Life, death and other ramblings!

What is life, a journey, a celebration, a treat to savour?And what is death, the inevitable, the loss of consciousness, the destination? What if one day suddenly the fine line between life and death gets blurred to such an extent that we are not sure which side are we in. This is not another sci-fi movie in the making but an actual event in the life of a friend. So let me introduce you to the lovely Gabriela and let her relate her own story.
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She was sitting in a restaurant overlooking the Ganges, holding a glass of greenish beverage. She felt quite comfortable up there, positioning her face in gentle breeze. The drink had a rather delicate taste and was tapped with a cap of white smooth spume. Her unconscious mind was however already getting aware that the burnt-like odor she smelt was coming from the burning bodies piled at the river’s bank; and that the sweet-like aroma in that very breeze was nothing else but moldiness. Actually, the musty smell was coming from the crowded lanes right below, lanes that have been running for centuries from the Ganges’ banks, full of filth, rats and feces; and have trapped her mind already earlier in the afternoon.

Without any warning sign from above, the buried gloomy feelings at a sudden shot out, turning bottom-up her perception of life and death. Was it an explosion in her mind or somewhere in the bowels of the building? She didn’t have the answers. She had just several confused ideas, her lifeless body tossed over a bed, surrounded by extremely pink walls. Was she dead? Most probably. Was she in heaven? Certainly not.

She was not surprised that she died - or that she didn’t get to heaven. She was expecting the moment of death instinctively all her life. She was much more astonished that a part of her conscious was still alive. How could she be so silly during her lifetime to doubt the after-life? And also - and more importantly – the concept of time completely crashed in pieces. She remembered most of the facts of her life but was unable to chain them down on a time line. All of them jumbled together, arising in her mind one by one but disarranged, without any chronology. She recalled the stories about sequences of pictures from the lifetime running in the head when dying – another sign that she was just leaving this world, if not done already. Besides, she started to feel hot sensation spreading slowly from the feet up her body. Are they already burning her at the Ganges? Without her mom and dad saying good-bye to her? She remembered their lovely faces with a deep sorrow. Her heart became beating so fast that even if she still wasn’t dead, she would definitely die from a heart attack sooner or later. Her conscious was not tied in her head any longer but was floating freely in the space instead. It was like if she could grasp another dimension of the cosmos in its eternity; her mind following different system, not bounded by the limits and rules of her physique envelope.

One point was very clear to her however. She knew she couldn’t stay trapped in there, wherever she was. It had to come to an end. Where will she wake up next morning? With a scream, all covered in blood from a new birth, her mind blank again? She didn’t want to forget. There were so many great people and things worth remembering. The next day, she woke up in the same room. Just the walls weren’t that pink anymore. She felt a burnt scar on her soul, wondering what a queer corner of her mind she just visited.