Afterlife

                Do you think there is life after death?

                Do you think there is life before?

Enough time has passed for me to be able to forget things. Yet I remember them, as clear as the first crystals of ice, sinking down a tireless landscape. In fact, not a day has passed when these thoughts haven’t crossed my mind. No matter the place, the time, the people, these memories always sit somewhere in the back of my head – crawling and scraping through all that is left to be called a human. In commotion the renegades sweep away places, but there are some hidden at the centre of the stage – looking over all; overlooked by all. And I wonder why they came to be what they came to be.

                Asha, a young girl, stands at the centre of the city bridge every midnight – ignored, attended by none. I first met her on the 21^st of December, when I sat on the same bridge with the whiskey beside. No security – all smeared by the holidays. One shot; Two shots; Three shots and next to the bottle I saw her sitting calmly, staring at me. The untamed breeze flowing over the river swayed her dark cascade left to right. Occasionally, silvery locks covered her eyes and cheeks when she gently tucked them in the back of her ear. Her silky gossamer complemented the pale face, and bright eyes.

                “Do you see me?” she leaned forward and gently asked.

                “Yes, I do” I replied.

                “Do you know how fast the river is?”

                “No, I don’t”

                “But I do. Do you want to know how?”

    “How?”

“It’s pretty fast. When I jumped down this bridge three years ago, my body was found a hundred kilometres away”, she looked innocently at me.

“Yes, that’s fast”, another hippie thought I and looked away. ‘What is she even doing here?’ I turned to look, but she was gone. I squinched hard to find her standing far away from me, staring at the river. “Hey!” I cried. She looked at me, her tears glistening in the moonlight, and jumped down without a notice.

I pulled myself up in horror, tripped on the fallen whiskey, got up again, rushed to the site, and nothing. The only sound I heard was of the whiskey bottle splashing into the water. And since, every night that I go to the bridge, I see her. She says the same words and jumps off in the end. I do not know anything about her, but I think of her as Asha. Someone who disappeared out of my life in a flash and was never heard of again.

There’s another one, Toby, a three-year-old toddler who sits quietly everyday outside the hospital where he died of pneumonia. His eyes are hollow and his lips sealed. Sometimes I wonder what would he say if he could speak. Perhaps about schemes that we conjure in consciousness. What would he even know about life, or the afterlife? Perhaps more than me?

It’s not just Asha or Toby or the old man at the gate of my house. It’s a clan of millions, that remains hidden to the world - is indifferent to its norms. A clan of spirits that is representative of the real world; that looks over all but is overlooked by all. Talking of the clan degenerates your image and fools pin you down to hospitals and asylums and treat you with pills and syrups and shocks, just because they are too arrogant to open to the truth! Just because truth is something that they define!

And this arrogance has lead to a mortal clan that is similar in every way to the spirits but for the palpability of a breathing vessel. The physical touch has overpowered the emotional one, and the society has a growing clan of walking people that are alive in no way! And this is something that cannot be forgotten, that must not be forgotten! And perhaps that is why I remember everything so clear as the crystals of the first snow. When there is so much to be discovered and learnt and changed about the world, by people that find difficulty in changing themselves in the first place!