I died yesterday

I dreamt that I had died. A bullet in-between my eyes, through the skull. They say your entire life flashes in front of your eyes after you die, so I tried hard to recall what had been my life. I got as far back to the last hour but then I couldn’t do it. It was too tedious.

I could feel the warm blood fill the hole in my head. Everything was so slow. It felt like ages before I dropped to the ground. After that all I could feel was warmth from the blood that was starting to cover my face, blurring my vision to the point where all I could see was red. It felt like I was inside a womb.

And then it faded into black. A lapse of memory.

I awoke to find myself on a red desert with large orange canyons that held up a Prussian blue sky. A colorless river ran through the rocky earth like a vein; shallow and thin, like a blood vessel. It was neither too warm nor too cold. I didn’t know what I was wearing.

I suddenly felt hungry, and then remembered that I had died. This is the afterlife, I wondered to myself. Now where could I find something to eat?

I thought about it for a while. I remembered that in my culture, they would make balls of rice and butter, and float them into the Ganges as offerings to the dead — food delivery for their starving ancestors. So, I went to the river and, to my genuine surprise, found some rice balls, neatly wrapped in the leaves of tropical trees. I looked around to see who they belonged to but there was not a single soul in sight. I nibbled on one. It was enough to fill my appetite.

It was after a while that I realized the significance of the rice balls. I had found proof of an afterlife, and it was surely the Hindus that had got it right. If I could bring this back to mankind, I could prove religion and the importance of these customs. I could prove that the Hindu way was the right way. I had always been agnostic, a borderline atheist my entire life. For there to be proof of a religious afterlife was huge.

Then I remembered that I was dead. It didn’t matter if any religions were right or wrong. There was nothing I could do to get back. The living world’s ignorance didn’t bother me anymore.

My vital needs fulfilled, I started walking towards what looked like a mountainous peak. It was the only landmark I could see, so it must be of some significance. The desert eerily reminded me of Mars. I had never been to Mars. Till the day I died, no human ever had. But there was something about the place. As I started walking, I began to think and really absorb what had really happened. I was dead. I was dead. My family was in another world without me. All my friends, my teachers, my students, everyone I had ever met, I would never see them again, and even if I did, they would be vastly different from how I would remember them to be. My loss would have changed them. It just would never be the same. Everything I had done, now gone. I wondered if there was a heaven, and a hell. This didn’t seem like hell. It was probably purgatory, and I would soon be judged for my sins.

At that moment, I finally started panicking a little. I had led a good life, but I had done bad things. I never took religion seriously, argued frequently against the existence of god. I had probably stolen things I didn’t mean to, et cetera. The very thought of a hell frightened me for a while. I would not like it if they sent me there.

In my panicked state I tried to reason for a while. Maybe I was dreaming. So, I tried to wake up. I tried my best to let my conscious mind take over my dreams, which usually worked since I was a lucid dreamer. It didn’t work. I didn’t wake up. I tried again. I started getting worked up.

I lie. I wasn’t worked up. Frankly, it didn’t really bother me much that I was dead. I wasn’t excited, but I wasn’t terrified to bits that I would try everything to go back. My panicking felt just like a momentary hiccup. I was surprisingly calm.

That was the strangest part. It was unsettling how calm I was. I was eager, even, to see what lay in the great beyond.

Eventually, I reached the base of the mountain. There was a vertical train there that led to the top of the mountain. There were some people inside. There was something of importance at the top of the mountain, I could feel it. The people were all somber, wearing scarlet red dresses and suits, and they were all beckoning to me. No one spoke. It was still very silent. So, I got on the train, silently awaiting the judgment that might await me at the top. I don’t remember much of the ride or the way after. I just heard someone say, Not now. Not now…

Then I woke up. The sudden wave of relief hit me. I was on my bed. All my memories came back to me like a flood. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t dead.

I died yesterday.

in memoriam

One year. Has it really been that long?

One year ago I was sitting on the road outside my house, eating leftovers for dinner. Everyone was scared. I was just hungry. The earth would tremble once every fifteen minutes to show us who was really in charge. It was dark. It was also raining.

That is not what I want to talk about though. My family was far better off than most people after the earthquake. We had tents, a portable stove, gasoline, stocked food. Our earthquake experience was more like a camping trip to our front yard, really — compared to what others went through.

What I really want to talk about is what the experience taught us, as a people. People woke up, after a really long time. We saw things for what they were; the make-believe foundations that we Nepalese cherish so much were useless. It wasn’t Buddha that saved us from the earthquake. It wasn’t the glory of our mountains or the beauty of our hills. Our temples and old structures were just beautifully designed gas chambers. No god came down from the heavens and gave us all free food and water. The parliament was busy snatching tents and blankets for themselves, a parliament we put together through the bloodshed of our brothers. All of these things, useless, like trophies made from gold plated steel.

Our guardians came in forms with two hands and two feet, with rugged faces and dirty palms, some wearing army fatigues — others wearing nothing at all. With our bare hands we dug up thousands who were buried alive, with our bare hands we fed our neighbors while we had but little to eat, with our bare hands we finally unearthed that it was not the mountains or the landscapes that made Nepal great, it was the people. Us, the people, rising up from the pettiness of our differences: political, social and economic. The rich slept with the poor under the stars, both of them equally afraid of the earth.

