Death often pops its head up like a nosy meerkat in my mind. Then it turns into a peacock, spreading its plumage so gloriously that every other thought is subdued. Then, like a dazed tortoise within its shell, it stays. Still. So long that it turns into the only thought in my mind.
Unhealthy or downright morbid, call it what you may, but in the last six or seven years, I have started to secretly envy people who die while they are still in their prime, physically, mentally, and financially. As the unofficial saying goes, the best time to leave is when it is least expected. On anxiety-driven nights, when I doomscroll into the rabbit hole that is the internet and come across someone who has left in their 40s or early 50s, my immediate reaction is, “How fortunate! Shob dukkho shesh.” All agonies over. I say 40s and early 50s and not anyone younger because, first, I am 43, and it would be unfair for me to wish early departure for anyone when I myself have hung around for so long; and, second, I assume that mid-40s to mid-50s is when a person — I apologise if I sound hurtful — has lived enough, experienced enough, seen enough, suffered enough, been overjoyed and revulsed by this world enough. Families come to mind. Dependents. Elderly parents, a spouse with no source of sustenance, children orphaned. Know that I do not wish this upon anyone, but I can’t deny that sometimes hope deflects from me.
In the part of the country I come from, what appears more daunting than death is the paperwork that follows for the living. It is the survivors, the ones left behind, the ones often clueless, who are tasked with the job of putting things in order after the dear departed. The place of death, the cause of death, the declaration of death by a medical doctor, the certification of death by a competent authority — each of these factors, and perhaps some more, go into the various papers – death certificate, NOC, insurance, etc. In this hinterland, it literally takes a village to get a person’s death certified.
Graphic novelist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi passed away recently. I am yet to read Persepolis, her iconic, autobiographical graphic novel, but I have seen the film (released the same year as the English translation, 2007, and co-directed by Satrapi herself) based on the book and been fascinated. Nearly two decades have passed, but this sequence from the film is still fresh in my mind: The headscarf-wearing, feisty Marji, while running to catch a bus, shouts, “Then stop looking at my a**” at the guards when they tell her that her rear looks obscene when she runs. The image of Marji on one of the posters of the film — a side profile, eyes closed, hair free from the shackles of the headscarf, chin resting on the left palm, a prominent mole on the right side of her nose, a hint of a smile playing on her face — is an enduring one.
Satrapi passed away at 56.
I ought not to have been shocked, given my advocacy of dying sooner, but I was as taken aback as her well-wishers across the world. What struck me more was the reason furnished for Satrapi’s death: Sadness. Satrapi’s family had stated that she had “died of sadness” over her husband’s death.
Sadness. Just one word.
Perhaps “sadness” was just a provisional statement provided by the family to the media. Perhaps there was some other reason — a more medical one, mentioned on the death certificate. Whatever the case might be, it made me wonder if sadness could ever be a valid reason for the death of a person in a rural hinterland in India, someone who is a beneficiary of a government developmental programme. Would sadness be accepted as a valid reason to put on the life insurance papers of a deceased person without jeopardising the prospect of the nominee/s of receiving its benefit/s unhindered? Wouldn’t the life — and living, as a consequence — of those left behind become much more convenient if death and its cause could be summed up in just one easy-to-understand word?
Would a single word in lieu of long sentences with technical terms make it easier to find closure or bring to an end all the official procedures and paperwork that follow death?
As my mind keeps returning to it over and over again, I feel — and I might be wrong again, so I apologise in advance — in the place I come from, death is never accorded the solemnity it deserves. There, grief isn’t private; it is usually performative. There is no room for a quiet meditation over one’s loss. The pervasiveness of this usually cuts across barriers of caste and wealth.
Death is an irreparable loss. In most cases, the person who dies is the anchor who held together entire worlds. But instead of letting that loss seep in, allowing oneself time and quiet to grieve, rituals and paperwork rush in to fill the vacuum. People die of sadness and heartbreak in places far away. Out here, where death can have only three likely explanations — age, ailment, or accident — and every other reason elicits questions and suspicions, will an abstract concept like death due to sadness hold any meaning?
Shekhar, a doctor based in Jharkhand, is also a writer and translator