The nightly sojourn was a task I dreaded but had to continue doing so since my soul had not been liberated in the way it should have been. Sometimes I wish I would meet some DELOG on the way so that I can pass on the message to my relatives in the human realm about the truth of my death and my decayed remains waiting for proper cremation. May be it is this renewed wish but I find myself wandering with more enthusiasm now.
Just yesterday, not meeting any DELOG, I kept on walking to find myself standing in front of a house I had never seen before. I know eavesdropping is bad but a shy zombie like me can't help it if I overhear conversation while deliberating with my mind to enter or not into certain houses. Inside the couple seemed to be having a fight of their lifetime. "Give me my youthful days back," the woman shouted followed by a thud sound. She must have thrown something at her husband in her anger. "I'm not GOD, I can't return your youth," the husband retorted. "You came wagging your silly tongue promising me happiness for eternity, ETERNITY, hah!" the woman seemed to be spitting venom like she was some snake. "Speak up! What happened to that educated tongue of yours? The silver tongue! Come on!" was it some kind of a challenge? I continued listening but the husband seemed to have taken a backseat in the battle. "You come home drunk each night and I'm supposed to take it with a smile, aren't you ashamed of yourself? I sit at home, cooking for you and looking after your kids and all I get is…." She started sobbing uncontrollably. I really wanted to have a look at the look of that drunkard husband but the thick walls obstructed me from the view of the drama I was listening to. It's like listening to your favorite soap in a radio, you recognize the voices and the emotions yet there is that thirst for wanting to see the actors in action. "I don't want your kids, I don't want your home, just give me my youth back." Again I heard her ask for youth, maybe the husband should seriously think of buying a time machine so that he can fulfill what seemed to his all caring wife's only wish. Instead I heard the husband meekly say," But they are your kids too." So much for an argument I thought. "Enough! I can't take care of them anymore, not with you drunk all the time," she said in such dramatic voice I felt pity on that woman instantly. "But I earn…" he protested but couldn't complete as his wife cut him short," That's it! That's it! You feel just because I don't earn! Isn't it? I know you are seeing somebody who is also earning, isn't it?" She started beating her chest at least that is what it seemed like with that small thud, thud sound. "But don't you remember I was working in that resort when you met me? I was earning too. But you didn't want my delicate hands to do chores for strangers. Now those same delicate hands have lost its charms, isn't it?" Wow! Women surely can present their debates in clear defined points. A strange silence prevailed for sometime; I was scared thinking maybe both of them might have killed each other, otherwise why so silent? For the first time after turning zombie I dreaded the cockerel's timing, I didn't want dawn, not now; I wanted to listen to their argument right till the end. A soft laughter ensued from within, was I too sleepy to be hallucinating? "Sorry, sorry" I heard the husband say weakly. Another giggling, it was the wife who had forgotten all her demand for her youth to be returned with that single sorry from her husband. I knew the drama had come to an end; they were united for yet another day, until another 'drunken husband situation'. "Bah! Women and their assertiveness!" I thought and returned to my grave with another night of no action.
write
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
This is how i died
Each night having to wake up with the loud voice of the sorcerer reminding me," Don't forget why you had to get up from your grave," is an ordeal in itself. What could have gone wrong in my human lifetime that although a Buddhist I was in a grave and not turned to ashes in some crematorium. But anyway, as I was already brought forth in this fashion I guess I have to continue playing this role. So, for yet another night I graciously got up from my grave, it took huge effort on my part to gather my mutilated body to walk in search of preys the sorcerer instructed us to look out for. The curtains of yet another ghastly night was lifted and in tandem with my sound orchestra (don't forget the jackals, owls, eerie wind and all other sounds to create the atmosphere of a zombie wandering night) I set forth climbing the rocky cliff and venturing out towards human habitation. As I was passing through the small forest at the edge of the village, two dark figures greeted my sight. I almost screamed in fright but my reasoning power proved the better of me and I knew it was their role to scream at my presence and not the vice versa, but these two humans were too entwined in their romantic spree that they didn't notice my ugly presence there. Seeing them that way struck a chord somewhere in my heart and the truth of my past life returned tumbling in the twisted, maggot filled brain of mine.
