Holding the cup of poison, the first thought that struck me was: what if I really die after drinking this? Well, does it hurt terribly when you die? The suffering I endure by living — is the pain of dying even greater? What does it feel like to die? When you die this way, does everything around you go dark? I’m living in darkness; will I die in it too?
I tried to imagine what the scene after my death might look like. Mother would wail and cry, fainting again and again in her grief. Father would abandon the courtroom and come rushing home. Father would weep profusely too. When parents cry like that, their bodies collapse, they fall gravely ill. My younger brother would spend a few moments wondering what he should do, then he too would begin howling with tears. Those around us, even if not moved by genuine sorrow, would start weeping just from watching the three of them. Tears are contagious, after all. When someone sits before you crying, joining in becomes a matter of common courtesy.
Thinking all this through, I wondered: what right do I have to murder with my own hands this life that my mother gave me? No one has absolute dominion over their own life. These thoughts made me desperately want to cry aloud — tears that would lighten the heart. But despite the tremendous urge to weep, I couldn’t shed a single tear. All my sorrow seemed to die choking within my chest. Suppressed tears. What agony! What agony! . . . . . .
I had read something about what the final moments of suffering feel like before leaving this world. Not all accounts spoke of pain. At that moment, I remembered something by Oscar Wilde, whom I consider the most humor-blessed writer of all time. His wasn’t sorrowful. The amusing thing is: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” Wilde didn’t actually say this in his final moments, but about a week before his death — though many believe he said it right at the end. The rule of suicide is: you mustn’t think so much, you just have to do it. Death means everything ceasing to exist. A dead person has no good feelings or bad feelings left. What’s the point of wondering who cried, who laughed? Yet the mind wanders anyway! Someone accustomed to living might naturally ponder the experience of dying. There’s nothing wrong with that.
A line from The Shawshank Redemption that I love came to mind: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Suddenly, holding that cup of poison, this thought struck me: even if I can’t be brilliant like ten others, why not try being alive once as just one unremarkable person and see what happens! I remembered the water-nymph from Shirshendu’s “The Swimmer and the Water-Nymph.” Now I understand — simply being alive accomplishes so much. Well, what happens when you stay alive? If nothing else, at least you get to suffer. When you’re dead, you get nothing at all. Better to receive suffering in life than to receive nothing at all. You must endure suffering, learn to bear it, learn to transform suffering into strength. They say when people have their backs to the wall, they turn and fight. My back was pressed against that wall! The pain, the torment, the sorrow, the despair, the melancholy of those times — none of it should ever be forgotten. It’s precisely because I lived that I received all those bonuses! So when someone asks me what brings the greatest joy in life — success? becoming wealthy? achieving greatness? — I tell them: simply being alive is life’s greatest joy. Others may not know it, but I do — sometimes just staying alive is incredibly difficult. To keep doing that work day after day, thumbing your nose at death — what a tremendous success that is!
I had read in one of Sandeepan’s novels:
“Will there be songs in these dark days of ours?
Yes, one day there will be songs about these dark days of ours.”
I had decided to spend my time waiting for that day. I knew writing such a song would be terribly difficult, but still . . . . . . .