I was sitting on the steps on the bank of Nila River (Bharathapuzha) drenched after few dips in her, for offering annual after-death rituals for my father the 16th time. The Sun was just born. The breeze that gave me a freezing shiver penetrated into me. That made me feel a communication which I’d like to believe was from heaven, through the baby Sun, as that tender breeze that came to me caressing the beautiful river and then into me. I felt abstracted totally. That was when I felt the touch of warm fingers on my shoulders. This wasn’t new to me. This is what forces me to this place every year. To feel this touch. But the warmth was deeper and more intense this time. May be because I was a little worn and weak time. All I could feel outside my skin was the cold drops from Nila that rolled all over me.
I could see or feel like seeing an energy that I always liked to call ‘Soul’, everywhere over there. Some were leaving, some trying to converse and some unwillingly flying back. The wonder in my eyes seeing the more than 64X or 128X fast forwarded motion of all beneath me, the Soul who stood next to me said, “The time-wheel have a longer diameter here than that of Earth. One heaven-day is one earth-year.”
Death was first just a word for me first. Then as I started to know, once it shocked me. As time rolled it turned out to be a fascination. Slowly I started admiring Him. Death…I believe it to be God’s proof that he still rules.
Soul then tells me that death is rather a beginning and not an end. It’s said that a body is a highway inn for the Soul. Life begins as Soul enters a body, following which the Soul remains in that body feeling this small-big world with the senses. And as time rolls Soul is forced to fly out from the cage of body as the later wares out.
The moment the last breath is exhaled, the body which was until then a mark of identity turns to a mass of dead meat, which waits either to burn in flames or decay under earth. What remains is the soul alone, which then moves with us in an intergalactic space that's beyond the description of the senses, until it gets a new body to enter.
“This is the fact, son. But, we guide those lives that struggle as we are lost to them. I had always been there around you.” He said. I made a hard attempt to speak. “I have felt that too. Th…though…” Suddenly, I felt water getting in my mouth making me gasp and breathing was also a task. Another sudden shiver woke me. “I” was taking a dip in the Nila after offering the rituals. I couldn’t believe how fast that time went.
Everything just passed by during my conversation with ‘Him’. Nothing abnormal or supernatural was seen anymore when I looked around. But I could still feel the shock all over my body. He must have gone. The montage of emotions I went through expressed a warm tiny candid drop of tear that rolled down my cheeks. Nobody noticed it. Nila wiped it cleverly, taking that drop deep into her.
I wished if we had the same ‘Time-wheel’ they had on earth too. Doesn’t matter.., I could still feel that energy’s unassailable presence around me that drives me steadily until the day I meet God’s proof…