I was an introvert village belle who was orphaned in the year her parents finally relented to the village headmaster's plea to send her to school albeit the fact that she was twelve years old. My disdain for mushrooms saved me that day but my dislike for mushroom turned to hatred as it took the lives of both the hands that blessed me. The promise of education and its fruit of success forgotten I grew up into a girl to get hooked up with a menpa who used to visit our village once every month. He was elegant looking in comparison to the village lads who walked in their stinking ghos, unkempt hair and lewd remarks ever ready at the sight of us-the female counterparts. His sparkling white coat took me to a trip in the wonderland of love- the secret meetings, his visit to my house at odd hours by the village standard. But I felt if I had ever lived my life it was when I was in his embrace. Although I was totally absorbed in his life I could never muster the courage to ask him to take me with him.
One day, after completing his usual monthly round he asked me to accompany him on his way back to town. My head spinning dizzily, I knew this was the moment I had been waiting for, so before setting off, I confided the secret to my best friend that finally I was going to the town to marry the man of my dreams and at the same time I made her swear to the oath of secrecy until I was gone for good. We walked; I went ahead of him so as to make our escape unnoticed by the villagers. We met near the rocky cliff which was quite far from my village. He made me sit down and I knew it was time he told me that I have to accompany him to town to clean his house, cook meals for him, weave ghos for him and bear his children. Instead there was a gush of tears from my eyes as he told me that he was already a happily married man and a father of three school-going kids. The reverie of beautiful life married to the man of my dreams smashed on that rocky cliff. There was one moment when I felt like going down on my knees and begging him to take me with him but as I gazed up he was already away in the next bend from where I knew he would never return. Tears made my return journey a foggy one and my bleeding heart made the journey even more difficult. The instance next, I found myself shrieking with a sinking heart.
The two lovers had heard me loud and clear and they left their heavenly abode of love and fled the scene without even trying to comprehend who shrieked in that blindness of the night. I looked at my dilapidated body and knew I had fallen from that cliff and died while my best friend had already told my village people that I had gone with the menpa, so that means no body felt the need of cremating me and conducting my final rites. Okay, so that's why I roam around as a zombie.
I was an introvert village belle who was orphaned in the year her parents finally relented to the village headmaster's plea to send her to school albeit the fact that she was twelve years old. My disdain for mushrooms saved me that day but my dislike for mushroom turned to hatred as it took the lives of both the hands that blessed me. The promise of education and its fruit of success forgotten I grew up into a girl to get hooked up with a menpa who used to visit our village once every month. He was elegant looking in comparison to the village lads who walked in their stinking ghos, unkempt hair and lewd remarks ever ready at the sight of us-the female counterparts. His sparkling white coat took me to a trip in the wonderland of love- the secret meetings, his visit to my house at odd hours by the village standard. But I felt if I had ever lived my life it was when I was in his embrace. Although I was totally absorbed in his life I could never muster the courage to ask him to take me with him.
One day, after completing his usual monthly round he asked me to accompany him on his way back to town. My head spinning dizzily, I knew this was the moment I had been waiting for, so before setting off, I confided the secret to my best friend that finally I was going to the town to marry the man of my dreams and at the same time I made her swear to the oath of secrecy until I was gone for good. We walked; I went ahead of him so as to make our escape unnoticed by the villagers. We met near the rocky cliff which was quite far from my village. He made me sit down and I knew it was time he told me that I have to accompany him to town to clean his house, cook meals for him, weave ghos for him and bear his children. Instead there was a gush of tears from my eyes as he told me that he was already a happily married man and a father of three school-going kids. The reverie of beautiful life married to the man of my dreams smashed on that rocky cliff. There was one moment when I felt like going down on my knees and begging him to take me with him but as I gazed up he was already away in the next bend from where I knew he would never return. Tears made my return journey a foggy one and my bleeding heart made the journey even more difficult. The instance next, I found myself shrieking with a sinking heart.
The two lovers had heard me loud and clear and they left their heavenly abode of love and fled the scene without even trying to comprehend who shrieked in that blindness of the night. I looked at my dilapidated body and knew I had fallen from that cliff and died while my best friend had already told my village people that I had gone with the menpa, so that means no body felt the need of cremating me and conducting my final rites. Okay, so that's why I roam around as a zombie.
Yet another night
Being a zombie is not a pleasant role, you have to tread on the face of the earth at some hideous hours of the day and particularly for me it is difficult because I've not understood my role clearly as of now. After my first nightly tryst, during the next convention I was given the yuckiest task of cleaning the mess of stinking blood spilled in that conference hall. The cleaning part is acceptable till certain point but the meanest eyes set on me froze not only my stale blood (if I had any in my withered body) but it surely had iced my creaky bones that I had to literally drag my feet to get out of that room quickly.
