I was apparently waiting for death to grab hold of my soul and leave my body lifeless. With no hope to be felt around, I was credulously smiling; I thought crying would be a better presentation of the deafening silence I could hear inside my heart, but it was too small an emotion to be outlaid. Crying because I knew death has reached my home was simply illogical for me; there was nothing left to cry for. The memory lane I could see now was filled with flowers of affection donated to me by sarcasm trying to cheer me before I could meet perpetuity. The beauty of this incommunicable warmth, I had received as compensation in lieu of an end to the process of experiencing verve, was fantastic enough to get me to smiling escorted by the filling of my eyes with a salty water I had no clue about.
I could in concord, see my past as though it was lived just a few hours back; it was all I had to relish; it was all I remembered of my life. I was very proud – I was to die very soon.
It was the valence week of the year 2004 which saw me learning what an incredible horror death could be. I had seen the demise of my beloved aunt, which even till the present date I can’t believe, and I had seen myself almost lying on the same bed from where the angel of death would take me away from my only physical possession and leave it as a carcass of a frail human.
I remember these days as my holidays just before I entered my professional education termed engineering. I was, in those days, reeling under the shock jolted on me by my aunt’s death, and I had seen a couple of nights filled with the presence of the angels of death around me.
My entrenched faith in my religion, Islam, says to me that dogs cry (bark) and asses bray in the night when they see the angels of death. And in one of those horrifying dead dark and cold nights of summer, at 3:00 in the morning, I heard the canines making these howling noises just to run shivers in every tip and corner of my body. I knew the angels were here; the angels of death. They had come to take someone with them. I wondered which house in my neighborhood was going to weep the next day; I wondered who was going to leave this world forever.
I was already in unbearable pity for that unfortunate family which was going to see itself becoming smaller. I somehow managed to sleep that night though it was in no way a good sleep. When the sun rose in the east the next morning, I was out to check for the news of an end of life in my neighborhood. I waited; it never came.
I was happy; we all were happy. But this happiness had discomfort in company. The angel was here and someone had to die and no one was gone yet. That lengthy day passed away staring at me in with it’s eyes wide open as though it knew the night I was about to see.
Then in that night there was a repetition of these hymns sung by the animals calling out aloud that the angels were here again. I knew they were here again and that they won’t be leaving empty handed this time. I was sure to see a dead body passing by my door the next day. But then suddenly, I was crippled. A seed of pain cracked up in my mind. I was said by this seed that the person supposed to leave could be from my own home too. God help me – I was in pieces. I didn’t slept after I heard it, and when the sun shined again, my face was swollen as I had cried all through the rest of the night just to beg my God to provide my parents and my brother with a more than 100 years of life. That whole day the mercilessly bright red sun had watched me crying tears of salty blood – each tear pleading God for a long life for my dearly loved ones.
The darkness arrived once again; this time with no hanging moon that would look like a dying lamp in the sky. I was waiting fog those beasts to come out of their dens to inform me again about the arrival of the angels, of death of course. And once more at 3:00 they cried about their arrival. I was not in my senses.
Someone had to leave, someone had to die. The only question with me was not who but when?
I had no desire to know who that person was but I was given the answer by my desecrated mad thinking. It was an answer that charred me to death when it reached my tympanum. The vibration in my mind said,”It’s you who is going to die”.
Me.
Yes me. Why can it not be me? I had prayed for others the previous day, I never did it for myself, so I was completely in agreement to that voice that I was going to die. I didn’t even then sense any foolishness in me as I was fed with an overdose of confidence that I was really going to leave this world.
There was no pain to be felt and no pleasure to be enjoyed anymore. Death, I thought, could never make me cry for I was programmed to believe that I must always be ready to meet it. And I was terribly in the correct understanding zone; I wasn’t crying. Crying then, was too small an emotion to be suffered.
