“Toopina dina kammi, aatina dina jaasti.”
My grandma used to say this. My mother does—now. Translated from Tulu, it practically means: “The days I had are more than the days left in me.” A popular saying among elders, the sentence is supposed to remind oneself of the ultimate truth (death) as well as of the ultimate gift (time).
Isn’t it amazing how deep the so-called vernacular languages can be without carrying the pretense of intellectualism with them?