May 20, 2015
Mumbai
If you happened to find yourself in Mumbai about 3 years ago, at about 10:20 pm on a Thursday (thee Thursday), you might have seen me dying. You would have seen my arms stretched out. You might have seen my nose, pointed towards the moon, bathing in its gaze. You could have seen me pierced right through to my back by the starlight, lying on the glass floor of Juhu Beach. Of course in that moment I felt like I was going to live forever. Everything around me was endless, but of course everything has an end to pave way for a rebirth, sometimes a do-over, and if anyone had earned a do-over, it was me.
You see just before this dying part (and believe me it’s pretty crucial so we’ll have to talk about it again at least once or twice), I had been begging for an end. I was bent over, head hunched between my legs, pleading wearily for a second chance. I told the gods (Ganesha, Shiva, Devi and gods by any other name) that I would earn it.
I’d sit and focus my mind and hold onto a pencil for days if that’s what it took. I’d commit 500 000 good deeds, I’d bleed, I would give up a limb — no worse, because Lord knows they were quickly becoming useless to me anyways. I would do whatever it took for my suffering to end.
You see there is no place quite like a busy street to make you feel insignificant and there is nothing quite like seeing a human being, with a contorted body, holding out their hand for coins to no avail, to make you feel a bit hopeless — unless of course you are that person. This is more proof than ever that it’s the same story on a different continent.
Most people go to India to find themselves. That had been me. I’d taken the last of my savings and booked a flight for exactly one week later (a luck), ready to figure out exactly who and what I was, but I only found more questions. It had been hot and busy and people tended to run their fingers through my hair without asking — something I’d never liked.
And so, in my dying moment (I’m sorry, I did warn you we’d have to talk about this again), I said “Goodbye” to the memories that passed through my mind: “You’re still my favourite accountant”, my parrot Jasper: “HELLO!” and my neighbour Gretha “When’s the last time we got the Tatler? Are we still getting the Tatler?”
How glad I was to be free of it all. What a relief to drift off into the sky.
“We’re losing her!”
“Is she allergic to anything that you know of?”
“Um, no I don’t think so. She’s never mentioned anything like that”.
“Is there anything else about tonight you haven’t already told the doctor. You have to let us know now”.
“No, that’s everything; everything I can think of”.
And as my heart slowed, the memories became all the more hazy, harder to grab onto. I rubbed my tongue along the top of my mouth. Have you ever had activated charcoal? It’s exactly how you might imagine it to be — delicious. My stomach ached but it slowly turned into a dull thud, somewhere far away. Besides, those were the cares for the living.
I felt my spirit climb up a pair of starry light ropes, and in a moment of pure Ecstasy I reached out my hand just a tiny bit further, into the emptiness, and shut those eyes for the last time.
“Clear!”
As I died and stretched, all 18000000001 cells in my fingertip brushed lightly against someone on the other side of my body. I felt myself shoot back into my lifeless corpse only to swerve and duck beneath newly firing synapses, right into my stolen form.
It turns out I didn’t need to find myself. I had found someone new, and now I had limbs that worked, a heart that pounded lovingly, a brain that lit up like that Juhu sky and a soul as light as the fingers of a dandelion.
And in all the years I’d seen every film, tasted every new sweet or bitter pill and washed the dust off my shoulders with all my lathered potions and emulsions, never was there ever such a glorious reincarnation.
“Look, I can’t promise anything but it looks as though she just made it. She should be alright with a bit of time”.
