An Encounter With Death

Death had never been formidable to me. Not because I was too naive to comprehend it or too oblivious of its mysteries. It had blown fiercely, often around me, snatching souls from mothers’ arms while their child lay suckling at their breasts or from lonely warriors strolling mindlessly through life’s journey. It had left unbearable grief in its wake, cruising briskly through bustling streets and leaving them deserted, forcing the mighty to bow humbly before it. However, in all the humdrum of dread and decay, Death had always eluded me.

I may not be exaggerating if I tell you that I felt invincible. Call it my illusion, if you must, but death evading my presence gave me unsolicited power over my comrades. I could tame it, as I imagined my hands holding an invisible whip tethered around the angel of death, nonchalantly tightening the grip, choking him every time he came near me or someone I love.

The notion appears childish, I realize now, as I look back on the day I had my first rendezvous with death. I lay helpless in a puddle of blood and tears, clutching her in my arms, slapping her cheeks to wake her from the interminable slumber, hankering for my neighbors to take her to a hospital, cursing them for being apathetic, cursing God for being utterly selfish, absolutely heartless, and most of all cursing myself for not being brave enough to rescue her.

Reality throws a Yorker. It bowls you out, throwing the stumps in a tailspin. But until it strikes, it is a tale we dismiss carelessly.

Was I guilty of being complaisant? Maybe I was? But I ask you, who isn’t? Is it a crime when humanity itself is its biggest proponent and follower? It is not a flaw in the Grand Design of the Mighty Old Fool? Why then single me out for it? Oh forgive me, I seem to have gone astray. What a fool am I to ask these questions of you. How I had lived my life in those days, when reality was still taking a run-up before the delivery. Fantastical dreams, twenty-two hours a day, dreaming that one day everything would fall in its right place and my story too would have a happy ending just like millions of stories I had watched on TV. I tell you, I sure turned a blind eye to the events around me. And I would never forgive myself for it. But I know that the repentance is mine and mine alone. The tears are mine. And I dare you not to show me your hollow sympathy. I have nothing but contempt for all of you.

*

“Did you know that human bones crackle under the fire, often snapping at the waist. Infact it is crucial to place a heavy log of wood on a corpses’ chest while cremating, lest the corpse swings upright, as if suddenly awake from an immortal sleep.” said my friend in a low voice during one of our many stimulating jogging conversations.

“Is it! Scary! How come you know this?” I inquired, dazed.

“I saw it with my own eyes at my grandfather’s cremation. And later, father confirmed it for me.” he said, unfazed by the direction in which the conversation was progressing.

“Well I have never been to a cemetery before. My grandparents died when I was quite young.” I said examining everyone in my near family who may have died in the recent past and whose cremation I may have missed, feeling a sense of guilt for wishing them dead, just so that I could see the log of wood placed on their chest as they take the final journey to the afterlife.

“You are lucky you know, to not have witnessed this. I couldn’t sleep for days as the flames from the funeral pyre kept haunting me. I kept wondering if my grandfather didn’t feel any twinge of pain as the fire engulfed him completely. My mother told me that the soul never dies. And baba may have left us but he is still out there keeping a constant watch over us. And only when he feels we are all safe and peaceful, would he go to someone else’s home to take birth again as a child.” my friend said, overwhelming both of us.

“I don’t know bro. I am sure my grandparents do not watch over me or my family. Whether they ditched us or whether soul never existed, I do not know.” I said.

“You know they crack the skull of a corpse by beating on it with a stick during cremation. Father told me that we do this as a homage to the corpse. How ironic, isn’t it? Father said that skull is where all the memory is stored, and by cracking it we let Baba know that he’s done a good job of raising us, and now that he begins a new journey, he could leave all his memories behind and depart in peace.” my friend said with a heavy heart.

*

My sister and I were running around the house, playing with a toy car when the phone rang. I jumped to pick it up and pressed the call button. Two voices echoed in my ear simultaneously. One, of my mom scolding me for having picked up the phone and the other of some stranger - as they often are to someone of my age - on the other end of the call. Earlier, I couldn’t separate the two voices, but months of practice had made me numb to my mother’s yelling and I paid all my attention to the lady on the phone.

“Could you hand over the phone to Indu. It is already 10:30 in the morning and she still hasn’t visited my home. Come now, do I have to call her every morning for the same stuff. Does she have no sense of responsibility?”, said the lady in a rather husky tone.

“Mom, it’s for you”, I said as I handed over the phone to her and ran after my sister to demand my turn for playing with the car.

Indu is my mother’s name. She has been a house cook for as long as I can remember. It is not a high paying job, but mother says it keeps the lights running. The wrinkles on her youthful face, dark circled eyes, hoarseness in her voice, worn out clothes, and malnourished physique often betrayed the tattered remnants of once a fine beauty, a princess she liked to call herself, reminiscing over the days of distant past before her ill fortune of marrying my father. She had eloped with him, a man from lower caste, something her family never forgave her for, and disowned her without hesitation. A fallacious facade of misguided pride outweighs years of love. Only humans with their infinite wisdom could be mechanized in their feelings. Dim-witted animals are devoid of this fallacy. But you see, it was the greatest of the sins, forbidden from high above. “Thou shalt not marry beneath your caste”, one of the unwritten commandments mortals had to adhere to.

Life after marriage had been good to her for a couple of years. Love is all she was hungry for, and my father had it in abundance. But as the saying goes, happiness lasts for a day, pain and misery a lifetime. Father doused himself in alcohol soon after mother lost her first baby boy during birth. Love then was crucified, dying a slow death. She did eventually give birth to me and my younger sister, Asha. But who says a child is always a product of soulful consummation? I could very well have been a consequence of inebriated thumping, an appendage to be discarded if not for my mother.

