My name is Rahul Singh, and I am a living creature that died yesterday. Sounds perplexing, right? However confusing the statement may read, no doubting its truth, or half-truth. I died in my dream, and the experience left me with an impression that's going to outlast time itself.
It was dusk-time, and I stood in an unknown place. Interestingly, I was dressed in a Suit, and seemed more like a body builder. I allowed myself to sit on a bench underneath a tree in a garden, which looked like it had been isolated for long.
Lost in deep thinking, I realized something was really weird. Problems with dreams are that there ain't enough emphasis on details. My mind felt perplexed 'bout the situation. I didn't need breathing, I couldn't feel my pulses, and whatever I did, I didn't seem to get injured. My vision seemed supernatural, I could even clearly see the ant that moved good 10 meters away from me.
I hate giving up on things I love, but everything here indicated that I wasn't human anymore. It was enough a reason to cry, but I couldn't, even jabbing my eyes with my fingers didn't help. I felt sad, and that was contradicting the situation as I never knew if dead people had feelings, and also the place seemed alien. I never had been there before.
I started walking from the place towards an unknown destination, and hours into the walk, there wasn't a part of me that felt tired. I kept walking through the night, and nothing changed for me. I realized I had lost life, and change was out of my curriculum.
Now, the question arose - where am I? After death, my granny had told me that we either went to heaven or to hell. The place being so desolated initially gave an impression of it being heaven, but later during the day I reached a place with concrete buildings, and all of the human-made machinery and other stuff. That meant builders, engineers had reached the place too, and I could see political hoardings and banners. I thought to myself - Okay, this must be hell.
All the voices of the cars and the people, I had been used to, when alive had added impressions of unknown voices that I wasn't used too, and that was annoying. Nobody seemed to notice me, and another hour I could see people quarreling over petty stuff, I could hear venomous stuff that some lads/lasses I passed by thought (not necessarily said, but I still could hear). I even saw blood, and misery.
I quickly moved on to a place of solitude, what was an isolated beach. I could still hear voices in my head, the voices which told of great misery. I reckoned that my heart wasn't breathing, but my learning hadn't ended. Somewhere, some puzzling queries of afterlife seemed answered, but many more confusions arose. I felt terrible at the thought of dying every moment, even after death. Then, I heard some soothing voices coming from behind. I needn't turn to find kids playing in the sand. Yet, not enough to make me feel alive, and more what I had eternity to live through, dead.
"All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent."
See, hear, and am silent."
This is how Walt Whitman ends his poetry "I Sit and Look Out" resembling the struggle of 19th century. Unfortunately, things have only got worse since.
The dream ended with a stupid phone call, and being so helpless in it, ached my heart, but what I felt worse was that maybe, maybe reality isn't too different.
This is a work of fiction brought to you by a "cool kid born in a hot month". I also have a blog called Good Little Indian.
I know I do a lot of self-promotion, but my favourite line is, "Such is the world and it's creatures."
