(among the scraps which I have carried over through the transition to "the new life", there was this vestige from "the old life" - something which I had written when I was just about 26yr old, on May 6th, 1981, to be precise)
When I returned from the
office, the postcard with a torn corner was lying on the floor. "It is
with deep sorrow that we inform you of the sad and untimely demise of Mr
Ashutosh Kumar…" it read in an impersonal bureaucratic tone. As if the
message deliberately aimed as dissociating any personal meaning from the words.
I sat down, numb and
uncertain. When you are middle-aged and an old friend dies, the feelings are
mixed and confused. Emotions rushed forth within me and tripped over each
other. A sense of triumph for having outlived him, a feeling of guilt for
feeling so, for being alive while he was dead, a sense of despair, of time and
life slipping away from between the fingers, of one's own mortality - all these
combined and prepared a curious blend of crooked emotions.
Ashutosh was an old friend
since the hide-and-seek and marble days. We had grown up together and learned
the strategies of living through common experience. Though time and adulthood had
drifted us away into different compartments of life, the bond of a common past
had somehow lingered through occasional new year and birthday cards. And now he
was dead and it felt unreal.
Death makes so many things
unreal. There were so many irrelevant, yet magically significant experiences
Ashutosh and I had shared with each other. Somehow, this commonality of our
memories made me feel my past as more real, more concrete, more secure. As if I
found a comforting validation of my life in his memories. But now, those
memories were gone, irrevocably lost, with Ashutosh, and along with them, the
objectivity they rendered to my past. My memories could well have been my
autistic fantasies.
Mechanically, I got up,
mixed myself a drink and lit a cigarette. I was awed by the change in the
meaning of death over time. When my father had died, and that was nearly twenty
years back, I had accepted his death as natural, as the logical conclusion of a
life lived. I had acted like a realist, had accepting the inevitable, and had
efficiently managed the rituals of his last rites, the bank account, policies
and the certificate. I had felt myself grown up and his death had been my
passing test into the adult world and maturity.
But now Ashutosh was dead and
what I felt was an empty hole in my life-space. Death, after all, I reflected,
is not the conclusion of life. It dogs through the every step of life and takes
one by surprise. It had struck me now, but I will go on living. A little less,
perhaps, for a portion of my life was dead with Ashutosh. Perhaps, that is why
we mourn death, because a part of us dies with others - just as it had lived
with others. I wondered if life - my life - was only a summation of its pieces
that lived and would die with others…
My eyes looked through the windows.
The sun had gone down and sky looked gray and dusky. In a few moments it would
be dark. I looked toward the approaching night and tried to accept its
inevitability…
****
