Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!...
And things are not what they seem...
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!


LEAVES fall. Clouds stand still. The sun hides. It’s time to say goodbye. Sadness creeps in and the days shorten. Raindrops keep falling. Winter winds thread the trees and make them shed. The air is heavy and the heart lonely.

It looks like yesterday when the first leaf turned red and the next to it glowed golden and yet one more flamed orange. Within the week, America changed colours. From lush green to sunshine yellow and brilliant burgundy.

A feast for the eyes, roving and roving for miles unlimited. Absorbing the sheer loveliness, each tree a poem, a piece of perfection. Exorbitant beauty graciously cast waiting to be devoured to become one with the surreal moment.

The drone of blowers everywhere deafen the ears as men go about their work collecting dishevelled leaves. All fallen. Dead and ugly. Fled is the dream, gone is the magic.

And thus comes to a close, the fall of 2002.

The celebration of life. Who else, but the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 75, can describe it more lovingly? “My God, if I had a piece of life...I would not let a single day pass by without telling the people I love that I love them. I would convince each woman or man that they are my favourites and I would live in love with love. I would prove to the men how mistaken they are to think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love.”

He is dying. The Colombian has lymphatic cancer. Hence he’s a man in a hurry to tell his story. Cloistered in his study for three years, he has at last released the first volume of his memoir, To Live to Tell It.

“It is not that I am afraid of death, it is that I have a rage towards death,” he once said and now as he nears his end, he says, “I have learned that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, without knowing that true happiness lies in the way of climbing the slope.”

America affords glimpses of how life is lived in the most blessed country of the world. Fresh and evergreen is youth, dripping with dreams and in love with themselves. The whole wide world is their playing field where the stakes are high and the challenges pulsating. America worships youth; their fads fuel the fashion industry; their moods steer the billion dollar advertising trends; and the job market tailors itself to the twenty something. Forget about the rest.

Producing boy genius and girl genius clones that America so proudly touts to the outside continents overwhelmed by ills of their own ranging from ballooning poverty, political chaos, evil elitism and uncontrollable births, life on planet earth appears unfair to most. The divide between the most powerful country and the burgeoning mass of poverty all around the globe was never so stark as today.

But life in the US is not a bed of roses either. With five million jobless and growing, with 70 or so per cent of the population investing hard-earned cash into the stock market that has lost billions in one year and continues to remain anaemic, ordinary Americans are experiencing an autumn of their own. A forty-year-old has huge problems on his mind today. Polowniak, a bricklayer for 20 years, is out of a job because “employees are always looking for younger people, who are stronger, faster. The older you get, the slower you become.”

America can be a very cruel country. Heartless and clinical to the core. Robert Linn, 58, an accountant, was laid off nine months ago and now spends nights worrying how he can meet his monthly mortgage and tax payments amounting to $2,600 for a four-bedroom house and money to raise his family. His daughter goes to college next fall.

Remember the adage, ‘old is gold’? Well it’s just the opposite now. It’s called ‘ageism’ and it is definitely not gold!

According to Linn, “there are very few ads that want 10 to 15-plus years of experience because that means either you’re overqualified or too old.”

While it is illegal to discriminate against a person on grounds of age, the law is being flouted left, right and centre because it is difficult to enforce.

That doesn’t mean the older you get, the more frustrated and cranky you become. For one thing, you can’t afford to sit at home, moan, groan and curse your luck. Most live from pay cheque to pay cheque, and have their health insurance intact when employed. So, you float your resumes and go out everyday in search of a job. That’s the beauty of America, still the land of opportunity. Nobody starves out here.

And the American dream lives on....

Women belonging to the pampered classes need not worry about hitting 50 and losing their — how do you say it? — femininity. The largest study of motherhood (Americans love studies) brings good news to menopausal women wanting to start a family all over again!

Out of 77 post-menopausal women participants given donor eggs from 1991 to 2001, 42 are today proud moms. “We’re having our own grand kids — we just skipped having kids,” is how one overjoyed woman put it. Marilyn Nolen, 58, conceived twin boys at age of 55, using eggs from a woman in her 20s. “For me and my husband, it’s just a dream come true.”

Critics call is unethical to “impregnate women who might not live to see their children grow up.”

But the actuarial age of Americans today is between 70-80 years. And most don’t want to die with music still in them. The older they get, the more active they become. Go to any college campus and you’ll see the paths of old and young intermingle. Campuses are not the sole preserve of the young, but are open to all. Many retired couples prefer to live in university towns to bask in the radiance of youth all around.

Last week, as the century-old trees in a university nearby, swayed gently in the breeze and gracefully allowed their leaves to flutter and dance in the air before falling to the ground with the sun choreographing the grand minuet, older Americans (you call them seniors) made their way to a Shakespearean theatre come to town on a lazy, lovely Sunday afternoon.

Garcia Marquez’s words echoed in the air: “If God gives me a piece of life, I would give value to all things, and not for what they are worth, but for what they mean. I would sleep little, dream more. I would walk when others pause, wake when others sleep. I would listen when others talk.”

Author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, who was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, Marquez is poignantly passionate about life and besotted by his world which he knows he may exit soon.


Footprints, that perhaps another, sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing, shall take heart again.