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Saying goodbye

"What's the toughest task in the world?", asked the teacher to her class. The kids came up with answers, and slowly she could she her turn approaching. What would she say! she didn't want to act like a fool by being dumb. See could see the teacher glancing at her, so she took a deep breath and said, "saying goodbye".

She could hear her heart beat aloud, as she stood facing the class. No, she didn't want to give any explanation but the class had demanded to know. She had no means of escaping and to her relief, words started escaping her lips.

Why is bidding goodbye so difficult? she asks a rhetoric question to which she waits for a second to let the class absorb the question and then she begins telling a story.

The story of a little boy who knew not what separation meant. He had the best of things for himself. A loving family, a bunch of good friends and all the luxuries that the world could afford. He saw failures but his spirit never sank for he knew it would all pass. He could always run back to his dear ones and there what assured him was everything could change but his little world would see no changes. Came a storm which changed the course of his life, he woke up amidst puddles of blood. Blood of his loved ones!

They said it was death , that death was the ultimate leveller ,that it spared no one. Those hollow words couldn't satiate his burning heart. He wanted to howl, there were a thousand noises deep within but his eyes refused to shed a tear. He wanted it to end, the whole world to end but what ended were the lives of his dear ones  and what stayed were their memories.

They pleaded him to cry, to express his grief but something within him had cracked, never to melt again. He refused to obey the world, he refused to say "goodbye".

She hears a pindrop silence as her words brush against the wind. She stops, draws a deep breath and says, the reason she chose this answer was the fact that however deep the problem, we can sort out solutions but one task that still makes us go through numerous deaths while we are still alive is bidding "goodbye".

For when we bid goodbye, we also bid away the possibilities of meeting that person ever in our life. What can be more painful than forsaking the person who once held the power to revolutionise our world.

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