You know those moments when a mix of serenity, quietness and a desire to think hits you? At that intersection lie the starting points of many of my meanderings. The other day I lay in the comfort of my blanket, with the AC just right. Everything was still and perfect. I guess maybe I find serenity to be the base of perfection. It makes me acknowledge the fact that everything is as is. I slowly started to drift towards contemplating the meaning of life. It's a question that everyone visits from time to time, and I am no different. I like to try thinking of it from different angles. It's like one of those wooden puzzles which can be solved only if you get the angle just right. The quest may just be unending, unless a deus ex machina happens. This night though, made me think about death, particularly the day my grandfather died.
We reached his funeral, and it was the first funeral I have ever attended. Everything was surreal. Everyone around me was grieving. Mom, cousins, relatives, everyone was unstoppable that night. I remember just looking at his face, all I could do was look. He seemed peaceful, asleep even. I remember just being numb and a small voice telling me that somehow, at this moment, the only way to show respect would be to not fake any reaction. The enormity of the event hadn't quite seeped in... atleast until the moment I looked at my grandmother. A lady who most probably hadn't left his side a day in her life. They were married for what... 50 + years atleast? She was holding my hand, but unaware that it was me. And she said just one line that night... when she saw him being lifted away from the house and onwards towards the final site... "atta nighaale maajhe mister"; which roughly translates to... "My partner has started his travel".
That moment was when it felt like the world just stopped. Here was someone.. whose entire life and love was bound to this one person. And that companion, whose eyes you see life through, is just... not there anymore. It made me think of love, and the expanse of life and the journeys we undertake with people. Knowingly or unknowingly, the people closest to us... shape us, form our thoughts, form our lives and memories. A lot of the time, we get so lost in daily living that the impact of all these cumulative actions don't seem to strike us. It takes a significant event that makes you face the bigger picture and evaluate. Somewhere that moment is tied to my idea of love as well. I would like to be like her... tied to the one person that you choose to love, freely and deeply. There is so much gentleness and strength in that love. Like embers of coal, that burn on an on, but burn slow and steady. Such a thought on such a day.
When the funeral pyre was lit, and the fire started raging on, I wondered how many of us there would be considering the reality of what was happening. The reality that the person who we knew, who was larger than life, is now slowly turning into ash. Just that. Tomorrow we will go and scatter the ashes into the river and that would be it. A physical closure to a physical being. In three days, there was nothing left of him... no physical evidence. I didn't know what to do with that. And this has been happening from time immemorial. All the ages that have lived, before us and all that will live after... millions of people and animals, each with their thoughts and loves and lives, have all lived on this one small planet. Our tiny, protective, lovely pale blue dot. All of them have never left. They have just become one with the earth and that is it. There was nowhere else to go, and there is no trace of you left after you go. The only fragments remaining are thoughts, and words that may get passed on if you left behind some work that benefits man. And even those will rust. So basically, your area of impact, for an average person... is simply the lives you have touched while you are living. That's it. And there can be beauty in that interaction... because while you live... you can choose to carry those people forward and think of yourself as a collective, and not an individual. In that mindspace, all the tenets of being good, acting with pride and restraint, offering help and comfort and understanding... all of it instinctively feels right. There is beauty in giving back... and this life is such a privilege. In the short while that you are here, what are the ways in which you can pay your rent?
And as the fire rages... when it envelops me someday - what it would seem like to me? If all I had was slight consciousness and no pain. Seeing it from the inside, with acceptance...would it just be like a beautiful warm blanket? Would there be poetry in the way I slowly disseminate and become one with what gave me life? The embrace of the winds and the earth...would that blanket be soft?
