Mute mourners

Mute mourners

                There weren’t many people when I walked into the small church. Most of them should be around my age. Gradually, one by one, the empty benches were filling up with the same age group of men and women. And the deadly silence of the church was occasionally broken by the organist whose chords reminded us where we were. The misty blank look worn by most of us bore a thought about our calling time of drowning into the darkness. I could not help mumble those words of Pablo Neruda:

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

 Suddenly the sound of death could be heard. The white clothing hanging around the withered sleeper made the sound. They bore her. Through the window I saw the hood of the casket kept leaning against a wall, patiently waiting for its better half to be closeted soon and disappear once for all. How the long life, with its greed and ambition, love and pain, hope and despair, yearning and whimper, is compactly compressed in a six feet wooden box. And the sepulchre was a square opening through which the closed coffin went like a hand in a glove. I was told that the same space was allocated to her husband years ago. In this vast country, dead ones cannot find a decent cavity and amidst the rituals of mourning they are just unceremoniouslyly shoved into the dark hole which would be opened once again years later to house another. There wasn’t horror or fear on anyone’s face. But there was a reservation like I will await it my own way. Many questions remain to be answered. When will it knock at your door? Who will outlive whom? Who will be around? Or will there be none?