Masterpiece

2.

It was not so long since I voluntarily burnt my father's dead body that I inhaled an ignited cigarette in one corner of my old house which used to be my playing arena in "those were the days" period. It was probably after six months that I let my lungs engulf the burnt smoke of a cigarette. I wasn't a regular smoker even before, but then I restrained myself because I was going to be one soon. Someone randomly unknowingly taught me that cigarette helps in relaxing your tensed muscles of inner body and then you automatically calm down, so that was it... I took its help to calm my anxious nerves down and some time later, it started to become a habit and I knew that the next level was going to be the one where my nerves will freak out if I won't smoke and I have always had enough toxicity in life already to add on to another one.
I was sitting in this corner to hide from mausi ma because she, like  an average nice woman, freaks out watching me smoke.

Thinking about the ritual I just performed, and the later ones I was to perform further made me realize the actual importance of a body. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They say it's all made up of dust and will end up in dust then what's the point of creating and dealing so damn much in between when at the end of the day all you will be is ash of bones settling at the end of a water body. Nothing more or less. How can a person which is the whole universe which holds immense power in its existence, end just like that....like nothing ever existed before. I had by now cremated both my parents one by one and I can now say, by experience of course, that it hurts. It hurts to put them in fire and see them vanishing from the world. It hurts so much that it stops hurting altogether. My mother died when I was very young, barely 6, and at that moment I had no idea why we were doing what we were doing and what was supposed to happen after that. I just knew one fact, what everybody had told me, that my mom "was called up to heaven by God to help him out and look out for me from the sky" and that she is always watching me but I barely believed it even before. No mother would barely watch her son bawl his throat out at night in a lonely room because he feels haunted of himself and then pretend to be perfectly fine by the morning. No mother would do that. She wasn't watching me at all. Her virtue vanished away the moment he(the God) clicked that off button. Body burnt, memory erased, RAM cleaned, processor restored for another machine. Nothing about me or about her remained in her after that.

That's what must have happened with my father too. Although I'm glad it did and he no more remembered us. Only if I could do the same. Format myself all over again and again until this machine called body stop working. What a painless life would it be, to have no life at all. 

"Nikumbh come here you need to bath and sit for the pooja" Khan uncle called and I immediately crushed the half burnt cigarette on the wall leaving a slightly circle burnt mark on the wall. The ashes fell on the ground and I crushed the rest of it by my feet and threw it away. Exactly what we did with a human body just now.

Days passed by with many relatives visiting and telling me something or the other to console me. Although they were all restricted by my mausa ji and Mausima to utter any word to me regarding it but you cannot shut everyone's mouth, can you? Someway or the other they made their point. Most of the them asked me how did that happen and I had no answer, some of them asked if I was able to meet him when he was alive? I had no answer. Some of them offered to take no tension and if feel the need of anything I must contact them and they will be here, so I replied "get me my mother back!". And that's was it. Nobody came after that to talk to me. I kept working on my assignment.

The 13th day was the shradhh day when you have to do this really long puja along with Hawan and then put the ashes of the respectively dead into a river. My head was shaved now and I was feeling really embarrassed about it, but more difficult than that was me catching cold every now and then because of it. Winters in Delhi, although nothing compared to other states, is pretty much nail biting and then I had my head shaved and wrapped in a lionclothe(dhoti) which is a super thin  cloth just randomly wrapped around your legs. So all I was doing was shivering during the whole Puja with my teeth clattering on their own in between. They even asked for stuffs, basic essentials like clothes, toiletries, food, bed, etc., to donate to other priests so that it reaches to the respectively dead. I got off the hall and took out a piece of curved clay which was a broken piece of a mannequin, it was stained with blood in its half. I went to the priest and asked them to keep it in the essentials too since it was something that belonged to my father only and he must carry it off with himself now. I had kept it with me for years but it was finally the time to let it go. They were confused and my Mausima started crying when she saw that piece. Khan uncle came and gently rubbed my shaved scalp which made me feel weird and I looked over him with disgust, he moved away. The main priest was confused but my Mausaji gave him a slight nod in positive and they took it saying that they will put it into a river. I demanded nothing more.