What If?

Am reading A Short History of Byzantium by the rather pompously named John Julius Norwich.
An elegant writer, Norwich, after describing Byzantium and the magical resonance of that place-name, writes:
Finally, the man: Constantine I, Emperor of Rome. No ruler in all history has ever more fully merited his title of 'the Great'; for within the short space of some fifteen years he took two decisions, either of which alone would have changed the future of the civilised world.

The first was to adopt Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire. The second was to transfer the capital of that Empire from Rome to the new city he was building on the site of old Byzantium... Together, these two decisions and their consequences have given him a serious claim to be considered--excepting only Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and the Prophet Mohammed--the most influential man in all history...

I don't remember if I've learnt that in school, but reading it now and thinking of the 'what ifs' gives me goosebumps. If Constantine had not adopted Christianity, that Jewish reform movement would probably have faded away, like tens of other religions that glowed for a brief while before either fading away or being stubbed out .
So, would the whole world have been Moslem? Imagine domes, cupolas and the muezzin's call in London, Paris and Rome. And also, no Crusades, no overdressed Popes and even the Iraq war?

Mnemosyne

The Wait

Now that I've figured out the functions of the various Blogger icons on my 14-inch monitor and squandered time away--it's been three days since I logged on to my blog--let me begin at an end. This dark tapestry of thoughts is about death, more like waiting for it.
Three weeks back, my maternal uncle was diagnosed with both lung and bone cancer. In a chest X-ray of his, which I happened to see, there was nothing but a dark swirl where his left lung was supposed to be. The cancer had spread from his lungs to his bones, nibbled away at the disc on which our head rests and also rendered his spinal cord hollow. This man, who's now about 70, has been more like a grandfather and a friend to me (we both used to bum smokes from each other, share both good Scotch and sweet brandy and so on). I still remember how he once rendered my irate college principal, who once decided that he should have a talk with his ward's guardian about my general misdemeanours, absolutely speechless. His reply to the principal's rants was, "He's 19. If he doesn't bunk classes and chase women now, when will he do all this?"

When I went to meet him last week, he was lying on the bed. Physically, he looked OK, but I could sense his spirit had been squashed. I sat next to him, held his hand and chatted with his children. They were putting on a brave face and wanted his last days (the doctors say he doesn't have much time) to be anything but gloomy. His little grandchildren shrieked around the two-storeyed house and there was good food on the table.

But I could also sense that dispassionate, cold presence--in the hall, around his loving children, in the little garden outside. Most of all, I could see death's shadow shuffling silently behind my uncle.

It is not the finality that hit me, we all know we have to poof! some day, but it is the waiting that is agonising. A voracious reader, he's stopped reading the papers and seldom switches the TV on. All he does is wait, like we do at the ATM, at the train station and for our next raise.
It could end in three months or eight, but it's finally, incontrovertibly going to happen. It's so close, he can probably smell it.

Life mostly is all hype, great fodder for the evil men behind advertising. But death, ah, there's nothing at all like it.

Three Bagpipers and cheese

Took a bad cold, recurring aimlessness, the third cloying peg of bad whisky and a friend's advice to make me start blogging. The first 12-odd words have tumbled out. So far, so good.
All writing is self-doubt and loneliness, but isn't the world getting too darned crowded these days?