“Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that define a living organism.”…
The wekipedia definition defines it so.
It was as if death was in the air. Woke up early today to let Mamoni in [my little maid, her mamma’s ill of late of appendicitis]. She came in cheerfully and announced vibrantly, “Didi my mum’s dying. Her pain has increased”. Smiling thus, she went to work! I stood stunned for a few minutes trying to ascertain my sleep fuzzed mind that it had heard right. On asking her twice I received the same answer with an elaborate explanation of her mammas pain.
“Death” to children is a very subjective thing which happens as one has cough and cold! They happen not to think of it as an eternal parting but as something very certain that will happen. This little child spoke those poisonous words oblivious of their meaning! I shivered at the hour, it was early morning.
Was at home during the course of the day. Saw two hearse vans. Felt strange because I never see them around in this part of the locality. Something strange was about in the air.
The very prospect of death shudders. When people refrain from staying away from home for even a day, the prospect of leaving it forever, living somewhere alien to me, my own ones, and my own place… the very prospect seemed horrifying.
Slept through the better part of the day. As a lazy evening dawned on, my caretaker uncle informed me that the grandma downstairs had an accident today afternoon while returning home and had expired in hospital. I was stunned!
She would not be here anymore; I wouldn’t see her again or get to speak to her. She was no more. I felt nauseated. The whole apartment was silent as if in death. Staying alone, silence doesn’t perturb me, but this silence suffocated. As the silence, the muteness of death. It screamed silent sentiments of everything, to which every bosom returned an echo. Is it only a physical end? It is an end to the stay in the world, an end to everything… her intellectualism, her unarranged cupboard, her unfinished shopping, her to be resumed gossips, her favorite television soaps, her favorite shoes, her grandchild, her beliefs, her faith, her life… where do I keep these?
Haven’t faced this enigma ever. But have seen a parting closely… it came back to me… My sister, the day she had left us forever, which I silently recollect now as the only immortality ever to have been mortal. It completes every incompleteness and every perturbation within a soul forever, an eternal parting.
“It is the night of this unquiet day called life. In the sleep of death the sickness, the sorrows, the chagrin, the beliefs which never cease to disturb unhappy living men… repose forever.”
1.50 am, 13th April.
P.S They brought her today, she was totally mangled up! I was not at home, thanking God ever since for not having to witness the horrifying scene. Their were four people in the car. Heard today afternoon that, saving grandpa, the other two persons have also expired. Am speechless.
Please do read and comment on my efforts if you find this post popping up anywhere near you :P
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