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.

Dear someone I’ve yet to meet,

Hello.

It feels weird writing to someone you haven’t met. It’s weirder still telling them that you miss them. Yes. I miss you. Even though the fabric of space-time hasn’t allowed our union, and even though English grammar forbids me to speak of future events using the present tense, I cannot find any other words to express what I feel right now, probably because the words are yet to come and do not wish to be brought forth before their time. It feels like you are a part of me, and I miss you.

I hope we meet soon. I have so much to tell you and you have so much to tell me. There is so much we have yet to do together. But maybe I’m taking a lot of presumptions here — I don’t even know if you’re one or many. Maybe I’ll see parts of you in other people, living each moment with a different person but still feeling the same warmth in all of them, the warmth that I call you. Or maybe you’re a single person I’m going to meet, someone who will complete me in some way. Or maybe I’ve already met you, but our timelines are yet to cross in a meaningful manner.

Maybe I’m a giant jigsaw puzzle that has lost too many squares and you’re a giant jigsaw puzzle that has lost too many squares, but in some divine way I have all your missing pieces and you have all of mine, and this is why I’m searching for you and this is why you’re searching for me. We’re just looking for our missing pieces, the pieces that were never there, the pieces that were taken and never returned, the pieces that just disappeared as time went on.

I guess everyone is a giant jigsaw puzzle, constantly searching for their missing pieces.

I miss you sounds wrong now, since the only way I’ll ever complete myself and the only way you’ll ever complete yourself is for us to take over each other completely. And that wouldn’t be a single I any more, or a single you. We miss you would be better suited.

Having said all that, I don’t know why completing puzzles is so important.

But what I do know is that the bare thought of being with you takes my breath away. I can’t even place my feelings. It’s one of those moments that no artificial construct, let alone words, can ever describe. It’s like looking at the stars at night and suddenly realizing that you will never be able to understand their beauty with such a clouded mind. It’s like watching a sunset turn the whole world red and then black with such grace that you’re left wondering when the evening ended and the night began.

I look at the world and I see so much that I feel like my heart is going to burst. So I shield myself from this grandeur. I wear the tinted lenses of apathy. I ignore the beauty around me, simply because I feel that if I take off these glasses I’ll be blinded by the light. And this is why I need you. And this is why you need me. I trust you more than I trust myself and you share similar faith in me.

So tell me everything is going to be alright, and take off my glasses. I’ll be happy to do the same to you. We’ll face the light together, you and I.

I really hope we meet soon. We miss you.

Yours,
Someone you’re going to meet