Jyothy Sreedhar

The ultimate equalizer

Death is the ultimate equalizer

that puts end to the unequalled destinies,

to the unequalled construction of living bodies,

to the imbalances of learning, learned and learnt alike,

to the unbalanced weighing of real and unreal,

to the confusions between related and unrelated rights,

to the struggle for defining lies against the mighty truth,

to the terms ‘high’ and ‘low’ of life- horizontal, vertical and diagonal,

also its hardest and softest synonyms that fly down

according to the gentleness of the tongue.

Death ends the sense and the nonsense alike

and makes everything just dead bodies,

letting loose the tight bond between body and soul.

Childhood was when I grew up from the pure innocence

of being a newborn who proved it with her smile.

I learned the art of wickedness that started seducing me

and made me addicted to the taste of negatives.

I lied, I stole, I abused and I was bad.

I started liking the artificial flavours of everything that I intook.

Teenage was when I started acting what I was not, in real.

It reflected in my wearing sarees that I stole from my mother

and cat-walked in front of my favourite mirror,

thinking too high of myself and my beauty,

pausing in stylish poses, as if I was getting clicked,

with flashes and millions around.

I was then, but a dark stuff of unattractive human woman body-

ugly within and without.

The darkness reflected the evil in me,

that I gained being a human! (or non-human?)

Still I boasted off!

Maturity started when I got bored with the painted masks

and started tearing it apart, and I slowly began

losing each dark layer from my bright soul,

looking beautiful atleast for me and for my mirror.

That maturity was when I started gaining innocence,

in all real sense of the word, experiencing its heights of glory.

The first conscious taste of innocence was then,

in contrast to the uncounscious taste that I had

when I was just a crying and smiling baby.

Then I began to taste the food without add ups

and still it became delicious for me.

I started hating masalas for everything.

I looked into, and thought around.

I craved for Siamese truth and beauty in everything.

I tore the masks, of mine and those around.

I saw the body just as a cave for some years of life

that is served with everything, except light.

The darkest of all creation is our body-

the most selfish one as well!

It not only covers our brightest souls.

not only fixes the five senses into it with selfishness,

not only makes the mind wander without a place,

not only gives us the ego of beauty,

But

It keeps the best parts of it-

the kingdoms of thought and emotion-

brain and heart-

in the most interior part of itself,

hiding it to the world outside and to our own eyes!

If they were shown out,

the body would have lost its importance-

the most selfish act of companionship!

I found how death is a necessity to end up everything

with the solace of a final breath, knowing that it is final.

The last moment makes us realize that there is no one around

who are dear to us in real, just as ourselves.

No one will help us take our final breaths.

Instead they task us with pouring water into the mouth

that opens widely with our hardest struggle for last breath.

They make the clothes ready, clean the floor and arrange the hall,

along with invitations for ‘relations’

for our after-death functions.

Crying for us, they, in real, cry for money that gets lost

with our foolish death ceremonies.

They buy a garland to fix it on the body that we tear apart

with the atmost maturity that we attains.

Fools! What else should I call them!

I want to die in Tamil Nadu,

And make people dance with their real natural happiness

For my death!

When in life, we say that past is to be forgotten,

life itself becomes just a past of death-

an autobiography of the final breath

passing through the deviations of breaths that we had taken

in the hurried wastage of life.

Death is when life becomes just a ‘tensed’ past

of the most relaxing process of being the soul

that we are in real.

Life is a senseless wastage of years,

as Vladimir and Estragon does (as said by Beckett)!

It just reaches us to the moment

when we see God(ot) and soul as one that is ultimate.

Death is when the mask called life ends.

Death is the ultimate equalizer

Of the (pretended) sense and the real nonsense.

Death ends everything

And everything ends in death!

Just the soul ‘lives’!