Tuesday, 12 November 2019

The embers of the bright blue sari

I stopped counting in life. Notice the missing number on the title.

The past few hours have been excruciatingly painful. I attended a funeral. I dont know if it is humanely possible to weep so much. But I wept and the tears all measured in a 5 l bottle. Filled to the brim. The bottle also started weeping. I am sure I dont have enough blood anymore. All my blood is now in that bottle.

I dont know the color of tears. I know that the blood/tears kind of fluid my body secreted thru my eyes felt salty. Probably it is to create a balance to the taste of my anger which was anything but salty. Is there a taste that's called ugly? Or fury?

The hot tears now started to scorch the bottle. Enough to melt the bottle. And anyway the puddle was all a part of the funeral scene. Imagine a pyre. Then the tears. Then the emptiness. The loss. The betrayal. The fear. The memories.

Each memory then became a picture in my head. I was re-living each moment. The happiness and the sadness of it all. All of it taken away from me because someone decided to taken them away. All of them burning away in full glory of the pyre. Was that how death was supposed to be? In knowing that you will never ever see this life ever again? Is that (im)possible? The shock of the suddenness of all of it.

Like someone else has taken over your body so you could take yourself including all your memories and then take a plunge into the pyre. Who is this someone else? Hello stranger!

The stranger in me mocked me. Hundred times over till my body resigned to this newer phase of living. Can I re-live something like this? Am I alive? Or am I dead? Gone into the pyre?

I still remember the day before. When the blue sari came into my hand. A gift. And someone jokingly said, "Isnt this bright? Do you wear such bright things?"

I'd have worn it. Had I the life to match the sari, I'd definitely have worn it. Bright or not. Blue was the color of twilight. The greyness of the skies matched the blue of the sari.

Just like the embers of the sari that now matched the night sky. Dark. Darker. Eventually black. The embers.

Blue sari? You said bright blue one?

The last laugh was burnt. Singed. And all gone.

Vanished into thin air... The smoke looked bright blue in color. And then poof. :-)

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