I still remember those days vividly and can even feel it right now, the very pain that had gulped my friend’s whole families and relatives at the time when her father had to be departed from his painfully staggered and miserably dragged life. He had to be taken to the river three times before he actually passed away. According to Hindu custom or ritual, at the last stage of a person’s life, it is wise and religiously correct for him or her to be laid side by the river. It is believed that the person would reach fast to the heaven directly just like that way, because the pyre for Hindu decease are mostly prepared at the bank of the river, stream or sea. The father of my friend had to be taken to the river three times in two weeks. He used to get laid by the river inside a little tent, where he would be gathered by some hymning priests and couple of immediate relatives. but within two or three days, he would seem to be looked as recovering so, they would take him back to home until his condition gets deteriorated again and had to be taken back to the river. That was so painful not only for him but for the families, relatives and neighbours as well. Nepali social structure is very different and cohesive at the same time. The pains and sufferings are thought to be less if those have been shared and obviously, the prime suffering of my friend and her families were shared with her neighbours. Everybody was involved in the process of saying goodbye to the father of my friend.
I had seen quite some, experienced with some. I saw a woman died in her sleep on her own bed with her eyes and mouth wide open. I didn’t know though whether she had a perfect and peaceful death or not. I saw a man bedridden sick for almost two years and finally died at the toilet. I had seen a boy with utmost unimaginable pain dragging his horribly dismantled body around the floor with pool of his own blood at the very last hour of his rejected life who actually had jumped from the seventh floor of the building just to commit suicide. And few more but, it was really sad to acknowledge that the death is really hard if you hovered between life and death for so long that your own family members start faking the sympathies.
I always use to get wonder by the fact about the various types of death that people have to receive. what is the perfect death and how does it come? Asking this sort of question or looking for the answer does definitely not sound the failure of the living, nor it gets crossed the limit of the curiosity. We don’t search the reason of the ‘death’ in dealing with the definition of the living. We don’t even understand the mandatory act of the death. We just look for the ‘outcome’ of the life-long experiences that we think we achieve so far.
Sometimes, in attempt on pursuing success into the society or the country, all may think that why are we running for ? Why are we shouting for? Why do we get tensed? Why do we feel stressed? Without staying in our own comfort zone, why do we dedicate ourselves for social cause ? Sometimes, all may hope that throwing the burden of lifelong commitments, hopes, expectations, dreams, stresses, pains, exhaustion, fatigues and uncertainty aside to fly like cotton freely on the sky or to lay flat like the mud on the ground, or to remain as motionless as stone or as speechless as paper. In this way, one may wish to end all the excitements and despairs on halt as a full stop dot. All may sometimes desire to vanish for good, permanently after getting rid of the innumerable turning points in life with over loaded hustle-bustle sufferings and frustrations. Sometimes, all may think just like that.
We are gradually adding pains, piling up the countless sorrows just in vain to collect ‘success’ in life. In attempt of collecting happiness, we are losing the very hardcore of valuable moments which could define the fundamental happiness. We try to grab the moments on our palm as sand. Every attempt to get succeed, we get to go through pinching in the heart deeper and deeper in it. We do find suffering ourselves on the way of selecting happiness. The times come as the tide of a river on its bank and ruins the years of years of our lives, but we are obliged to live like this way. We are obliged to see ourselves getting pale, thin, wrinkled on every passing days on the mirror as the tides on the bank of the river. At the end of the day, all may want to say..’that’s it’. That is it ‘that’ we think is the best and perfect. So, what it is the ‘perfect’ definition of the ‘death’ and how does it come, then? I don’t know about you but sometime, I use to think what actually that I am destined for?
I have heard that every single one of us have been given a ‘task’ in our lives, a destiny that has been set already for us but it comes on us discreetly that we should be knowing or finding the way to know that what exactly that particular destiny that was signed for us individually! What is the purpose of my birth, then? Running around with time since the moment that I was considered that I’m a part of snap-shot of the memory, I never planned my future, I rather drifted here and there all the way to Hong Kong and to UK. What is it that I’m looking after? Minutes became hours and hours became days..so as years and years and years. I feel exactly the same as I used to be 20 years back but, the physical possibilities don’t support that and now it kind of reflection of those times to show me the result of my living after such a long time. I found or saw nothing rather millions of millions of never-ending thoughts. What is the significant meaning of my birth ? I simply don’t know but I like to search for the perfect death, rather…….!
