What does it feel like losing, or rather missing someone in your life? What does it feel like, when it is a friend? When you hear from his father that your friend had given up his life on a string of cloth and they found out after a day in another place far from home? What would you say to him? That you’re sorry to hear the news?
Silence. And a big blank space in your mind. That’s what the death of beloveds feel like. Not even a drop of tears. Funny, I wasn’t even stunned or shocked at the news. So it happened when my brother died in an accident. And so it happened when my friend gave up his life five years back, alone, in an empty room in Chennai. Today marks his 5th death anniversary.
Death is black when you hear it and white when you see it. All you see is a long piece of white cloth and the face or hands that pop out of it. And sometimes it’s just a package, a massive piece of rotting flesh wrapped up in a white cloth and put into an electric oven. You wonder why you didn’t feel a thing. You wonder if you should have forced yourself to push a tear drop. Could it be the cold early morning in the cemetery? Or like life, does death grow on you? Or is it any comfort that you still have more time in this world? That you’re lucky, or damned that way?
(Image courtesy: Outlook magazine. I was surprised to find his photo while searching in Internet.)