On Death and Dying.
Being the youngest in my family has instilled in me a profound fear of aging. It is neither a fear of grey hair and wrinkles, nor the common nightmare of becoming the token "crazy-old-lady-with-seventeen-cats."When people ask me where I see myself in ten years, I give them the conventional answer - husband, kids, career,dog named Major Major - but I always wonder if I will even be alive then, or worse, I wonder how many people I love will have been sucked into that unending vortex of darkness and uncertainty. While I do often mull over the not-so ridiculous possibility of growing old without a romantic companion, I am more concerned that with every televised Times Square countdown, with every abandoned calendar, I am closer to losing someone I love. Slowly, like prisoners on death row, or in quick succession, like the hundred beer bottles on that notorious wall.
The closest - and admittedly, it wasn't that close after all - I've come to dying was in an auto rickshaw in 2000, spiralling out of control on the monsoon-ravaged slope of Cozihom. As we crashed into a wall, I failed to see my sixteen-year-old life flash - in slow-motion or otherwise - in front of my eyes. No,my brain was on repeat and all it said was, "Holy shit, Auri. This is it. This is how you are going to die." Turns out I was wrong, and the accident left me with nothing but bruised ribs and hysterical laughter, a coping mechanism I'd used before.
I was nine years old the first time I ever had to deal with death. Persis Khambatta - no, not the model/actress renowned for her baldness, but a classmate of mine had died of a mysterious illness. Rumour had it that her body - nine, naive, naked - was placed on a large block of ice in a futile attempt to bring down her scorching fever. The next day, incidentally the Parsi New Year, Persis passed away. I remember being in Kanika's house when her mother, a teacher at our school, gravely broke the news to us. Not knowing how else to react, we giggled. Hysterically. Like the nine-year olds we were. Death had finally escaped John Lennon photographs to directly intervene in my life. In the following weeks, I began to truly understand mortality with its fragility, unpredictability, unfairness. I found myself crying in the midst of piano lessons, and evading sleep - that torturously lonely realm - to evade nightmares depicting the casualties of time. I still remember the exact moment at which I realised - in the bathroom, by the basin - that my parents were going to die at some point too. To date, I struggle to censor such thoughts, anaesthisizing them with the mundanity of every day life. Despite these efforts, I have spent many a sleepless night masochistically imagining unsavoury versions of the inevitable, set to the soundtrack of my pounding heart.
I guess it's fair to say that Persis' death affected me deeply. For years after, I felt enormously guilty for laughing at the news of my classmate's death. Thing is, I didn't really know Persis. I didn't even particularly like, or for that matter dislike, her. But being the person I am, I know that her birthday was on the 30th of November, making her exactly 13 days younger than me. Still, here I am at 21, livingbreathingthinking, while Persis will always be nine, frozen in photographs and indelible memories that undoubtedly haunt her family.
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On a lighter note, I had the strangest dream a few nights ago. Picture this: I am sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, with my legs dangling in the water. Suddenly, _______ appears from under water and as if it were the most normal thing in the world, begins to suck on my toes in a vaguely erotic manner. He asks me to jump into the pool, but even in the haziest of dreams, I am acutely aware of my hydrophobia. Then he dramatically leaps out of the water - fully clothed, dry as fat-free khakra - and sits beside me. We proceed to make out, and when I pull away, he is Kevin Spacey. I, more logically, am mortified.
The closest - and admittedly, it wasn't that close after all - I've come to dying was in an auto rickshaw in 2000, spiralling out of control on the monsoon-ravaged slope of Cozihom. As we crashed into a wall, I failed to see my sixteen-year-old life flash - in slow-motion or otherwise - in front of my eyes. No,my brain was on repeat and all it said was, "Holy shit, Auri. This is it. This is how you are going to die." Turns out I was wrong, and the accident left me with nothing but bruised ribs and hysterical laughter, a coping mechanism I'd used before.
I was nine years old the first time I ever had to deal with death. Persis Khambatta - no, not the model/actress renowned for her baldness, but a classmate of mine had died of a mysterious illness. Rumour had it that her body - nine, naive, naked - was placed on a large block of ice in a futile attempt to bring down her scorching fever. The next day, incidentally the Parsi New Year, Persis passed away. I remember being in Kanika's house when her mother, a teacher at our school, gravely broke the news to us. Not knowing how else to react, we giggled. Hysterically. Like the nine-year olds we were. Death had finally escaped John Lennon photographs to directly intervene in my life. In the following weeks, I began to truly understand mortality with its fragility, unpredictability, unfairness. I found myself crying in the midst of piano lessons, and evading sleep - that torturously lonely realm - to evade nightmares depicting the casualties of time. I still remember the exact moment at which I realised - in the bathroom, by the basin - that my parents were going to die at some point too. To date, I struggle to censor such thoughts, anaesthisizing them with the mundanity of every day life. Despite these efforts, I have spent many a sleepless night masochistically imagining unsavoury versions of the inevitable, set to the soundtrack of my pounding heart.
I guess it's fair to say that Persis' death affected me deeply. For years after, I felt enormously guilty for laughing at the news of my classmate's death. Thing is, I didn't really know Persis. I didn't even particularly like, or for that matter dislike, her. But being the person I am, I know that her birthday was on the 30th of November, making her exactly 13 days younger than me. Still, here I am at 21, livingbreathingthinking, while Persis will always be nine, frozen in photographs and indelible memories that undoubtedly haunt her family.
***********************************************************
On a lighter note, I had the strangest dream a few nights ago. Picture this: I am sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, with my legs dangling in the water. Suddenly, _______ appears from under water and as if it were the most normal thing in the world, begins to suck on my toes in a vaguely erotic manner. He asks me to jump into the pool, but even in the haziest of dreams, I am acutely aware of my hydrophobia. Then he dramatically leaps out of the water - fully clothed, dry as fat-free khakra - and sits beside me. We proceed to make out, and when I pull away, he is Kevin Spacey. I, more logically, am mortified.
posted by Auri @ 1:23 AM
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