The whole idea of living is to get through the day so that one can sleep at night, only to wake up the next day and live through it. That does not sound encouraging. But it depends on how one looks at it. If getting through the day is a chore then life does not seem very encouraging. The activities of the day would seem dreary and at the end of the day, one would hit the bed dreading the dawning of the next day. But if there are activities of interest that sparkle among these chores, then the days and nights seem more welcoming. Of course there are exceptions. Regardless how one looks at one’s life, some nights seem to last forever as the next day is so exciting that sleep eludes and one keeps tossing and turning in the bed waiting for sleep or dawn to arrive. When the dawn finally arrives, one finds that the sleep of the previous night was not enough and that some of the excitement from the previous night is lost to the lack of sleep. Through half open eyes one looks at life spinning around and wonders when one will be able sleep well. At that moment, one...
Damn it! It's about time one replaced all these ‘one’ in the previous paragraph with ‘I’. From now I will use ‘I’ instead of ‘one’. If necessary, the one who is reading this piece for God knows why can reread all the above written material replacing all the ‘one’ in the previous paragraph with ‘I’. Note: one of the ‘one’ mentioned in the previous sentences refer to ‘you’ and not ‘I’.
... At that moment, I heard the words from the Pink Floyd song 'Free Four', which goes 'Life is warm short moment, death is a long cold rest'. The second part of that line has made me look at death yearningly. I mean one (this ‘one’ can also be replaced by ‘you’ but I don't want to tell this to you directly and so am using ‘one’ instead of ‘you’. I now think I am taking this ‘one’ business too far and should stop it. One hopes... I mean I hope I stop it now. Damn, there are too many sentences here. I should not have placed it inside bracket but I have already placed the opening brackets and so I have no choice but to close it now. Here it goes.) Oh lord, where was I? Oh yes, the 'long cold rest' from Free Four.
You might think that the cold of the long cold rest might detract me from the resting part. Nope, It does not! I have lived most of my life in Chennai and love the cold rest when the air conditioner is blasting at 16 degrees and I am lying under a thick layer of blanket. If the line in the song went 'death is a long hot sweaty no fan due to a power cut rest' then I would have looked at death with dread. But then this song was written by folks from Britain, which is a cold country where people are buried in the cold earth. So cold rest makes sense from their point of view. But I live in the hot, hot Chennai and belong to a creed of people who cremate people. Cremate is a word used to hide the word burn. So, in my case I am not sure if will be a '...long cold rest'. It probably would be '... long and terribly hot rest'. Damn! I should not have thought about that. Now I don't look forward to death. I must add that people in my creed go through a lot of post death customs involving close relations of the dead dipping a million times in a river to cool down the soul of the dead. But in case, that will not be of much help either. The other day the one who should do all this dipping on my passing away informed me "Listen, don't expect me to do all this shit, ok? Nothing more than burning for you." So, no cooling down for me, no departing for me. I am going to be around haunting my loved ones and unloved ones too.
Going off on a tangent, I love this song. It's a happily sung miserable song. Such songs in the background make the miserable parts of life hummable. I love the way the group starts off with "One, two, free four". For a long time, I thought they went "One, two, three, four" but no, it is not 'three, four", it is "free four". Cool trick. This song is a part the album called 'Obscured by clouds" and the whole album is brilliant. This album was followed by "Dark side of the moon" and already many elements of the latter album appear in a raw form here.
I find death fascinating. One day you are a person who is giving pleasure and pain to others, the next day you are a body, the day after a memory and soon not even that. But that is all in the mind of others but what about you? What happens to you? Do you exist beyond death? There are many who think so. Some believe in heaven and hell which is a concept that cannot be written off, but it sounds ridiculous. I can’t imagine a world where Amul butter grows on trees, nor one in which one is fried in Amul butter. Reincarnation is not believable at all. I mean I can't remember my previous births and so I have no reason to believe that they exist. Of course, it is possible that this is my first birth and so I can't remember my earlier births. But I know almost no one who remember their earlier birth. There are one or two who think they have some idea of their previous births, but I am not sure if I agree with that side of their mental faculties and so I am ignoring their beliefs So, I don't think reincarnation works. The same goes for ghosts. Never seen one and so won't believe it. The day I start seeing one I have to start checking the functioning of my brain. Soul is a possibility but what the fuck is a soul? It does not seem like anything other than heat and dust. So maybe soul wins! This is a comforting thought. After going through the hardships of life, one ends up becoming heat and dust. No afterlife of any sort, just live, die and become poof. Life is a warm short moment and death, cold or not, is a long rest anyway.
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