All I could think was about the nice time I had with the people I had prayed for – the gatherings, the days we had seen in delight and cheer, the smiles and laughs of my dear ones. All this made me smile with wet eyes. I was happy, I was about to have a new beginning in another world promised to me by my Creator.
I was with great anticipation longing for that heavenly person to come and take me with him. I was longing for death. I knew it was somewhere here and I couldn’t even say that I had mislaid it for it was supposed to arise from the heavens.
It was a wait then. That person, the angel of death, would never come. It was tiring – more tiring than standing in the middle of the Sahara with a burning sun at the top and heat scratching the red skin. It was an unending story of delaying the start of eternity.
I spent two days with this pain. Even the next night was the same with howls of those damned animals. My vision was blinded by the pain and all I was made to see was a longing for death.
There was no future to think of. Only my remembrances of the past could make me smile.
I knew I was foolish. I was crazy to make myself believe in that ridiculous crap. I was out of my mind to think that I was going to die.
Something had to be done and it was done with no reason. Something in me said that I must ask for a change in my routine chore of being alone with my solitude. It was only after I left my house to live with my other relatives for a couple of days that I could get out of this terrific self-created illusion of a nearing death.
I, then later, for many days laughed at myself; and I was very much justified in doing that - I had fooled myself to death; I had been suffocating myself with self-deception.
But today, when I sit down and convert this silly experience into words, I realize what I had gained. I had a tryst with death; it was living with the feeling that I am going to die the very next moment even before I could breathe. It was nearly like experiencing death.
Now I am glad I had seen those days. Now I know what death can be - I call myself fortunate to know this. Though I was asinine then, I was unknowingly learning how the end of life might look.
I don’t know if I should say this but let me do it for the sake of expressing – “I have lived with death in my soul”.
Long live death. God knows when it should arrive. It is never a matter of concern for me but, but I fear death.
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Thank you!
This work by Syed Zubair Hasan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
So You Are Safe, Hmmm?
When you feel like doing something, sit down and relax until that feeling goes away – this was a line once shown to me by a good friend of mine. I was so impressed with it that I gave in to the belief that I was great in handling myself when ever I felt any strong wills to do a task which seemed a bit demanding on my nerves and I had left it unaccomplished. I took it as though these were golden words; just until I realized that they weren’t; they were not true in every aspect of life. They were verbalized by a soul trying to mistake incapability for patience. There were merely the words we all appreciate listening to.
When I got into this to prove it incorrect (in specifically serious walks of life), I was forced ambiguously to encounter stiff opposition of probable errata that might have pushed me into false and unanswered paradigms. I started off with a ridiculous understanding that I am the one on the wrong side trying to gain appreciation for being different and going for ideologies often unaccepted. This provided me with a challenge of fighting self-manipulation just to test my buffer for formidable self-fraud. And I fell into the deep trap of flirting with my conscience; and I came up with the following explanations. Now, I’d like to make it clear that I am in no way trying to preach or wreak any new notions that might get any false objects of misunderstanding into the subtle minds of the readers.
Every one of us likes to enjoy life irrespective of the fact that we might just not be gaining what can be the single most valuable need of every life – satisfaction. We are misled by our own perception that we are in possession of every happiness required for an anticipation of a fruitful life (note that I am using the word anticipation here). We put ourselves on the track of a virtual train moving in circles and eventually leading us to a pleasant nowhere. The reason – we want to be happy!
The verily accepted logic that its truly human nature, to always ask for more, pulls us deeper into a delusion that successful people have beaten this natural phenomenon. But when we are made to make it clear who these so called successful people (at least for us) are, the answer we might throw evidently shows the personalities who have said ‘yes’ to this human nature. They were ready to dream big; not only dream about something, but also believe in it.
When we are asked about the category we belong to – practical or unpractical; the answer often found is ‘it depends’. To be frank, it depends only on one thing – the fact that we are unpractical. Only unpractical people depend on the outer world; practical people depend on themselves.
