This is a dying man’s book.

So be careful to pick it up because it will remind you that there’s an expiry-date to this journey we so fondly call as life.

I was traveling on a train when I finished reading it. And it left me twisting and turning on my berth all night long.

It gripped me like I was reading fiction.

And to be honest, spooked me a bit too.

Paul Kalanithi was a talented neurosurgeon about to complete his residency with amazing offers from leading hospitals in the US.

But his life was about to be turned upside down.

Paul got diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.

A stage IV diagnosis for a 36 year old married man isn’t just a death sentence for himself but often a death sentence for his entire family.

The story takes us through the implications and decisions that come with it and are enough to send chills down anyone’s spine.

I feel stupid even writing about it because I realise as I’m typing that my words hold no power over a man writing about his life’s story on his own deathbed!

Paul started writing this book well after his diagnosis. But he didn’t know he had less than a year to complete it. And it shows.

The start of the book is elegant with a noticeably hurried middle and an abrupt end. As you read you get a sinking realization that it isn’t going to end well.

Paul died before completing this book. He personified the nature of life with it though. Unlike in fairytales, life in reality seldom comes a full circle. In a way, life – just like Paul’s book – is always incomplete.

But he wrote with more than enough brilliance to shake me to the core. Powerful writing by an incredible man.

Death is a paradox I realised – it is communal and it is solitary. Everyone has to go through it but everyone has to do that alone. That’s the spooky part.

Most of us think of death as some distant reality. And maybe that’s what we tell ourselves to focus on the present.

But sometimes it’s a good idea to self-shatter the illusion that life goes on forever to put a brake on the auto-pilot mode of life that most of us have gotten so used to these days.

The finality of death alone should be enough for us to leave everything that isn’t helping us do the things that we really want to do in life. I know Paul for one would be proud of that!

I don’t lightly recommend a book but this is a story more than worth reading.

“One life.
Just one.
Why aren’t we running like we are on fire towards our wildest dreams?” ~Rumi