September 21, 2022
Am I really going to die? Is this all a prelude to my benevolent call from the heaven or I am ready to be roasted in hell?
The draconian de trop of death is an illusion, fear or a grim reality? Illusion for many as they see the splintering of their nerve impulses, a distorted vision of a disenchanted past—lost and loved, and a swang of family pies deliciously gauging if one of them would be the next paterfamilias.
The very fact that death is inevitable is still a pantomime to many—the vague foreboding of an afterlife is a messed up dictum and a challenging whimsical pot-boiler to keep us alert. I have met a lot of people, nuisance I must say, who top spin that death is not a grieving end. Definitely, they are overpowered by religious connotations that plague the human mind to live dual lives. It’s often heard –
‘I could have been a better son or daughter.’
‘My ailments crop up every now and then; maybe because of my past deeds.’
‘I have been a stubborn knot giving my loved ones a hard time; it would be hell bent on me.’
Heaven and hell would give a torrid glance to such people who find death as a means to exfoliate their wrong doings. Many assume what they have not been able to achieve in this life, death would definitely be a palliative bridge to give them another chance in the next birth. It’s quite curious and staggering when you see people above 60 thronging temples, gurudwaras and other religious shrines asking for absolutions.
Why are we being so hard on ourselves?
Isn’t death a sanctifying truth; why ingratiate its stubborn fortitude of whisking away lives because that’s what it is meant to do. It’s the fear of death imperceptibly clinging on the soul, for life went by indulging in deeds—some piquantly devious, some honourable and some transpired by the chicanery of the mind. What then lies ahead is a time in scansion of regrets, repudiations and reprisals.
More than fear of death, it’s the scandalizing torment of after-life that acts as a silent creeper of ambivalence eluding us to take onus our emotions and reactions. The death trap is a behemoth trespasser, taking away our sanity of where we belong. Many times people have faux-coated ruffles pillaged over their true self—just because they feel it will help them cross the Machiavellian death to diaphanously be accorded with privileged set-up in the next birth.
Isn’t the entire connotation of leading such capricious lives leaves us without sentiments to experience our own invasive affirmations to life?
I know certain set of people who carry deceit as a walking stick and in no time use a hammer and nail to apologize for their misconduct. Impertinence follows a misaligned forbearance stressing on the fact as drummed it may be –
‘We need to show our face to God.’
‘Apology will wash away our sins and give us an honourable place in the next birth.’
Even the scared river Ganges seems petrified now as washing away sins has become a mechanical process to buckle and then unbuckle the entangled fallacy of frivolous minds. Let’s welcome death as a profound closure to existence rather than creating an opulent door to settle scores of displeasures and incomplete disbursements.
We decide our heaven and hell right here. My obituary should be a preface to my unassisted experiences rather than a tat-e-tat among people who hardly know me showering praises on what I have not been. The quietness of death too has been made into pomp & show of the bereaved tears who fail to understand if more is a perfunctory solace and less a violation of an overwhelming tribute to the dead.
Death is the final nip in the bud. Who left at what cost is the decision of the creator—past lives and next birth restrict us from doing full justice to our present privileges? It makes us restless and anxious. Sometimes religion can be debilitating to the mind because of its approach to death—vast and full of paradoxes. The ambivalence of religious briefs makes death a torrid affair inclined to existence again, thus predisposing humans to create a thread of engagements, which can be very well sought here—right here—the present.