The Night I Died

by Durlabh Singh

There was a knock at the door and he thought some one has entered his room and was sure that it was his father; he looked up and saw a bloodless pale face, which reminded him something of a corpse.

‘ I have come to ask you something.’ The pale figure whispered

‘ But I thought you were dead.’

‘I have just died but I am still alive.’

‘How can that be? I do not understand.’

‘Could you go to the tailor and have a new silken shirt made for my last rites.’

‘Go away, you are beginning to frighten me.’

The boy began to shake and covered his face with the duvet. A chill ran through his body and he dozed off in order to avoid confronting that situation again.

A hand startled him and his mother was shaking him to get up.

She spoke to him:

‘Your father has just died. I have this silken cloth. Go to the tailor to tell him to make a shirt for his corpse, to be dressed in for the funeral.’

Trembling and in a hoarse voice he uttered the words ‘But it is till dark, I cannot go till it is morning.’

‘We will need this shirt for his funeral right in the morning.’

Through the winding narrow street the boy went out to find the quarters of the tailor. As he listened to the sounds, an echo of his own footsteps rebounded and he looked at the houses along the street. The seemed to be empty but there was something ominous about these and when he looked back, he saw people coming out of those and following him. They were like his father, half dead with faces.

‘ We need a silk shirt.’ One cried

‘We need a silken shirt.’ The others echoed ‘ S-i-l-k-e-n---- s-h-i-r-t—’

They began to move forward and the boy ran as fast as he could, knocking at every door till he found the tailor’s house and began to knock vigorously and when the tailor opened the door still in his half sleep, the boy had just time to fall into his arms before fainting.

Like most people I carried my roots within me when I migrated to a foreign land. These biological impulses have different names with different people. Some call it ‘rooted in native soil’ or ‘it is in the blood’ and such people could never transplant themselves in the soil of some foreign land and this happened to me. The cultivation of tract of land, which my father owned was not sufficient for me. My portion of land divided among my brothers was not big enough to make a decent living. With my modest education and of which I wanted to make use of, to indulge in more ‘intellectual’ job. I started working for a big government organization in the clerical department in the foreign soil.

As it customary I got married to a lady suitably selected by my parents and left my portion of land in custody of my brother who was next in line of the family and then I migrated. There I found other people in the similar circumstances and together we found a sort of refuge among us. I worked hard and began to save with the intention of returning to my native land someday.

I went to bed in a dejected mood and when just coming to the edge of sleep, I was awakened by a dog fight outside my house, among a pack of stray dogs and the noise was so intense that I have to go out and chase the pack away. I shouted at them to move away and suddenly felt a stab of pain in my chest. I tried to steady myself but the pain increased and I felt suffocated and disoriented and could not breathe. The beating of my heart increased ten fold and I felt it was going to explode. I shouted to my wife and when she saw me, she began to wail. She called the neighbours for help and tried to hold me but I slipped through her hold to the floor and sat there out of breath, trying to lessen the pain in my chest by squeezing it. It was no use. My wife shouted that what would become of her if I died and I tried to answer her but my words became silent and refused to revert to sound. I raised my hands towards heaven

They words coming out of my mouth just got flattened, rebounded across the walls and then dissolved into brick and mortar and then I died. I was sprawled in the courtyard and they tried to lift me into a bed but my body just collapsed with the intensity of pain. Something burst in my brain and I screamed a silent cry. Everything began to dissolve and a mist came between the surroundings and myself. I tried to tell people what was happening but no one listened.

‘Send for the doctor quickly.’ I heard faintly someone shouting

‘ I will go myself to fetch a doctor.’

Suddenly all the human voices stopped and then I heard a whisper telling me to go back to my childhood.

My father was ploughing the fields with a wooden plough and was making deep furrows in the brown soil. I was playing nearby. I hid in one of the furrow and called to my father to find me but he was too busy ploughing the fields. I did not know why he did not find me, as I was only a few feet away from him. I felt that I had become suddenly a stranger and did not have any business of being his son in the land of living and felt rejected.

It was Sunday and it was raining hard outside. My mother was making pancakes and dished out a pancake for me but the housedog came running and snatched the pancake from me. I chased the dog but it charged at me growling and showing its fangs. It backed away and sat there at a distance growling at the ceiling.

‘Why does the dog growl at me?’

‘Because you are dead.’ some whisperer told me

‘You have no business to be here in the land of living. Go away!’

I ended in the land of dead.