Yon the wide opened gate;
my hasty steps slowed down
on that silent midnight.
I looked tranquil with a
whirlwind in my heart.
Walked on the soft sand towards the gate.
He was sleeping in divine tranquility
on huge translucent ice blocks
with balls of cotton crammed into his nostrils
and thick rose garlands in his neck.
Wisps of fragrance from the incense sticks
those pierced into a glass of sand beside him,
drifting around him.
Thumbs of his feet tied together.
Feeble moans and sighs of women heard from inside,
hours of midnight turning into morning,
the strength of visitors growing.
Kith and kin, friends, acquaints,
the loved ones, incessant groans and moans,
sudden shrieks of someone… brief silences filled the place.
At the gate… discussions about his last pilgrimage.
Two canopies erected:
one in the open ground,
one over the building.
A strangeness wrapped the place.
Tear-stained faces all around.
The loved ones beating their arms against their chests.
Sadness trickling down everyone’s eyes.
My eyes viewed two images everywhere.
Two pretty children asked their shell shocked
and fainted mother:
“Will daddy bring us dolls today”
ignorant of anything.
Then… many arms lifting the coffin…
and again… the shrieks, cries and howling intensified.
Some bending madly, with hysterical shrieks to hug the coffin.
Some helplessly hugging others for consolation.
Some blaspheming.
Some crying for god`s help.
That evening the smiling flowers from the fragrant garlands bid
a long farewell from the six foot pit to the long procession.
Alas! the young widow stood shocked at the grave with a grave face,
disconsolate amidst a hundred consolations…
he was a unique soul, slept in the hearts of multitudes.
But… he came again
smiling at me from a garlanded lamnation.
A flickering little bulb below.
He looked at me as if he was asking for something.
But I had only a couple of tears for him.
It was an untimely death of a nobleman made the time tough,
a divine mystery inscrutable to the mortal mind.
I still ask… “why he died young leaving a titanic burden
at the feet of my poor young sister?”
There is an answer…
“No other way but dump acceptance”
His demise, a ticket to my poor sister’s toughest journey of life.