Epilogue

This was last Tuesday. I had stayed up late the previous night completing the play. It had come together wonderfully well without a single snag, start to finish. Immensely satisfied and pleased, I trudged off to my bed and fell fast asleep.

That’s about all I remember. That and an ill-timed powercut an hour later.

It’s disappointing to be dead, to tell you the truth. I hadn’t counted on an early exit. My writing was just getting back on track. The surgery was becoming a distant memory and I had finally gotten around to talking with my parents after a decade. Why only last month I was thinking of asking her to consider marriage (if it wasn’t too early/fast for her).

Hmmm… I suppose such things happen.

Bleak as it may be, being dead doesn’t suck completely. For one, the pressure of proving myself to the world has completely vanished. Neither am I being plagued by conflicts, distractions and deadlines. Concisely put, this is every writer’s wet dream. If only it were possible,  I’dve published a lot more post expiry.

Secondly the concept of time just vanishes when you’re dead. I find myself everywhere, witnessing everything, all at once. Yep, it IS as nutty and overwhelming as I made it sound; like watching 1000s of movies all at once and losing yourself in the clamor. Good news is, its all expenses paid time travel all day- everyday where one can tune himself into/out of ‘channels’ at will.

Bad news is, watching is all one ever gets to do. Just like how, much as you wish, plunging into the TV screen and punching the shit out of nincompoop reality show contestants/judges is out of the question, I can’t catch hold of my younger self and bash some sense into him nor can I be by her side, holding her hand, as she dies alone in her attic lot many years from now (Did I just say ‘now’ ? Ha, I humor myself sometimes). The vicariousness of it is terribly heart breaking, must say.

Once during my short stint at the army hospital, a colleague (a poet, died of a asphyxiation few years before. Poor thing) recited me his poem about a man watching his own funeral and how it tickled him to see humanity grieving over the inanimate and the transient when all that had changed was that he was ridden of his decaying mortal shell.

This particular poem was called ‘Epilogue’ and was apparently my colleague’s proudest poetic achievement. Back in the day, I was much taken by the idea and even referred this colleague in the right circles and in a small way helped his career take off. Of course, now I know the whole thing is utter bollocks! Without a second’s thought, I’d swap this ‘eternal being of light and love’ with that ever-sweaty, ever-itchy, awkwardly disproportionate, flabby body of mine. The foolishness of romanticizing death dawned kinda late on me.

Sigh.

Would I be lying if I said I died with no regrets? Of course, yes. Every bleeding sod that dies has regrets. I have quite a few of them myself:  Like I never went back to Rampur to study palmistry as I promised myself I would. Never serviced my Fiat Padmini (they let it rust). Didn’t complete pottery lessons. Never learnt to cook. Never got around opening that bottle of Dewars in the cellar. Never paid Keshto a dime for his stunning early morning/late evening teas.

So on and so forth.

I frequently find myself going back to that rainy day when a group of us trekked up Chembra. Bad stomach and a bloodied pair of feet notwithstanding (courtesy: leeches), the ascent was terribly hard. But it was worth it. God’s honest truth, it was! Sitting atop amongst the clouds, I watched as it rained gently down the valley below. There I was, Lord of all things, unchallenged and without fear, commissioning relief to the parched lands below. The rapid expansion of ego felt all too powerful and magnificent; the kinda thing that pours forth all sorts of beautiful poetry and haiku, gets written and gets sold for a decent price to various magazines.

If you’re expecting some sort of an epiphany or a moral to emerge out of the above anecdote…. there isn’t any coming.

We left that place after an hour or two and caught the evening bus back to mainland.

….and life went back to being a blur.