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My wife announced the death of two drowned squirrels when
I returned home from work. She wanted me to fish out the dead
bodies immediately. And she said I must also soon get the
plumber to replace the broken tank-lid.
Looking into the tank, I found four floating bodies. Three I
could easily fish out, but the fourth slid over like a bladder
every time I tried to adjust it on the stick. It was relatively
heavier and bigger. I later guessed it could have been pregnant:
several weeks ago I had seen a squirrel gathering woolen bits
and hauling them away with great care.
A few minutes later, having cast the plastic bag with the four
squirrels on a garbage heap, I returned home. But the strange
event burned on in my mind. Why did they die together? Were
they trying to rescue one another after one had accidentally
dropped into the tank? Or, did the death of one squirrel drive
the rest to suicide?
These questions will never be answered. Four lives—with
perhaps many more waiting to blossom shortly—had
ended, and how inanely! The final struggle must have been awful:
their mouths had been tender pink on the underside.
My sadness was short-lived, although the pain persists. (Mother
said she had been wondering where all the squirrels in the house
had suddenly hidden themselves.) In comparison, the death of
my two dogs a year ago had left me distraught for a long time.
I miss the squirrels no doubt, but their death has not somehow
really wounded me.
It seems the deaths scattered in the landscape of memory work
differently upon the consciousness than those concentrated in
it at a site. The concentration attracts you and makes you dwell
on it. You cannot simply plunge into and then quickly escape
the awareness of death the way you may if you happen to occasionally
visit a graveyard or attend a cremation. Concentrated death
is slowly overwhelming. You begin to abide in it, a migrant
to the country of death. The sights and sounds of the familiar
country no longer assail the senses. The vision begins to adjust
to the virat, the divine-cosmic.
I have a faint memory of some illustrations in my school textbooks.
One of these was of the town of Mohen-jo-daro, the hill of death—the
town that flourished and then suddenly, mysteriously died in
the ancient civilization of the Indus. It got its name from
the pile of human bones that greeted the archaeologist's spade
with a funny, cynical defiance—Hamlet's
encounter enacting itself across ages and civilizations.
The earthquake that razed whole towns in Gujarat in January
would have merely authored a few more Mohen-jo-daros but for
the communications that prevent the isolation—and
quiet burial—of
a mass entombment of living people. The instruments of the spectacle
poked death into every eye. Maybe, death got trivialized in
the process, but not without treating life to a mixture of trivialization
and glorification. My friend, returning after a week spent in
the first Mohen-jo-daro of the millennium, looked profoundly
reconciled to death. He had seen through it all. He said he
did not see why one should favour life over death when the two
could not be really distinguished. Death is not a stranger,
he said. It is just that we refuse to acknowledge its omnipresence.
Three days after he had returned from Gujarat, burglars broke
into our office and set it on fire. Two hours after the fire--the
plastic of cooling monitors smelling like overcooked adulterated
spice, the smoke rising, and the policemen sniffing around like
dogs--he gazed at the ceiling and remarked, "Could any painter
do the ceiling as perfectly black as that smoke?" And we both
laughed. People, who had come to offer their condolences, felt
obviously cheated. They looked so offended that we had to immediately
assume the standard solemnity, and postpone our pleasure to
a more solitary hour. Death can distort—or
correct—perspectives
rather scandalously.
The awareness of death in wholesale reinforces, too, the memory
of the deaths that you have lived with. You count the dead whom
you once knew and who mattered to you personally, and you discover
with surprise that you have suffered so many bereavements, so
many deaths. The lapse of time between those deaths ceases to
effectively exist for you. The temporal contraction deepens
the concentration and tears the lid off vintage death.
Copyright © 2001 Rajesh K. Sharma. All
Rights Reserved.
Rajesh K. Sharma is a writer living in
the Punjab, India. Feel free to e-mail him at: rksharma1@vsnl.com.
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