பிரியா விடை - Saarvaagan

பிரியா விடை - Saarvaagan

All of a sudden, I experienced some strange feeling. I didn’t feel my own body weight. I just got up on the sickbed. A hazy surrounding made blurry visuals. My feet didn’t ground on floor and I felt like floating in air. I couldn’t understand anything. I turned back, seen my own body on the sickbed.

I could perceive amidst the fog, some five or six persons around my sickbed. My wife was on the head of the sickbed with tears flowing like a leaky street water fountain. Her hair stuck all over her face that resembled the streaks of ink on a bloating paper.

On the right side, my daughter was sobbing. Her face was swollen due to this continued sobbing. Covering her face with her palm she was sobbing with her shoulders and her back periodically swaying like a clock pendulum at every second.

A little away, my son-in-law, like nobody, was staring at emptiness. The only thing that he was up to was scratching the mole at the hair line of his bald head that is akin to the shining finger tip dipped in gee.

At the foot of the sickbed or close to the feet of my body, my son and the doctor were standing. My son was tight lipped and squeezing his palm. The doctor touched my left wrist and swayed his head sideway reflecting a negation (absence of life). Tears rolled out off my son’s eyes.

The doctor put his stethoscope in the coat pocket and without uttering a word, tip-toed out like a mother who don’t want to disturb her sleeping baby.

“He betrayed us and gone!” was the loud cry from the head of the sickbed that resounded on the walls and pervaded the entire room.

Murugan and Kandhaiah ran into the room. Murugan, the dog raised by me with affection. The breed, like all of us is an ordinary one. Kandhaiah is a loyal servant, serving at my house over twenty years. Murugan started to howl. It was louder than everyone else’s cries and sobs.

“Tie this lousy thing (the dog) outside somewhere else!” hissed my son through gritted teeth without opening his mouth.

Kandhaiah went out dragging Murugan.

My heart slackened. I yelled that I am here and I did not betray anyone. But no one paid any heed to my yelling but continued their audible cry or silent sob. It seemed that my voice didn’t reach them. Then only, slowly it began to make sense for me. I hear their voices. I see them. My own body can be seen fully by me. But they did not see me. My voice was not heard by them. No breath in my body. Doctor also confirmed the absence of pulse. I became different from my own body.

What to do? It has to happen for everyone and it has happened to me now. Without intimating that “I am going, take care”, suddenly, in an unexpected moment, it all happened. That is only the distinction. But, this did not make me feel any sad. In some sense, I am little inquisitive. It is one of my crazy desires. The desire to get to know ‘after life’. That’s going to be known now.  But, seeing the sufferings of my wife, my daughter, my son, my son-in-law makes me uncomfortable. How can I console the ones who is crying for me.

I felt as if someone touched my shoulder. I was startled and turned to find two strangers standing behind me. One looked like a peasant; bare bodied, clad only in dhothi and turban on head and another with fragile lean body that might break down, wearing a shirt covering three fourth lengths of his arms and dhothi. For both, their feet are missing. The man wearing the shirt was the one who touched me.

 “Who are you? I don’t have any idea ” I said.

The man wearing the shirt replied that, we have been sent from above to take you there. Come on, let‘s go.

Are you by any chance the messengers of Lord Yama? I enquired with an element of surprise. My imagination always was that the messengers of Lord Yama used to sport twisting mustache, a king-kong body and the noose in their hand. I had not even dreamt that they look like a peasant of 60 years old and an ambitious writer.

Like the ripples that propagate when a stone is hurled into the pond water, the wrinkles curled across the ‘peasant’ face.

He laughed on asking “Did you imagine someone resembling the character from Sathyavaan Savithri drama?”

Yes, we are from there only. He, well ahead of your period, had authored more than three hundred stories, articles, poetries, epics with a nickname “Chandragupthan”. I was an editor of “Vedi Maalai”, a quarterly magazine for many years. Since you yourself a writer, they have sent us. The man in shirt, ignoring the other person’s sense of humor, saying very grammatically “Come quickly. It is getting late” rushed me.

“I too wish to come along quickly. But, it feels quite disheartening to go without consoling these people who are crying for my sake. Tell me does it feel good if I escape stealthily, like Nalan, without saying a word?” I replied the erstwhile writer in shirt.

He looked at me surprisingly up and down.

“I don’t want to trouble you. Why are you still thinking of them? What’s the connection between them and you henceforth? They are alive. You are departed. Their grief is their lookout. They have to manage it. You can’t do anything about it” said he.

