The Obsession

Right from an early age, Sameer had been obsessed with death. Not in a crazy or cruel way. Think of it as an intense curiosity. What happens when life is over? What precise moment does a living being cease to exist? And, most importantly, why do living things die?

His first encounter with death had been with the neighborhood cat. Hit and run, and he was the only one on the scene. He remembered how little the cat looked, lying there in the pool of it’s own blood. He remembered how he used to play with that cat, for such long hours. How all that had actually been so fragile. He hadn’t tried saving the cat, he hadn’t even considered it. Somehow, instinctively, he had known that there was no point. Instinctively, he had known that the cat was dead.

He remembered vividly the time when his grandfather went to the hospital for the first time. He had gone there to meet him. He knew that he could ask the old man anything he wanted; the old man wouldn’t laugh at his thoughts, or be worried.

“Dadai, what’s wrong with you?”

“It’s my heart, kiddo. It keeps throwing tantrums.”

“Has it always been this way? I don’t remember you coming to the hospital before this.”

“It’s been a recent thing. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. What’s the matter? What’s bothering you?”

“Dadai, what happens when you die?”

“Well, I don’t know myself. I mean, I don’t really know where you go after you die. Or if you even go somewhere. There are a lot of people who claim a lot of things about death, but I really don’t know who to believe, and who not to. I personally don’t think you should be worried too much about it at this age, kid. You’ll have a lot of time to think about it,” said Dadai, with a faraway look in his eyes. “A lot of time.”

“Are you going to die too, Dadai?” asked Sameer in a tiny, quivering voice.

Dadai smiled, held him close to him, and said, “Not in a while, kiddo.”

*****

Over the next year, his obsession with death grew. A million questions seemed to be burning up inside of him, and somehow he knew he couldn’t ask Dadai anymore. There was nobody he could turn to with the questions, and so he began looking for the answers himself. Dadai had told him about religion providing many views about death. So, he started reading those books. However, he never seemed to be content with any of the answers those books provided. He knew it had to be time to move on.

Now shunning the books, he forayed into searching for the answers himself. To know the answers to death, he somehow thought he first must find out the answers to life itself. So he found the litter of pups near the park, and took it upon himself to care for the little ones. The mother of the pups soon got used to him being around, and soon he found that she was actually looking forward to his visits. Life and love, it seemed, were not that far apart.

As his questions about life began to be answered, although not too much in depth, his answers to death were still just as murky. Just out of curiosity, he had contemplated suicide as well. The only thing that stopped him there was the fact that he wasn’t sure where he would be once he died, if his consciousness would die with him, and all those questions left unanswered. Still, the idea of suicide was enticing.

Pills. Razor blades. A rope with a noose. Even Dadai’s old service revolver. Sameer seemed to have forgotten all about life, and the beauties of that, in his search for the answers for death. Twice, he came dangerously close to killing himself. Once, the thought of his consciousness dying with him stopped him. Another time, his mother walked in on him, and he was forced to throw the razor blade away.

*****

While his obsession for death continued unchecked, Dadai’s health grew worse rapidly. Sameer noticed that Dadai had gone thinner and paler than before, but he was still his chirpy old self. “Don’t worry about me, kiddo. You stay focused on your studies,” Dadai told him once, a few days into his summer vacations.

“Studies? Dadai, it’s the summer holidays! I’m not going to study now. I’m going to Hyderabad for the summer. No studies there for me. Ha ha!”

“Well, then, in that case, enjoy your holidays. Don’t worry about me, enjoy your life as and when it comes.”

*****

Two weeks into the vacation, his father got a frantic call from home. Dadai wasn’t well. Two days later, they were back home. Dadai was in the hospital, and the house seemed strangely empty. Sameer used to stay at home, while his sister would take care of him. Sameer used to feel very lonely at home, without Dadai; but he didn’t really have anyone he could tell that to. The only person he could tell it to without having to think, was Dadai.

Four days later, Dadai died in the hospital. Left ventricle failure, Sameer learnt those words by heart. He wondered what his reaction to the news would be like; he waited for the tears to come. They didn’t come.

He couldn’t sleep all that night. It was the first time that he spent the night pacing the house, wondering what exactly it was that he was missing. He was sad, but he had no way to show it. He had lost a friend in Dadai, and the fact that he would never see Dadai walk in again through the door, wearing the brown golf cap, and his short walking stick in his hand settled down heavily somewhere on his chest. He didn’t find any of the answers he was looking for, but he finally understood that there’s no point in looking for all those answers. All that matters in the end, is the deep resonating interconnections that exist between life, love, and death.

The next morning, when he woke up, he went outside to the courtyard. Dadai’s chair was there, as usual, but Dadai wasn’t sitting there reading the newspaper like every day. Instead, the unopened newspaper was laid neatly on the cushion.

The tears flowed finally, late by one night.