A Different Station

If thoughts were premonitions of what was to become actions, wouldn’t it be logical for death to come earlier than people presume? People think of death almost everyday in some form or the other. We kill a mosquito and relish the fact that we “got him”. A beloved pet dies and we wail. But when it’s a person, the sorrow that engulfs the incident is prejudiced and tainted by the way in which the death occurred, the character of the person in question, whether he deserved to die or not and ultimately the unnerving thought that we all end up thinking where he or she has gone.

Considering all of this, shouldn’t life’s ultimate aim be death? And in turn, if most theological books reveal, isn’t the ultimate aim of death, life? Think about it. Hindu philosophy presents the ideology of rebirth, reincarnation and the whole nine yards surrounding the “past lives to undo bad karma” dogma. Christianity believes in death leading the soul to either the Gates of Hell of the Kingdom of Heaven, depending upon the acts of the soul when he or she was alive and kicking on earth. Judaism presents the idea of a Messiah who will be their saviour and ultimately let all of them join God in his Kingdom of Heaven, again. 

Let me take the liberty of assuming that the atheists will be kind enough to hear me out with an open mind, while the religiously inclined will let their minds explore the possibility that perhaps the Kingdom of Heaven is just another term for Earth, but with better people; people who have learned from their “past lives”, people who have understood that life was just the waiting room where we try and while away time, sometimes getting to know the other passengers, sometimes choosing to turn away from them. 

Now don’t misconstrue my words. I firmly believe that a life spent simply waiting to die is absolutely worthless. You wouldn’t be in the waiting room with other people if you weren’t meant to mingle, right? Then again, I do not believe that there is a purpose to the act of waiting either. Maybe happiness lies somewhere in the middle, the platform, if I may. The strange in-between level of both whiling away time by observing and reacting to the people, and things, around you, as well as getting ready to catch your train. 

Strangely it’s at times like these, 10 in the night, having the weirdest of conversations in my head with myself, that apt songs fill in. From “What if God was one of us” to “Bulla ki jaana main kaun”, it could be more than just coincidence that other people have had the same doubts arise. Would you really address God by his/hers/its name? And does God really know you, as you are now? What if he/she/it just moulded a rough cast of what he thought you should be like, but let you have your freedom in shaping your ideals, beliefs, mannerisms and thoughts?

Maybe that’s why people see spirits and ghosts. Maybe they are souls whose trains have broken down or hit a snag because the driver forgot to tell his wife not to pack his lunch, or if it were the erstwhile “City of Dreams”, the dabbawala. For some reason, this quirky approach to the whole concept of life and death brings a smile to my face. Initially I thought it would lead me to stay up all night, wondering where these trains were headed and who would be meeting the passengers at their stops, but now I guess I’ve convinced myself that it doesn’t really matter. People will be people. They will meet each other through coincidence or destiny or curious desire, get chatty, as Indian platforms are proof to, and it won’t matter what stop it is. Maybe the stop is the much sought after “Kingdom of Heaven” or maybe it’s just the same station they got in from, but just a different platform, meeting familiar faces again and unfamiliar faces to hope to meet again. Who knows? The dead are busy gathering their things to board while those living wonder if they will reach safely, wherever they are headed.