*

“I would quit Mrs. Kamala’s employment as a house cook when you grow up.” mother would remark.

“And then I would get a good job in the city and purchase saris and jewelry for you, and bangles for Asha. Oh how she loves the sound of bangles clinking when the neighborhood girls play with them,” I would often interject her as she hugged me tightly and run her calloused fingers across my hair.

Father would spend the day in a tavern, drinking whatever he could get his hands on. Its surprising how generous a man becomes the moment he crosses the threshold of the tavern. An extravagant indulgence, for himself and his drinking comrades, booze in arms, ready to take on any adversary. But soon the money dried up and my father’s time at the tavern increased. It was spend in demanding alcohol, unceremoniously, from anyone and everyone, from some as a settlement for earlier generosities, with others as a favor or heartfelt gratitude. Who says chivalry is dead? Perhaps it may be, for you and me. But it was kicking for my father, in the cozy commotion of the tavern as the bottles changed hands.

Often he would return home, intoxicated out of his skull, banging on the door with all his fury. A moment’s delay in opening the gates and he would be epileptic to break it open.

“Whose wretched face had I seen that day when I decided to marry you?”, he would bark at my mother. “I should have left you at the altar.”

Father had lost all sense of day and time. There were no more weekdays and weekends, no more springs and winters, no mornings and evenings. There was only one time, one day - one moment - to drink. He could no longer distinguish right from wrong, righteousness from decay. Come to think of it, his greatest discontentment from the world, his source of all anguish was the loss of his first born child. While mother was under the knife, doctors had informed him that they could only save one, either her or the child. Dad, after enough rumination, had realized he wanted his baby boy more than my mother. However, the doctors failed in saving the child and as a consolation, managed to return my mother alive. Soon after, arguments replaced bonhomie, fights became a daily affair, blame took center stage, mother drifted apart putting herself in a cocoon, and father found solace in alcohol, the only medicine to ease all his pain. That was the first time he would enter a tavern, and once inside, he would never come out of it.

*

Father was a cloth merchant before this sordid episode. He had a big outlet, employing some eight people, always busy displaying wares. However, once hitched to alcohol, debt soon followed, and loans kept piling, until he could pay no more. Overnight, in the shadow of the darkness, we had to run, our entire family, carrying the valuables, under constant threat from the lenders. However, a change of location did not put an end to our woes, as father soon stumbled upon a new street and a new tavern.

Two actions summarized his life - drinking from morning to evening and fornicate at night. My mother had tried to resist him often, sometimes using illness as an excuse, sometimes invoking mine and Asha’s presence in the home, but all her prayers fell on deaf ears. It had scarred Asha and me for life, his presence filling our hearts with terror.

Soon alcohol gave way to violence. Beatings occurred regularly and mother would cry often, writhing in pain. Blood stained curtains, cuts on the forehead, blood clotted waist became a constant occurrence. An affair we witnessed for ages, helpless and incapable to challenge his authority, before one wicked episode brought all this to an end.

One of those days Asha took to bed with a flu. Mother borrowed half her salary as a cook in advance to purchase medicine for Asha.

“Here, take it and run along to the medicine shop.”, mother said handing over the money to me.

By the time I returned home, I heard father raging like a bull. “Am I not the one who’s dying instead. My entire body has been aching since yesterday. I haven’t had a drop since Bhanu offered me a sip. And anyways what does Asha have. A cold. Is that it? And you had the nerve to send that scoundrel to the bloody medicine shop with my money. Hand over all of it now before I kick you with my boots.”, father growled as he darted towards my mother to snatch the money from her.

But mother could take it no more. She could bear unfathomable suffering on her body, but to see her daughter howling in torment, that she couldn’t bear. And to top it up, the coldness of Father overwhelmed her. She pushed him with all her might, as Asha and I lay still, numb, frozen to summon up the courage. He pounced towards her, held her by the hair locks and smashed her face in a wall. She died instantly, as her body hit the ground, gasping and bloodied.

*

The funeral pyre was drizzled with oil. Mother was draped in a red saree, her favorite, to be worn on special occasions. What occasion could have been more special than her final journey to the unknown? Women were prohibited from cremation grounds, but Asha had begged me to take her along, and so I did. Father decided to utilize this moment to drink, a free man of few hours before going to prison, so he skipped the funeral and trudged towards the tavern.

“What would the priests say? That it is a bad omen to bring a lady to the cremation grounds? Well, how bad could the omen get when my mother is already lying as a corpse?” I rationalized my choice of bringing Asha. “And if the priests are adamant of not servicing the rituals unless Asha is removed from sight, than I would perform the rituals on my own account.”

I circumambulated Mother’s dead body lying on the pyre. Clarified butter was poured over her. A tinge of smile and relief adorned her face. I was reminded of one of her sayings. “People who smile all the time carry the most pain in their hearts.”

As the flames rose sky high from the pyre, I vowed before this holiest of the flames. “I would never see my father’s face again until the day he dies”. That night I boarded a train with my sister and went far far away - from the shadows of our father - to a new city, a new life.

As the last ritual during cremation, the priest asked me to break my Mother’s skull. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Did I want her to forget about me and Asha?”, certainly No. “But does she not deserve peace and quiet even in her afterlife?”

I picked up a log of wood, smashed her skull to pieces and walked away as the fire kept burning.