A Tryst with the Grim Reaper

What part of the brain does consciousness stem from? What comes after the final breath? Is there a floating-in-space sensation? If there isn’t one, what does ‘no sensation’ feel like? These are some of the questions many people think about. I did too. I started by searching for broad keywords on the internet, hoping to find some thought-provoking articles. That was a mistake. After spending hours scouring the internet, I came to hate metaphors, similes, and analogies. It seemed to me that the internet was teeming with wizened old birds who couldn’t help but quip ‘Life is like a…’. I gave up on random webpages after that and instead went for the quotes. That was my second mistake. I hoped to find some ‘woke’ comments and quotes that would hit home and leave me in awe of the writer. There were indeed some very brilliant and hard-hitting ones. The trouble was, to get to them, I first had to go through a therapy session for suicide prevention, rummaging through the rest of the quotes. I left my active pursuit of enlightenment that day.

Over the years, it was books that continued to supply me with food for thought. Some theories I read appealed to me. However, to this day, no book has influenced my perspective as much as one by Stephen King. A particular novel involved a man who has been pronounced dead medically, but he wakes up to find himself locked inside his body. The thought wouldn’t exactly have been blood- curdling if he was not scheduled to undergo an autopsy.

I was almost ready to forget about it when I read about ‘anaesthesia awareness’. I initially thought of it as a docile and tame concept about bringing the advancement in medical science to the ignorant. Its true meaning, however, caught my imagination and shook me to the core - imagine waking up during an operation. You have been cut open. You feel every one of the incisions that the surgeon makes in your body, the searing pain as the scalpel tears at your flesh. The catch is that you are unable to scream and have to bear the ordeal for as long as the operation lasts or until someone notices your eyeballs moving.

The fact that reality wasn’t so far from the concept of a horror story convinced me to alter my non- existent will to say that I wish to be buried and not cremated. In case I meet a violent ending, there’ll be no autopsies for me. If someone does go ahead with an autopsy, let them be charged with murder.

Many religions propound the existence of an afterlife wherein all your mistakes and good deeds are accounted for and your fate decided. It is, according to me, a more interesting prospect than floating around, formless. There are times when I choose to believe the former and there are those when the latter appears more plausible.

Don’t get me wrong here, but in this dilemma, I feel jealous of those who are about to make a peaceful getaway from the world as we know it.

I like to think of it in this way: The very next moment after they exhale for the last time, the truth or hollowness of religion and science is laid bare before them. If they are able to retain the feeling of consciousness, they can conclusively know that religion had been right all along. If there’s no such consciousness, science gets to have the last laugh. In either case, they finally know.

People have always feared death. They went so far as to personify it to get some grip on a mystery that eluded their mortal minds. I, on the other hand, have a rather blunt opinion of death. When you die old, you have seen all that life had in store for you.

When you have an untimely death, there’s always some suffering or violence preceding the demise. If by some miracle you do survive the ordeal, chances are, you’ll be scarred for life and perhaps, be plagued by PTSD. So death always

comes as a welcome release from the misery. Dependants, especially children, are loose ends in my philosophy. There’s no silver lining to the emotional trauma that children go through when they lose one of their parents at a tender age. That is a thing that should bother you if you’re about to die but, (if I allow the selfish and callous part of myself to make an observation) the pile of dirt you are about to become won’t give a damn.

I would not be so bold as to say that I look forward to death. On the other hand, I wouldn’t embrace immortality either. It is a dreadful and pointless idea. Perhaps we wouldn’t have the kind of society we have today if we knew that we had to be around forever. Who would value you if they knew you’re going to stick around for eternity? Society would be frayed. Perhaps death does play an essential role in our society. But it doesn’t have to be feared. It would do if only all of us realize and come to terms with the reality that everything is transient.

As for me, I am dying to know if there is something in store for us after we die. When my time comes, and no earlier, I might even be excited to close my eyes one final time.