Colour of Death

The silence of death helps man survive. Being an excruciating reality, so closely associated with every walk of life, man has no choice but to accept the decree of death. It isnt really true that people dread the system; it is often the mode that haunts. Death was just another phenomenon, some time ago. While mostly nature contributed to the cause, accidents and man-conspired incidents were a countable few.

Even so, the shock was inevitable, the pain, irreversible. The naive wanting to relive every possible moment was innate but one found the vulnerable naked truth of illusion gone forever, never to return.

Emotion as an unusual commander then let the crying drain into sobs. The tears dry and the smiles return. The memory lingers as an ever-budding bloom, but the voices get distant. The healing is slow, but steady. And then, a dawn breaks, when both the heart and mind sing in unison LET GO. And thereafter, the black fades, preserving the memory, yet withering the pain, steadily into a peaceful white. That was all when the colour of death was black.

Though one of natures best kept secrets, death is no more black. Be it the Gujarat massacre, or the Columbia tragedy, or the WTC cabal, or the Kargil valiance, or any of the millions of such, the meditation of violence is one aspect to which we cannot shut the doors.  Coping with the escalating reign of human killing machines seems a possibility as long as it is not personal,  but confrontation with one explodes an emotion so unique - beyond words, beyond understanding. It is neither wrath, nor helplessness, nor pain, nor fear, nor revenge, nor insecurity. It is an outburst of the inner peace, the self, so impotently surrendering to the aggressing heart, impossible to reason with the mind. Such a storm never calms. At this, even the rhythm of dirge is not a melody. Rather, it obtains and sustains the clamor for lifetime. The very thought inflaming, the memory anguishing, the absence aching, the loss kindling, in all, setting humanity ablaze. Though the rosary of crimes and the time-free life have saturated the minds, and hardened the hearts, it is somehow impossible to defy impuissance. The infinite instances of man playing the lover of hate has consciously projected and proved the change in the tint of death. YES, it is the ineffable truth. The color of death is no more black, it is RED, BLOOD RED.