Philip Larkin, 'Aubade', 1977:
"...
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
..."
Diwali 2013 is now history.
Containers that stored Diwali snacks up to the brim are emptying fast. Even 'Sunil Gavaskar' 'shankarrpale' (शंकरपाळे) (called so because they come to 'bat first' and go out last) are on their last leg.
And no matter what, it leaves a sense of emptiness behind. It has always done so for me. It perhaps taught me, very early in life, without using any words, that you couldn't hang onto to anything.
I began to understand a little about Larkin's "the sure extinction" much later.
"A matryoshka doll, also known as Russian nesting/nested doll, refers to a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other." (Wikipedia)
Artist: Geoff Thompson, The Spectator, UK, September 2013
(I have always loved Mr. Thompson's work and you will find a few more example of it on this blog.)