Death is such an easy thing to
happen. At times, I feel, it isn’t death which is accidental; rather it is
life, which is. It is strange not to have written about it. Death has been a
consistent thought hovering over my mind like an ominous vampire clouding over
a meek moon. While two of my stories, “The Death of A Soldier” and “Betrayed by Time” dealt with
death as a kneel over which they revolved; on my blog, I never have written
about death. To think of it, it seems a rather strange thing.
Not to have written about death. Any blog about life had to stray
somewhere into the dark realms of death.
It is rather coincidental that in
last few months, I have read several books which dealt with death, the most
recent being “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. The book traces a
period of intense grief through which she survived post the death of her
husband and her daughter. While reading it, I found it rather strange that
having had so closely been touched by death, I had steered off the subject
almost like being in an adamant denial. Before I was so closely visited by
death in my own life, I would boisterously conclude any discussion about death
with a solemn one step sideways argument. But that was before 17th
of August, 2001 fell on that long balcony of that house on the fourth floor. Hit
by a sudden uneasiness in the chest, which quickly turned into a pain which
found me doubled on the balcony, I, on a later thought, was driven by a unique
kind of stubborn stupidity to have walked three stories into a hospital next
door. The visit to the hospital coincided with the daily round of senior doctor
who was a heart specialist. Once coincident led to another, and I survived and
woke up on this side of the world. Those three days which had the door opening
in both the directions proved what I always said in my youthful sagacity- Death
is nothing but one step sideways. I survived, and I continue living, in dark
shadows of death still hovering over the brightest sun. Nothing came close to that
feeling than what Joan Didion wrote about her husband when she wrote- John
lived with a bad heart which will someday kill him. One only needs to replace
John with my name to understand my usual day.
There is nothing sanguine about
death. It walks lonely in the dark alleys with its head held down. It doesn’t ever
look up, it doesn’t smile at you, it promises nothing but an eternal silence in
the end. It doesn’t even have to take you along, a brief embrace hangs over
your soul forever and your whole life thereafter becomes a struggle against it,
against death, against the futility of life and against the eternal silence in
which all the noises are to eventually fade. I survived death but had since
been living with the feeling of a borrowed time. It gnaws my soul, feeds on the
innards of my being. Didion’s husband inherited a bad heart. I didn’t. My
father had a cardiac episode, but that was later than me. I had it at twenty
eight, he at sixty two. Maybe, at some metaphysical level, he inherited it from
me, something like the magician whose life was in a bird, I being that bird.
Maybe, inheritance of a bad heart is a flawed idea in itself and we both
embraced our own frailties through our own accidental turn of fate.
At the end of it, a fractured
heart beats inside me which like Didion’s husband will eventually kill me. The
knowledge of that damaged heart struggling hard to keep me alive does strange
thing to my mind. I want to respond to minor kindness with wholehearted
gratitude. I read my obituaries in my dreams. It makes me realize my own
existence as an idea, extending beyond mere physicality of existence. I
recognize myself as an idea, a though, a confluence of values. I do not want much from the world. I want my six
year old to delve deeper into her heart and derive her own value, spring-boarding
from the foundation that I have built. She has a good heart and she need to be
rescued from the vagaries of intemperate thoughts. She doesn’t inherit a bad
heart and she needs to learn the deeper meaning of life without having to
encounter the painful intimacy with death like her father. I need to teach her
that before I someday take that one step sideways. I look forward for a good
obituary on the day that happens and in the meantime, I want to prepare my
daughter for the inheritance of a good heart and a kindled mind. And of course, in this borrowed life of mine,
I want to be pampered and loved, for I am the pampered prince of pathos.
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