#365DaysOfWriting – Day Sixty-Six
Death.
Interestingly I’m listening to a song titled Death, from A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.
This is a movie about a lonely vampire woman who stalks a fictional Iranian city named ‘Bad City’. I won’t reveal anything about the film because I want all of you to watch it, if you haven’t. It’s made by Ana Lily Amirpour, #2 on my list of celebrity lady crushes and a bad-ass director who calls her film an ‘Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western’. Yes.
Anyway, back to death. No, not Thanos’ mistress, but the one human beings face. That this song should play now is a creepy coincidence (my playlist is on random shuffle), because we were talking about death at work today!
No one likes to talk about it, especially in India.
It’s considered अशुभ (bad luck) to talk about it at all. It’s like my post yesterday, on menstruation. The moment you say the D-word, it’s all ‘shush’ or ‘stop saying these things’ and ‘what’s wrong with you’. If death is a natural conclusion of the life cycle, why can’t there be a natural, normal conversation around it?
There are quite a few physical manifestations of death in fiction/mythology.
Like I said earlier, Marvel Comics’ Mad Titan Thanos’ mistress is Death. Sandman has a character named Death. Even Judge Dredd has an antagonist by the name of Judge Death. In Indian mythology, Lord Yama (यमराज) is the God of Death. Anubis is the Egyptian God of Death. We enjoy reading about these entities, even discuss them, but when it comes to our own deaths (which will be real, someday), we skirt the issue.
It’s almost as if we feel we’re immortal. And we’re allowed to feel that way until that ‘dreaded’ day actually arrives.
I relate most to Albus Dumbledore’s quote on death, “After all, to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.” Not many do though, unfortunately.
