Death: The End of All Sufferings

Elevated on a massive stone platform and surrounded by old, dusty colonnades, the temple in the middle of the forest is the home to many birds and a deity. On the platform sits an old, wrinkled woman with the knees pressed towards the breast. The monkeys, huddled together on a tree to keep themselves warm in a cold, December night, want to sleep inside the only room in the temple but are afraid of this unexpected visitor. At times, a strong gust of wind rushes out of the dense fog and flutters the worn-out flag on the top of the temple.

Two years before now, she was, in a small hut, happily preparing dinner that she would enjoy with her husband and her only son when they would return from the field after a day’s long toil. She was happy with her small family and want nothing more from God than the safety of her family. She would sell pots when her husband and son would go out to the fields. One day, they didn’t return from the field, and she kept waiting for them for the whole night. The next day when she went to the field, nobody was to be seen there, and she searched the whole village for her loved ones without food and water. That day the hearth in the hut remained cold. Days passed, and when the villagers got to know about that, they blamed her for the mysterious disappearance and suspected her of practicing witchcraft. They burnt her small hut and threw her out of the village. The day she was kicked out of the village, she returned to see the field upon which her family’s subsistence was dependent for the last time. She walked in and stumbled sideways by something deep in the soil. She dug and what she saw there made her fall flat on her back. With the scavengers lined up lay the half-eaten, hollowed dead bodies of her husband and her son.

Two years have passed since this incident. She doesn’t know how she survived these days. Now her soul has passed the shining portals and stands in the blaze of the inner light, and for her, all the activities around are superfluous, inadequate and impertinence. She stands up and walks towards the river barefoot, her neck being sturdy. The fog and her white sari create an illusion of a deity walking in heaven. She walks into the river without any fear of death, surrendering herself to the Ganga. The water of the river, after a movement of an activity, returns to its normal, peaceful state. Life is noisy, but death is silent.