Death, as I see it...

Time 11:49 pm. Setting- My Study-bed room.

I am lying in my bed, with eyes wide open staring at the spiraling optical illusion of the 3 winged whirling ceiling fan just because I can’t sleep. Abruptly, I hear someone suddenly breaking down, sobbing uncontrollably and incessantly. Probably a few women. I cock my ears in the direction of the sound.  It was probably from the slum situated next to my locality. I sit up in the bed. I can feel the coolness of the floor; a reminder that winter has set in. I walk unto the window, draw the curtains and try to figure out what actually is wrong. I comprehend that someone has passed on. I can’t stand the agonizing and dolorous weeping of those women. I try to close my window. Closing it has done no good to keep the weeping, wailing sound of those women from falling on my eardrums. They are crying ‘alas, alas’ and weeping for the dead. I sit on my arm-chair and sink back. It is natural to cry out when someone dear to you dies. But they beat their cheeks and pull out their hair, and all these things are a grim reminder of the memories attached to the dead ones in YOUR kinship.

 I don’t know much about life and death. All I know is that some days you are alive and some day you die and once dead, there is no more dying then. By now I am pretty sure that I am going to stay up until the wee hours of the morning until my eyes and body give in. Even though I am sitting on my arm chair physically, my mind has already gone out of the window in the direction of the grieving ones. I start making out eerie guesses. Who might have passed on? A tired old man/woman who was abandoned by his/her own son;the only son for he/she had lived far more than what was anticipated? And now crying is a mere custom to bid the departed soul. Or another old man/woman who was probably expected to see another sunrise whose departure is going to leave an irreparable vacuity. Or…a young boy, maybe? Who succumbed to an ailing or a major accident then?  Or a mid aged man/woman who has left back his vulnerable children at the mercy of this cruel world. In point of fact, I neither have a good reason to go into the cosmic details of this incident nor do I have the right. (Apparently, no right time too) yet I can’t resist from thinking what I’ve been thinking now. An unclear dullness has clouded over my mind and I am not able to reconcile what that’s about.  I am reminded of very first dear person whom I lost to old age: My Grandfather. I can remember of my maternal grandmother who clearly wasn’t liked by my uncles and was in bed for rest of her life until she gave in to a bedridden illness. I am reminded of an Uncle working as a manager in a bus depot who died for a very silly reason when a MSRTC bus driver ran into his course while reversing this giant vehicle, even though mistakenly. I can think of a languishing aunt who finally died in her house just because she couldn’t conceive a baby all her life. I can remember of my cousin who immolated herself just because she was scolded by her mother for not having stood up to her expectations of being a good child. I remember of a dear brother who drank himself to death leaving behind a traumatic wife and a few children. I am reminded of those 132 school going children of Peshawar, clad in green school uniform only to return home in coffins. Death often seems like a bitter-sweet occasion. Bitter in the pain, sweet in salvation, as they say.

 I again find myself trying to reconnect to the unknown-yet-known-grieving-family about their huge/ mediocre/minute loss. Tomorrow when I wake up I’ll probably forget about this and go about my business. But all that time I’ll know that the things I love, especially the people, at any time can all be taken away. Irremediable, loss that would be! I live knowing that. But I keep going anyway like everyone does. For our worst fears are seldom realized.

Disturbed that I am now, I rise from chair walk into the next room where my flat-mate is busy scribbling down some notes with his earphones plugged in. I enquire if he has heard the mourning episode. Heedless as he is, stops for a moment holds his earphone in his clutches and says, “You know, you are foolish!” Worried now that I am, I call up my father, recite the whole incident. He says, “Grow up.” I talk to my sister.  Who after a brief pause, says, “So what? Good night!”

I talk to my mother who says, “You understand grief. Nurture it. One day you will rise above this.” I come to realize, unfolding such an experience is like a painting which demands interpretation, but when you find one, it begins to look shallow. Maybe I should keep the interpretations in check. Maybe I should stop chasing the mice inside my skull. Or maybe I should bloody go back to sleep or maybe I should wait for an enlightenment that would never come.

Ritesh Randhir

18/12/2014