My homage to Sorrow.

Life is funny. Everyday you get to see something new happening around you. Every time you feel you have full control of it, you fail to realize that you don’t. One may not know what lies ahead of this moment. No one knows what a new day may bring for him/her. It is funny to see how each day progresses and how we feel that we are achieving something, but how little do we realize that this progress is towards our very own end. Hardly do we realize that things can end too. We have stupid fights over stupid immaterial things. We hurt each other, we hate this and we hate that, we hate ourselves, and we follow rules just to break a few, everyday we look at the mirror just to ensure that everything is alright. But is everything ever going to be alright once when you have the gift called “Life”.

Strange as it may sound, a positive girl like me speaking about death in such a way. But yesterday itself I had an encounter with death, a peaceful death, in a moment which I don't really know how well to describe. But what seemed funny to me was the fact that after this encounter with death I had to attend a birthday party, celebrations of someone who is happy to be alive[no offence meant]. Such a contradiction in a day itself made me wonder what really I am supposed to do with all of it. I still don’t have an answer to this question and so I sit here and type this all out. Type the supposed story of a “living dead”.

A normal day it was. I was sitting idly on the bench, hardly paying attention to what the person on the dice was speaking about. Perhaps the class was on how Gulliver tried to communicate with the lilliputs, on whose island he had accidentally landed. And that person on the dice was trying to show how Gulliver kept on contradicting himself, saying something and doing completely the opposite of it. Contradictions are an inevitable part of human life. That is what I have learnt after so many days of my survival here. So there I was sitting and staring at my copy, little realizing what exactly might happen in the next moment. I was eagerly waiting for the evening celebrations with my friends, it was one of my friend’s birthday and I was to go there and join her and indulge in the festivity. After this class, I was to leave for the party. I was giving blank looks to my copy and waiting for the class to end soon. But then there was a sound which distracted all of us, including the man on the pedestal. And then a scream was heard. Sitting on the third bench I hardly had a proper view of what exactly had gone wrong which made the girl scream so badly. And then my friend told me that a sparrow had hit itself in the fan which was moving and was supposedly hurt. But the scream I had heard seconds ago had told me a different story. Something wasn’t right and it made my stomach turn inside. There were small feathers flying in the air of that room, a spacious and yet so congested room, over crowded with people who hardly have a purpose of being there.
We had to find out what had happened. That is when this guy stood up to inspect what had happened, we call him “Carpenter” [cause he looks like one and is always ready to mend things even when they don’t need mending]. So he stood up and went forward smiling as always [and I hate that irritating smile of his, its so very God knows what]. He turned to tell his friends that the sparrow was dead and as he said “broken into two”. Did the sparrow had a life or was it a non-living entity? I was confused. But what he did further was more irritating. He took the body of the sparrow [mind you all, without the head] and threw it out of the big window [I wish I could have pushed him from there as well, but I didn’t cause I do have some feelings left] and then he was like- “What should I do now?” I so badly wanted to scream- “go join the dead”. And then he walked a little further and he took the head and threw it out of the window and smilingly [a little annoyingly now] he asked for permission to leave so that he can “wash it off”, “it”…
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”

“All the perfumes in Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. …cleansing blood to wash away that damned spot” [Macbeth]


Irritating and disgusting his act was. This doesn’t means that I expected people to give a proper burial to the small bird but a little respect would have harmed none. Do you expect people to throw you away once you are dead? Well inevitably they will do so, throw you away from their life and your memories, but would you still want it to happen?

The bird must have been a great creature, of that I am sure. Flying high in the air, feeling the breeze in the wings surely would have given the bird [let’s call the bird- Sorrow], a great sense of freedom. Away from all the trivialities of life, not bothering about how it looks or how to best impress others and lie a little more, Sorrow surely must have had a life better than all of ours. And the moment before Sorrow left us all with our own sorrows to look after, I know it was on its peak of success, enjoying its flight when the stupid blades of the very old, dingy and dirty fan hit it, just a small sound and the plight ended in a peaceful death, without any hassles, no pain, no crying, no nothing. There was no voice heard except that of the girl sitting on the first bench who must have screamed because of the brutality of the death, but I am sure she must have not known the peaceful pain of Sorrow, who is by now flying high in the sky, and we can’t see anymore the beautiful flight of the dead bird. It is gone now, with no proper flowers to offer, with no burial, with not a single tear shed on its departure, but only with harsh reality that once you are gone, you are gone forever, even from the lives of the others. Forever…

As a privileged section of animals we enjoy so many things in our lives. From the moment we are born till the moment we die and at times even after our death, we are a lucky lot of beings. We need flowers, and proper burials, people come to pay their last respects [no matter how bad one must have been, the dead are always forgiven and we cry in their loss]. All rubbish, everything is so unreal. Life is so dead...

Well on the same day, I attended a birthday party. A celebration of life, smiling youthful faces made me forget about the little, not so significant incident of the day, and I too was having a good time.


Life is so unpredictable. Live it while we still can, once gone it won’t come back.


By the way the bird supposedly [according to me] died a peaceful death. It happened in a fraction of seconds, no pain, without any troubles. I want to die like that. Reminds me of “Ode to a Nightingale”

“I have been half in love with easeful Death,
…
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,…” [John Keats]

I bid thee adieu oh dear Sorrow. I too was unaware of your presence amongst us until yesterday. You taught me an important lesson, the hard lesson called “Life”. I shall respect it more and shall live it everyday.
Thanks Sorrow for all you stood for and shall always stand for. You have been my inspiration to die, an inspiration to live and love my life until I die.
I shall miss you.

**May your soul rests in peace**

The girl who came here to stay...

The empty streets call her today.
The missing beggar at the corner of the street,
The street lights dim in the month of May.
Will she ever walk again this day?
Will they see her face in dismay?

Those sign boards on those closed doors,
Those voiceless hawkers screaming some more.
Far across this deserted street, she stands,
All alone, not ready yet to cross over
But something calls her out once again.

In a trance shed walks past the empty bar.
She forgets to stay and pay her regards
And walks straight, across the yard.
She walks with little hopes in her heart,
Then why does she stop? Stop so far?

Can she go any further with such a pace?
Can she tell the time with a tickless clock?
She knows what she does, or can she not?
There she goes again, without tears now
But why does the voice still call out to her so loud?