Rendezvous with death

Dusk was setting in as she made her way through the fields with ease and expertise. This is where she had spent each working day. She really didn’t need the light of the stars to guide her. It was as if there was a compass embedded in her feet, or would one say heart. Every Sunday she had made this journey, as if a voyage to the end of the earth. For her it was her world.

The village was always tranquil at this time of the day with an occasional loud banshee like whistling, from the new factory recently opened on the outskirts, breaking the peace and quiet. Walking through the village was akin to wading through layers, a labyrinth so complex that an outsider would certainly not venture anywhere alone.

For her though, it was nothing short of a pilgrimage, a ritual, a habit, she could not let go of; a reason for her being alive:  A promise to keep, a commitment, something, about long ago.   

She entered the neat little hut at the edge of the field and quickly finished a few odd chores, then she slowly, but surely, walked to the main house and waited at the door. As if by clockwork, it opened just a crick at first and was then was thrown ajar and a sweet fragrance, afloat in the early night air greeted her. She waited in the shadows, scarcely breathing. A silhouette was seen in the doorway, a pale ethereal figure almost frail, there yet, not there.

As soon as she was certain it was safe, she gingerly approached the door, which was still a little open. Pushing it wide open she walked in.

In the farthest end of the room, on a threadbare floor mat, lay a reed thin man, barely alive. From the look of it, he was gone. But, she lovingly bent over him and tended to him, as if nursing a child. She looked for the little bowl by the alcove and dipped her light fingers into the sweet smelling paste and slowly applied it to his forehead and chest.

Their eyes met for a brief moment. He wanted to say something but had no energy. She waited for exactly fifteen minutes, wiped him clean…looked deep into his eyes again and left as quietly as she had come in, not looking back even once.
This had been going on for nearly six months. Everyone else in the village seemed to be whispering about this strange rendezvous. They almost knew what was in the offing. He was dying and she couldn’t do a thing about it. She, the beautiful girl, now woman, who had given her heart and herself away long ago to the land owner’s son; was the only one who even so much as sat by his side. In those fifteen minutes when she was by him, he lived. He breathed, he felt alive.

He had gone away when she had needed him most; he had married into his own and set up home in the city. He came to the village only, occasionally. She never complained. She had married into her own, but he left her too, for reasons best known to him. She had tried, genuinely to be a dutiful wife; she had done whatever she could.   He left without telling her one morning and since then she existed, as if in twilight, not knowing if he would ever come back, not really wanting him to, though.

Life was generally good; she worked in her brother’s fields by day, taught at the village school three days a week. She had educated herself at the adult education center once he had left her. Twice a week, she earned by working at the new cottage industry that had opened on the outskirts of the village.

But Sundays were just for that little trip she had been making without missing even one Sabbath day. It was like going to Church she felt. No one asked, she never told. She just did what she felt.

She walked again, down the same path; a quickness in her step and discomfort in her heart. She looked around furtively for the first time, knowing deep down that something was amiss. She had not felt too good the last three days. She attributed it to work, but there was a sadness somewhere deep within. She hadn’t felt like this since he had left her. The physical pain somewhere in her chest was slowing her down. She shirked off the ill feeling and tried to walk as fast as she could.

There was a strange stillness in the night air as she approached the door that was as always ajar. She walked, rather ran to the threadbare mat on the floor in the farthest corner of the room…

He had died exactly three days ago, no one told her, she never asked. A tear rolled down her cheek, a tear she thought would break all barriers, at least now. No one knows how long she sat there, crying silently all alone.

The next Sunday, she made the same journey, to her puzzlement, she saw his mother sitting on the same worn out mat. She walked up and clung to her and cried like never before…she never said anything, the mother never asked, but knew.     

There is a certain finality in death. A certain something, man has perhaps tried to understand since the day he came on to this planet. Reams have been written about what saints, sages or ordinary beings have garnered from their own near death experiences or about those who just came back from the tunnel of light. There has always been a certain amount of intrigue attached to this strange but sure phenomenon ...the above write up stems from readings, impressions, brushes with death and life in general...how, what we think will remain, passes on without even the slightest sound, often leaving the ones who remain in pain...