Then of course they are a group of very interesting people who keep on saying that they prefer playing it safe no matter how much it take on them. They say they have nothing to lose forsaking the fact that they got nothing to gain form this assumption either. And they take delight and pleasure in proclaiming their belief and to make things worse, they even preach their concept of being safe. The most amazing part is that they think they are safe by doing nothing.
What a pity it is, what a waste of human potential. God help them. They demur to any person who might try to guide them; it makes no difference to them even if that person is correct or wrong. They are simply cynics.
How can I explain them that having money in a safe deposit vault never yields; how do I enlighten them that extinct animals are safe from poachers only in their sanctuaries, their only need is to survive; how do I show them that no life is lived by staying indoors.
These people are the very wise ones who go to any extent to prove their points; only that if they had gone for some good deeds, they could have put their powerful minds to a better use. They don’t even understand that they are simply devising a valid explanation of their helplessness to achieve in life what they desire.
I am sure they want big things; they do have big dreams – dreams that include people. But they are afraid to go ahead with them; the reasons are many – maybe they are weak, probably too shy to express, may be they think they are waiting for the right things to appear (which might never happen), or it might be just that they have some personal problems they dare not to reveal to themselves. But one thing’s for sure – they really, really long for things as big as life and they are too proud to lose. And as I have already stated, they do nothing but proclaim modestly that they prefer being safe. It is just their inability to employ effort that they are validating this point. It’s a shame they don’t realize the hard facts. I pity they deceive themselves.
In the larger run, they never are satisfied. These are the people who are afraid to dream. They nave no idea of what they have been created for and they are afraid of the power their mind manifestation may give out. They are afraid of themselves.
We don’t get satisfaction in life as long as we limit our potential and encapsulate ourselves. We need to go beyond what we have seen, and more beyond what we thought we could do.
It’s like a hammer kept in a box for a long period; it knows not what it has been made for. It stays there for several years and then one cold day it is taken out to get to work. The hammer is hit on the trees to chop them; it is pounded on the ground to level it; it is played on the people to kill them. The hammer feels nice that it is being used, but it has contempt in it. It is not happy and satisfied with what it is being used for. It has work but still wants more. There is something missing in it; it’s getting frustrated.
Then one day it is hit on a nail. And lo! It felt life. It was as if it was made for this act – to hit nails. The hammer knew it. It realized it is this work that gives satisfaction.
Though it’s incorrect to compare the non-living with humans, I do believe that this example can be taken as a compelling one. The case is definitely same with our lives. Making ourselves safe never lets us feel life - it rusts our souls and shrinks our world. A few of these people say that the world is very big; yes, I do agree with them. I’d like to tell them that the world is even much bigger than what they think it is – in every sense they like to take it. But I must take the opportunity to sensitize them with a well known fact that this world is round (in cross section), geo-spherical for that matter.
Being safe is equivalent to forming a shell around us – the one we think that might give us some protection. It hardly and barely does that. Deep down inside our hearts we know this. This kind of safety limits our well being and stops us from moving up from the point of mediocrity.
If one really wants to be safe, it is better he dies and remains safe and sound in his grave. (Ah! What a pity, even that grave won’t be safe for him. Remember God!).
When I got into this to prove it incorrect (in specifically serious walks of life), I was forced ambiguously to encounter stiff opposition of probable errata that might have pushed me into false and unanswered paradigms. I started off with a ridiculous understanding that I am the one on the wrong side trying to gain appreciation for being different and going for ideologies often unaccepted. This provided me with a challenge of fighting self-manipulation just to test my buffer for formidable self-fraud. And I fell into the deep trap of flirting with my conscience; and I came up with the following explanations. Now, I’d like to make it clear that I am in no way trying to preach or wreak any new notions that might get any false objects of misunderstanding into the subtle minds of the readers.
Every one of us likes to enjoy life irrespective of the fact that we might just not be gaining what can be the single most valuable need of every life – satisfaction. We are misled by our own perception that we are in possession of every happiness required for an anticipation of a fruitful life (note that I am using the word anticipation here). We put ourselves on the track of a virtual train moving in circles and eventually leading us to a pleasant nowhere. The reason – we want to be happy!