Among the ashes of my sleeping nation, rose phoenixes made of bronze and mud. People complained, they shouted, they said that oblivion was inevitable and our efforts were in vain. All over Facebook, angry, angry people who did nothing but complain. Weak-minded, whining piles of meat without substance, screaming their lungs out. None of us heard them though, we didn’t have the time. We were busy with matters of consequence.

Never in my life had I really felt pride in my countrymen. It was a pride far surpassing any patriotic song that had ever been written. It was a pride in knowing that when I slept, someone else was working. And when they slept, I would step back into doing what was needed from me.

Yet still, cowards were among us. Cowards that stole from the defenseless. I pity them. I pity them because there they were, showing the world how powerless and miserable they were. You are always below the person you steal from, because he has what you want and you don’t. How low must they have been that they had to steal from people who had suffered the hand of god? I feel ashamed just breathing the same air.

These weren’t the only people I am not proud of. There were the stockpilers, ‘victims’ of the earthquake, always first in line when someone was giving away fried noodles. There were ‘rescue workers’ to whom distributing aid and helping villages was some sort of picnic, with merry songs and sleeping in the sun. There was ‘aid’ rotting away in the basement of a busy district officer’s building that some bank left as their ‘relief effort’. And of course, there were the politicians, who halted trucks full of supplies in their tracks because that area was under his ‘supervision’, so he could watch people starve in peace. We even saw what we really meant to our neighbors, sending us one man missions that left hundreds to die, blocking our supply lines when we had fallen and were struggling to get up.

But we outnumber them. We outnumber them all. The corruptors of this proud state. I think now is the time that we see that it was us, the people, who were the real saviors in the time of crisis. Instead of giving our pride to fake and useless symbols, instead of believing in vile and ignorant people, we can believe in ourselves.

We are not victims. We are survivors.

Never forget.

April 25th 2016.

What keeps you alive?

It has been a very turbulent six months for me, since I started my formal education here in the United States. I came here on the fourth of August 2015, previously never having set foot outside the country I was born in.

Needless to say, America was… new to me. There were so many things here that I didn’t understand. Specially how effortless so many things were. It felt weird, having everything you could ever want at your fingertips. Everything was so easy. So ridiculously easy. I really enjoyed my first two months here.

Then something happened, I don’t know what.I didn’t feel very energetic like I did when I started out. I started skipping classes. Became lazy to the point where I only ate from vending machines because I didn’t want to walk to the cafeteria. I started spending my days in my room, alone. I played video games a lot. I don’t know why. It felt so comfortable. I was getting tired of adapting to this country. Everything was so different from what I was used to. The food, being one of them. I was disappointed, in a sense. The wonder that had hit me was now gone, replaced by cynicism. But the video games hadn’t changed. So I hid in the things I knew. I stopped meeting people. I was either always in my room, or working. I spent money on things I didn’t want, bought things I would never use. I don’t know what had come over me.

Time went on, and finals came. I didn’t do well. I don’t know why I was surprised.

Then, on my winter break, one of close friends passed away. I didn’t take the news to heart, because it seemed like I was living a dream anyway; nothing was real. So I couldn’t take the news for what it was.

After that, all through my winter break, I would go to bed in my uncle’s house and think of what kept me alive.

Death is a strange thing. It’s the only thing life promises to you, the only thing that will happen, for sure if you were ever born. I feel as if death is a sort of ground. Like life is something that happens to people until they can get back to the normal state of being dead. We are dead until we are born, and after we are born we will die.

But if death is so normal and so sure, do I fear it much?

I don’t think I do, really. I am perfectly fine with dying. I do not want to leave a legacy that will be remembered because time erases all, and we are naught but grains of sand in this beach we call the universe. We are not special. I am aware of this so I do not fear dying.

However, I realized that even though I wouldn’t mind dying, there were things that kept me alive. I want to be alive for so many things, my parents being at the top of the list. I want to be alive to eat the food I love. I want to be alive to meet wonderful, wonderful people. I want to be alive to talk, to discuss philosophy, books, ideas, anything. I want to be alive to experience love. I want to be alive for these small, trivial things. To feel the wind in my hair when it blows in the spring. To see the orange and yellow of fall. To smell the breath of the fresh morning air, sometimes when I actually wake up on time.

My faith in humanity doesn’t keep me alive. Nor does my passion for science, to know more about the world. I am perfectly fine if I die not knowing how the world works. The ultimate questions don’t keep me alive. Art doesn’t keep me alive. There’s nothing grand that supports my existence. I am alive because of the small things. The small earthly pleasures of a human being. I think it’s pretentious to think that something you cannot imagine is what keeps your blood pumping.

It was difficult. It is difficult. Living. Existing. I think everyone goes through a similar existential crisis at some point in their lives. The only way someone could get away from it is by being blissfully ignorant of the meaninglessness of our existence. Shame I read too much as a child.

I do not think I am sad. I am quite happy, yes. It’s just sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying it is.