The second night I decided its time I get down to serious zombie like business. Agenda to hunt down prey afresh in my mind, I set off with the fierce wind bellowing notes of horror aided by the other nightly creatures. To set up a scarier setting I went to a dark cave in the nearby forest just adjacent to my grave and drove out the blind bats hanging upside down in their cozy hideout. It was as if the darkness had silenced all other humanly sound to pave space for other unearthly sound that would send any human awake rattling in their bed.
I reached the house I had set my foot just the night before. Hoping to hear the routine snoring sound I almost placed my foot on the threshold when the voices inside startled me. A husky female voice sounded loud and clear, "I literally had to run in the cold February rain to search for that book, I feel like killing you for putting me to such task…" I wanted to walk further and search for preys who would have surrendered themselves to slumber hours so that I would not have to hear their shriek( I'm a woman but I've never screamed in my entire human lifetime, somehow I have always dreaded that girlie habit). But that voice was talking book, a hobby I had attained from my childhood till my death. I remember reading MEMOIRS OF GEISHA and entering the Geisha world just before my mysterious death(some other time I'll tell you all how I died). So I stayed on waiting for that husky voice to talk more about the book. "I ran all over the town and none of the bookstores seemed to be having the book you asked me to buy for you." There was a pause, husky voice had stopped talking but there was no other sound, "weird!" I thought," is she talking in her sleep?" "I know it is important…….." that husky voice again. "Okay, so she must be on the phone," a bell of wisdom rang in my ears. "I know you want me to buy the book and gift-wrap it," a deep pause and again then there was a laughter. That laughter surely would qualify for a witch and I felt that we were playing role reversal here, she was like some creature of the night and I was like a human quietly waiting for mother sleep to bless me. "I bought the book." Another one of her cackles filled the night air. "And I met the Birthday girl and gave her that book with your message." Wow! Using a book to bridge two hearts, how come this idea never struck my heart during my human time? I felt like barging in that room and ask the lady what book they were discussing about in the dead hour of the night, but my rotting senses had sense enough not to make my presence felt if I didn't need a shriek, the shriek I had in mind seemed more dangerous after hearing the lady laugh. But whatever the book was, I longed to go to the grave and read myself a nice book, of course I cannot say "I wanted to go home, take a warm shower and read a nice book!" So I trudged back home via the cave intending to find a book to read before my next nightly adventure.
The second night I decided its time I get down to serious zombie like business. Agenda to hunt down prey afresh in my mind, I set off with the fierce wind bellowing notes of horror aided by the other nightly creatures. To set up a scarier setting I went to a dark cave in the nearby forest just adjacent to my grave and drove out the blind bats hanging upside down in their cozy hideout. It was as if the darkness had silenced all other humanly sound to pave space for other unearthly sound that would send any human awake rattling in their bed.
I reached the house I had set my foot just the night before. Hoping to hear the routine snoring sound I almost placed my foot on the threshold when the voices inside startled me. A husky female voice sounded loud and clear, "I literally had to run in the cold February rain to search for that book, I feel like killing you for putting me to such task…" I wanted to walk further and search for preys who would have surrendered themselves to slumber hours so that I would not have to hear their shriek( I'm a woman but I've never screamed in my entire human lifetime, somehow I have always dreaded that girlie habit). But that voice was talking book, a hobby I had attained from my childhood till my death. I remember reading MEMOIRS OF GEISHA and entering the Geisha world just before my mysterious death(some other time I'll tell you all how I died). So I stayed on waiting for that husky voice to talk more about the book. "I ran all over the town and none of the bookstores seemed to be having the book you asked me to buy for you." There was a pause, husky voice had stopped talking but there was no other sound, "weird!" I thought," is she talking in her sleep?" "I know it is important…….." that husky voice again. "Okay, so she must be on the phone," a bell of wisdom rang in my ears. "I know you want me to buy the book and gift-wrap it," a deep pause and again then there was a laughter. That laughter surely would qualify for a witch and I felt that we were playing role reversal here, she was like some creature of the night and I was like a human quietly waiting for mother sleep to bless me. "I bought the book." Another one of her cackles filled the night air. "And I met the Birthday girl and gave her that book with your message." Wow! Using a book to bridge two hearts, how come this idea never struck my heart during my human time? I felt like barging in that room and ask the lady what book they were discussing about in the dead hour of the night, but my rotting senses had sense enough not to make my presence felt if I didn't need a shriek, the shriek I had in mind seemed more dangerous after hearing the lady laugh. But whatever the book was, I longed to go to the grave and read myself a nice book, of course I cannot say "I wanted to go home, take a warm shower and read a nice book!" So I trudged back home via the cave intending to find a book to read before my next nightly adventure.
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