The verily accepted logic that its truly human nature, to always ask for more, pulls us deeper into a delusion that successful people have beaten this natural phenomenon. But when we are made to make it clear who these so called successful people (at least for us) are, the answer we might throw evidently shows the personalities who have said ‘yes’ to this human nature. They were ready to dream big; not only dream about something, but also believe in it.
When we are asked about the category we belong to – practical or unpractical; the answer often found is ‘it depends’. To be frank, it depends only on one thing – the fact that we are unpractical. Only unpractical people depend on the outer world; practical people depend on themselves.
Then of course they are a group of very interesting people who keep on saying that they prefer playing it safe no matter how much it take on them. They say they have nothing to lose forsaking the fact that they got nothing to gain form this assumption either. And they take delight and pleasure in proclaiming their belief and to make things worse, they even preach their concept of being safe. The most amazing part is that they think they are safe by doing nothing.
What a pity it is, what a waste of human potential. God help them. They demur to any person who might try to guide them; it makes no difference to them even if that person is correct or wrong. They are simply cynics.
How can I explain them that having money in a safe deposit vault never yields; how do I enlighten them that extinct animals are safe from poachers only in their sanctuaries, their only need is to survive; how do I show them that no life is lived by staying indoors.
These people are the very wise ones who go to any extent to prove their points; only that if they had gone for some good deeds, they could have put their powerful minds to a better use. They don’t even understand that they are simply devising a valid explanation of their helplessness to achieve in life what they desire.
I am sure they want big things; they do have big dreams – dreams that include people. But they are afraid to go ahead with them; the reasons are many – maybe they are weak, probably too shy to express, may be they think they are waiting for the right things to appear (which might never happen), or it might be just that they have some personal problems they dare not to reveal to themselves. But one thing’s for sure – they really, really long for things as big as life and they are too proud to lose. And as I have already stated, they do nothing but proclaim modestly that they prefer being safe. It is just their inability to employ effort that they are validating this point. It’s a shame they don’t realize the hard facts. I pity they deceive themselves.
In the larger run, they never are satisfied. These are the people who are afraid to dream. They nave no idea of what they have been created for and they are afraid of the power their mind manifestation may give out. They are afraid of themselves.
We don’t get satisfaction in life as long as we limit our potential and encapsulate ourselves. We need to go beyond what we have seen, and more beyond what we thought we could do.
It’s like a hammer kept in a box for a long period; it knows not what it has been made for. It stays there for several years and then one cold day it is taken out to get to work. The hammer is hit on the trees to chop them; it is pounded on the ground to level it; it is played on the people to kill them. The hammer feels nice that it is being used, but it has contempt in it. It is not happy and satisfied with what it is being used for. It has work but still wants more. There is something missing in it; it’s getting frustrated.
Then one day it is hit on a nail. And lo! It felt life. It was as if it was made for this act – to hit nails. The hammer knew it. It realized it is this work that gives satisfaction.
Though it’s incorrect to compare the non-living with humans, I do believe that this example can be taken as a compelling one. The case is definitely same with our lives. Making ourselves safe never lets us feel life - it rusts our souls and shrinks our world. A few of these people say that the world is very big; yes, I do agree with them. I’d like to tell them that the world is even much bigger than what they think it is – in every sense they like to take it. But I must take the opportunity to sensitize them with a well known fact that this world is round (in cross section), geo-spherical for that matter.
Being safe is equivalent to forming a shell around us – the one we think that might give us some protection. It hardly and barely does that. Deep down inside our hearts we know this. This kind of safety limits our well being and stops us from moving up from the point of mediocrity.
If one really wants to be safe, it is better he dies and remains safe and sound in his grave. (Ah! What a pity, even that grave won’t be safe for him. Remember God!).