TRAPPED - Dead Yet Alive

The usual chirping of birds woke me up. It would be around 5 AM by now, I thought. Like every other day, starting my day felt like lifting another heavy weight. Not that I have anything in particular which was bothering me, but my daily routine probably had turned me heartless, and nothing now gave any happiness as such.

 

After my usual chores and a quick breakfast, I started cleaning the open area of the cremation ground I work at. For last ten years, I had been living in a small room just next to the cremation ground. My father used to work here. This is the only cremation ground in the village. Since childhood I had known him come here every morning, perform last rites of people and then help the families to take away the ashes which they would take to holy rivers to be laid there. People believed that it would help the soul to depart from the world and transport it to heaven.

 

As a child, my father would never take me along for his work. He always said that it is not a place for children to visit. He would talk to my mother quite often about how he felt that God had chosen him as a source to free up the souls from their bodies when death dawns upon them. He would tell her stories about the families who would bring their dear ones once dead, and would perform the rites, the funeral and then collect the remains, the ashes to make sure they help the soul, as their duty, in its journey to heaven. My father always thanked God for choosing him for this responsibility which he felt made his life worthwhile.

 

The happiness he found in his work, always made me curious to visit the place he would daily go to.

 

Life has strange ways of making wishes come true. One day finally, fate made me visit the place. The only difference was that my father did not take us there, we had to take him along. His family stood at the same ground where he had been meeting those unknown families. It was him, for whom the funeral had to be arranged. It was the first time when we visited the place my father had been visiting every day of his life, the place which made him feel so close to life, was the place where death had brought him that day. The place which he worshipped was from where he would leave for his new journey.

 

The loud horn outside broke my chain of thoughts. It was the daily truck of wood log supplies. I went outside to get it unloaded. With the help of the driver, I managed to pile up the wood inside under the shed to protect it from rain and outside moisture. I came inside after that. There wasn’t any work today, as there had been no cremation to be done. I sat there wondering about life, and about death.

 

Since the time my father left us, I had taken up this responsibility. While few people felt it was to carry on the tradition of the family, my reason behind was that it was the quickest way to ensure our family could manage the financial situation. If I had waited to get some other work or job, I might have lost this work as the village head would have appointed someone to take care of the cremation ceremonies in the village. My mother also wanted me to follow my father’s steps as she thought it would make him happy when he would look down from heaven.

 

When I started with the work, I used to only think of it as a source of livelihood for myself. With time, it just started becoming part of me. People could come and cry their hearts out in sorrow and pain. What just felt like ashes to me, held so much value for them as they saw remains of their loved one in the same. Each passing day, with each encounter of death, with every exhibition of sorrow I witnessed, I just kept growing heartless. Daily experience of the feeling of death had made me realize how fragile life is. At times when I met people outside and saw them cribbing over little issues in life, I used to smile in my heart. I knew that end of every journey will be the same, even if they get what they want or if they kept crying over it. I tried explaining the irony during initial few times, but just realized that how much worldly pleasures matter to people and dear they hold them to their hearts. Maybe they don’t yet see death as I have been seeing.

 

We live this life searching for what we want to live,

Still to questions of life we don't find any answers to give.

We cling to past, so fast in future, we dive,

Materials and money are for what in present we strive. 

As time passed, my mother also left me to follow my father in heaven. Time had turned me into a stone. Having lost a family, I feared losing nothing else now in life. There was no attachment left nor anything seemed worthy of giving me any happiness. But as they say, life must go on!!

 

With no family left behind now, I decided to move to the little room in the cremation ground. For years now the only thing I see day and night is dead people and families behind who mourn the death. Slowly I feel I have lost the desire to be happy, or maybe have forgotten what the emotion of happiness is. There have been times when I tried to encourage myself with my dad’s words, how he used to feel blessed to be helping people move on path of ‘Moksha’.

 

I managed to kill the human in me who wanted to run away from this heart wrenching experience each day. I have become cold which I needed to be to survive this. But I could never make myself happy with what I was doing on daily basis since years now.

 

Today after all these years I just sit here looking back at my journey. I have learned to be heartless. But does that mean I do not have a heart that feels like others. If I am not sad, does that mean I do not want to be happy or is living without sadness equivalent to living happily? If I have made myself accept this reality of my life, why I still feel trapped in my own body. Life is just a journey and death would be a transition, but should I not enjoy this journey while I am alive. Why does life feel so heavy when everyone calls it a blessing?

 

I am tired now of helping people to free up the souls from their bodies when death takes it over. I still breathe, but I have been long dead now. I wonder how my soul would be freed up.

 

Silent is the ocean so peaceful it seems,

Being silent though, I have a storm within me.