Well, no one would want to die suffering on the bed. It’s hurtful in the sense that you are no longer the person as you used to be for your own family or beloved ones. You are just the ‘sigh’ which delivers the desires to get relieved. You don’t want to find the untold pain while dying through an accident. Every single person wants to die in peace. But, you see…, dying in peace would definitely be simply impossible. Just imagine; you are on the bed, dying, waiting for the last breath to pass away, or waiting for the last heartbeat to pound. You may or may not be able to find your friends and families around but you definitely may find the plenty of time to think about and this may be the time that you would think about your regrets, you would cherish about your success. You may thank god about the achievements that you had and you may worry about the possessions that you couldn’t have had. But mostly, you may find yourself in a deep confusion and at the same time, you may worry about the whole of the lot that you are leaving behind in this point in your life when you are not sure about your destination. Definitely, no one would die believing that ‘that’s it’…the ‘end’ of it. Soon after closing the eyes, you are just ‘done’.
There is nothing,.. zero, ..dark or just the …blank. Once it is gone, that’s ‘it’. Nothing will be shown ahead. You couldn’t close your eyes that way in ‘peace’ for sure. So could you die in peacefully ? Since you hold a functional mind and heart, functional eyes and sense, you definitely could not shut yourself peacefully. Basically, human get tangled deeply by love. It’s not the only so-called love between men and women, boys and girls. There are various aspects of love which surround human like full eclipse. You can’t get a mere ray out of that to get out without succumbing in it. The very love becomes a silent and silhouette of the net that human stay busy throughout the live just to untangle each core of it. Socially, a whole life, human get grievously connected with every episode of desires, fulfilments, success and failures, earnings, spending and savings etc. There are always regrets of the past and worries of tomorrow and by this, the wholesome of PRESENT always gets vanished easily. So at the very end of the life, the very core of vanishing predicament suddenly appears front of the human and that leads the uncanny uncertainty around. Because of this, the simplistic way of getting out of the human life is undoubtedly painful. Even the priest can’t get out of the tangled emotions, they always look for the better ‘uncertain’ of after death calculating every deeds they had in their lives without any signs of sins. That gives them some degree of confusions which lead them into mentally chaotic condition and this very aspects definitely don’t let them settle their eyes easily on their final journeys.
Recently, one of my friend had committed suicide hanging on the tree. There were speculations about the death. It was mainly presumed that he was murdered until the post-mortem result surfaced. He was found hanging with his knees on the ground. The branch of that particular tree was actually high enough for a person to hang himself. That friend of mine had a long rope knotted with his neck. He simply couldn’t die immediately after hanging. He might have struggled quite a while of the suffocation and because of the force that he might have had on kicking strongly, the knot might have loosen a bit and at the end, his motionless body might have touched the ground. He just wanted to get away from the lifelong suffering at once but that surely scrapped him with all the pain he had. The death wasn’t perfect for my friend. He had left behind a whole of a lot of grieving souls and eyes.
Definitely, committing suicide is the perfect death. After strong determination and solid planning, a person commits suicide which definitively puts a person on edge. The half of the success has already been achieved till here, now all one needs to do is to select the proper way of committing suicide. Hanging is far more cruel as jumping from the height. Having potassium cyanide, shooting right on the forehead or having a lot of sleeping tablets definitely would let a person to vanish from the life for good without even knowing how that has come and gone!
The morale of the story is..we do all sort of things to get perfect life. As we all know that the ‘LIFE’ is the time between the ‘BIRTH’ and ‘DEATH’. The perfect life is not the perfect, without the perfect death, a peaceful death. AND…as my understanding…in this era, no one dies peacefully surrounded with love ones. The life is getting more and more difficult on every passing days. We tend to get frustrated by the traffic jams, parking spaces, expenses, demanding works, competitions, disturbing news, market turmoil, political changes, changing cultures, loosing faiths, hot and cold waves etc..etc. A person therefore only gets the perfect ‘DEATH’ on committing suicide by either bullet, poison or sleeping tablet. Really.
NOTE:
I have not suggested the perfect way to have a perfect death by suicide, what I was trying to express was the difficult outcome of living in modern days. The sort of satisfaction we always want to possess is too dreamy to think of. The frustration is every-where. Morale of the article is..we just need to live in the ‘present’ as much as we can.-Prakash K.C.
