loved him more than anything,but this old man had social restrictions that prevented him from visiting her daughter very often.He had complete faith in his son so he gave all his property to his only son moreover he believed in the saying that "To be successful in a race you should pass the baton at the right time"and so he did.But now in his old age he regrets the decision and held his wrong foresight responsible for his misreable condition.

As the old man moved in the room he came across something very precious to him an hourglass, he took it in his trembling hands.When he was a kid he used to look at the hour-glass, it was so much fun, every particle of sand flowing away gracefully , and after 60 seconds it had all moved to the other side.and then he used to turn it again and again , he smiled everytime when there were last few particles left in the hour-glass because these were the particles that he could observe more clearly and yeah they slid so fast, that the child wanted to do it again and again but now the same hourglass looked scary to him , particles in it seemed to be synonomous to the time and days of his long life and with his shaky hands he turned the hourglass and then the sand started pouring down again,he was terrified by the speed of the flowing sand, he realized that how fast time is slipping away and as last few particles were slipping away that old man lost his control.

Thudddd...... with a loud noise hourglass fell on the ground,and by its side he layed aching in that unbeareable pain ,with his thick lensed spectacles broken, in that dim light old men stressed his cornea muscles to see the hourglass.It fell on a frame ,brittle glass of hour glass had broken giving way to those sand particles , that were trapped in those confined walls, particles scattered on the frame lying beneath , these tiny scattered particles seemed to be telling his story,tired of juggling with the life and hoping to breakaway from these mournfull shackles of life. Uneven patterns of inhalations and Old man knew that he is taking last few breaths, just then he saw the frame lying by his side on which sand was lying, with his last chunk of energy he moved away that sand from the frame and then as he looked at the frame , a drop of water made its way from his old parched eyes and fell on frame that contained the potrait of his dead wife.......................................................................