Death is no stranger

Bomb Blasts. Railway accidents. House collapses. Untimely death is no more a remote possibility and, no, it does not knock at somebody else&...

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Bomb Blasts. Railway accidents. House collapses. Untimely death is no more a remote possibility and, no, it does not knock at somebody else’s door. Unlike your breath which is invisible, death seems to ostentatiously breathe down your neck, with every step you take.

It follows you in trains, in aeroplanes, on the roads, in public places, in concrete complexes, in fact, maybe even in the house you live.

Those were beautiful days when my father used to proudly say that the safest way to travel in India is by the Indian Railways. As we made our long-winding journey every summer and winter from Orissa to Pune, changing two trains, my mother would spend her time stitching hemlines and button-holes for our new dresses. Arriving at the final destination safely was never questioned. It was taken for granted.

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Today when my daughter travels with her husband, even though a privileged passenger of the Indian Railways, I monitor their journey like a cop does a VIP — making calls over the mobile phone umpteen times a day and thanking the Almighty for this invention — it’s like hearing God’s own voice in times like these, when travelling appears so unsafe.

Can you imagine the Gateway of India as the gateway to death? Here are some tourists standing around, watching the splendour of the Arabian Sea, suddenly getting transmogrified into masses of flesh on the pavement. Somebody dining in a restaurant or travelling in a public transport bus, only to end up a corpse. You are saying goodbye to your son as he makes his way to college on his mobike — something he does every day — and cops knock at your door a little later to announce he has met with an accident.

Death follows you more persistently than your shadow. In multi-storeyed commercial complexes which more often than not have inadequate emergency exits, death decides to engulf you in an outbreak of fire. Or it can come calling unabashadly, while watching a movie in an enclosed cinema theatre and have you choke to death like in the Uphaar cinema theatre tragedy. Or your body gets charred, while swinging away in a plush pub where there is no outlet for fresh air and a short circuit leads to a fire.

Earlier I had a phobia about air travel but now it comes on as soon as I or any one of my near and dear ones step beyond the doorstep. It is as if there’s no reason to die and yet Lord Yama comes a calling. Me thinks, the call of death, has gone beyond the philosophy of Karma too. And that if grilled by a journalist, God will find it difficult to give the reason for the death of so many innocent people.