Notes To Myself : A Tale, A Pain, A Death

"When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men."

- (As reads the epitaph of Jalal-ud-din Muhammed Rumi)


Alas!
You have shattered
The beautiful world
With the brazen fist;
It falls, it is scattered.

-(Goethe's Faust, lines 1607-11)



On the thirteenth day of her demise, when thirteen brahmins ate the sacred meal, I finally gathered the strength to write at least that which can be called her obituary. My paternal aunt (bua) passed away on the day of 31st July, leaving a never-ending pain on my soul which I know time can never heal.

Being the resident of same town, a close relationship germinated between me & her. I can still recall my early childhood which used to pass within the warm walls of her home. In fact, it was she who gave me the identification : my first name - Amit. Later, I was to ask her, while the question really bothered me during my early teen-age, meaning of my name. I remember, she told,' It means limit-less, so you are going to be.' This was the only lie that I knew she told me. I am not limit-less, never even going to be. I believe it was a lie to quench a boy's curiosity. Being born on the ominous date of 13th & growing up watching horror movies like 'Friday The 13th', I always felt that fate has parted ways with the boy who is born on such inauspicious date. But there was she, who not only filtered my infant mind of such vague ideas but also in some way taught me never to trust the numerological & astrological absurdities. Though she never felt herself that this was the beginning of my atheism which later was to grow into agnosticism, thanks to the numerous dead spirits. She laughed when a teen-age boy, born on 13th, refused to attend any pooja activites during diwali. Her laugh was a consent, for instead of preventing my own cultivation of ideologies, she stood against the whole family to spare me & let me do what I want.

Ironically, I became the center of her motherly love, for her only son was born mentally retarded. This mishap, I feel, forced her to grow me in the way what she preferred or else what I preferred. While my mother was preparing for my sister's birth, she brought me with herself to her home until the delivery. This temporary stay was to last for two years. The only mother I knew until then was she. My naughtiness reached to its fullest in her home, pulling her hairs with all the strength I got while reciting the poem which my uncle taught me. My uncle during all this act used to laugh merrily, for I was doing what he always wanted to do. Throwing the neighbor's two year old child in drain, I faintly remember, was my favorite.

Twenty five years later I was to witness her grasping for every breath in the dark corner of Intensive Care Unit of hospital.

Putting in the words of Nietzsche - the idyllic tendency of the opera, she became my confidant, hearing all the stories of my girl friends. Turning the tide she always would,' why are you fooling them ?'. & I would laugh on her innocent remark. I was to discover later in the words of Carl Jung - mater spiritualis, which gradually and innocently she became for me, efforting to prevent her son to commit any sin, which I never did.

Though I never live to eat but I must say that she was the best cook I ever knew. I used to arrive at her place without even informing her exactly at the time of lunch. I remember her getting angry, of my coming without any prior notice, though I had taught her how to use a mobile phone. But I knew she used to love my home coming, informed or uninformed. On the thirteenth day when I ate what others called the sacred meal, I knew, it was the last meal I was treating at her place. With every bite, I ate the solitude created by her absence. Au contraire, it increased. Stealing the glance of everyone I conflated my lone tear with her unseeable presence.
She suffered from severe arthritis which followed her like a ghost for six years. Having sought to the refuge of every specialist doctors in this case with her, I never managed to get her rid from this painful physical state. Some twenty days ago, she barely survived a major cardiac arrest which led her to begin a journey which was to end in death. Doctors informed me of multiple diseases apart from cardiac related, I knew then that she wont last long. For seven dreadful days, I stood by her bed, while she dozed in coma, unaware of my presence.

I felt for the first time that Assagiolian egg diagram is all wrong, for he forgot to mention the space occupied in our 'self' by those whom we love. Their departure creates a vacuum within us which can never be occupied, reminding us from time to time of their 'once-existence' by those small things which we inevitably tend to associate with them : memory. Her demise reminded me of my own, for I have also to go one day, induction of love for life rather then the fear of death. Things are never going to be same again. I miserably accept that it is not the death of our loved ones which causes pain but it is the shattering of our mirage : that every thing is permanent. She taught me even with her death.

The quintessence of all religions : fear of death. Exploitation of humanity on the name of surviving in some other world, waiting for day of judgment, the vague desire of humanity, which even Godard moans in his film 'À bout de souffle' : 'I want to be immortal. '
If Michel Foucault is correct when he says ,'Man is an invention of recent date', then it may be also correct in finding the answers to all the curious questions of death, which is yet to happen, one must investigate the recent date itself. Simply put, the question of future can be answered in present.
But what if science wins over death, as it has always been put into effort by the means of alchemy. If it happens, I doubt, there would be any trace left of religion. The immortal man, I suppose, cannot be religious. But would it pose another threat, as in Kafkaesque 'Metamorphosis' Gregor Samsa wakes up from a nightmare finding himself being transformed into a giant beetle, causing a disgrace to his whole family, an outcast. The science made immortal man would be far different from what we are today, unlike Gregor Samsa, but very much like a giant beetle. Neither there would be any Nietzsche's Übermensch in this scientific expedition. Whatever there would be, I may not live to see it.

Her death struck the very roots within myself, which was unwittingly growing into such ideas of immortality. I feel that I am being lessoned in the most vital chapter with her sad demise : immortality can be achieved only by mortality. Just like, she will live within me, always & I am dead within her.

The boy born on August 13th 1980, turns 27 years old today.