“Gentleman, I am not matured enough, only now I have become separate from them. Give me some time. I will be back just after comforting them, please,” I begged him.

He thought for a short while. “Ok, ok, you get into their mind, comfort them and return. But remember that you can’t stay more than a minute in the mind of each of them” he said sternly but kindly. It was apparent that he took pity on me.

“After extending a million thanks to him, I entered into my wife’s mind with her breath. “He left me in the crossroads and passed away ahead of me! As a widow should I, have to sit at a corner and gulping food down? I am not sure, how many more years I have to remain like this! He left me, placing me in such a situation that I have to look up to this fellow and be expecting her hands for my livelihood! Oh, my god, why do you grudge so? Is it not enough, that all the misery I went through in my life time? Do I need to undergo this trial as well? Only recently, it started being bit comfortable. Within this short while, you rendered everything to dust. Is it proper for you? Is that all in store for me having born a female…..?”

Her mental wail frightened me. I rushed out and entered into my daughter’s mind.

“Oh, my dad, suddenly you passed away! Don’t you have sympathy and kindness? It might have been alright, had you been bed-ridden for days and left us. It might not have been such a shock to us. You just destroyed my parental home in seconds. Where will I head for, in case I need something in future? Now itself they harass me as disgrace. I ran up to you to say so many things, but you just left. To whom I will in future address my grievances…..?”

Her mental sob perplexed me. Immediately, I rushed out and entered into my son-in-law’s mind.

“I came here thinking of relaxing for a couple of days, but this man suddenly ripped off. He is a lucky man. Without any suffering, without being laid of diseased, without any trouble, all of a sudden he closed his eyes. I have to take ten to fifteen days of leave. Head-clerk will talk so much as if this man had died only for me to avail leave. I have to listen to all these stuff. In the office, work will pile up. Was that the time I started auspicious...…?”

I didn’t like further listening in. I entered into my son’s mind in anticipation of his thoughts.

“Dad, you ditched me so badly like this. Only in the recent times, your writings started gaining some fame. You just passed all the burden of debts on me. Should you not stayed alive for six more months? I was expecting the possible pecuniary gifts on the eve of your sixtieth birth anniversary. I don’t know how I am going to manage things. Oh, damn, why this Murugan is howling? It’s all because of the dad’s special undue advantage to Kandhaiah.  He tied the dog with the window bar instead somewhere at a farther place. How arrogant is he? Tomorrow itself, no, he would be helpful for errands. Let ten days go by. Let the last rites tasks get over. Then, I will get rid of him…”

I was getting angry. Immediately got out and entered into Kandhaiah’s mind.

Master was gifted. Neither was he suffering due to illness nor did he trouble others he passed away. How nice it will be, if it also happens to me like his. I have to keep a word with Arumugam. “Hi, you shall carry my body in a chariot like funeral coach.”

Outside, Murugan is howling. I entered into the dog’s mind curious to see what is there in his mind. What a surprise! Nothing was there. An empty darkness has engulfed it without any sign of light. Akin to the water filled potholes of the roads after a rain, mind full of grief. Nothing else was there.

I came out. “I am ready”, I informed the man in the shirt.

He smiled at me and asked “why are you so angry?”

Then what, Sir? At least, one should have cried for me, thankless creatures. Everyone was concerned about themselves with self-pity. A man suddenly passed away, what were all the things he thought of doing, what were all he planned, and everything shattered. Shouldn’t they remorse on these lines? They wail and sob thinking about their own personal losses. As you said, henceforth, everything is their lookout. Come, let’s go. Thus, I poured my anger out.

Why should they cry for you? What is that you are lacking? Weren’t all the paucity theirs? As far as they are concerned, everything about you already became nonexistent. Moreover, man needs a reason to cry for himself. Is he a child to cry at whim? Should he cry like that? Your death has become a reason for them to cry thinking themselves. That’s it. For this, you get so angry. This too is because you thought that they caused the damage to your self-esteem. Just leave all these. All these are old story. Let the living beings worry about the living beings. Now onwards, what is the connection between us and them? By the way, since you are a writer, they have sent us. Your writings… are a lot obscene. Have you ever read my writings? I was the one, with the nickname “Mudhukizahar”, insisted that it is necessary to write classically and without grammatical errors in Tamil and also proved that it is possible. He started walking by saying, come I will narrate it on the way.

I too followed him. That, peasant looking writer and Lord Yama’s other messenger also followed me. Murugan’s howl, for a long distance followed us, then slowly faded and then passed out.