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| A 'grave' as good as any, if I am lucky. [Pic courtesy www.yamu.lk] |
‘I plagiarized shamelessly,’ a friend confessed. He had copied something from an article I had
written, ‘On heart-unbuckling’. I told
him that my words were not born in me, that they were engendered by others and
therefore it does not matter where they go after they leave my fingertips, i.e.
the moment they die and receive afterlife.
I told him that I don’t care much for copyrights, although I understand
that other do and therefore acknowledge when necessary.
There’s a heavy storm raging outside. Only essential areas have power from the
generator. I am not sure if the email
connection will be restored quickly enough for me to send this to my
editor. My words are under threat of
being incarcerated by a technological glitch.
Things die. It is inevitable.
A few days ago, on a bus from Athens
to Chalkidiki, a resort village in Greece , I suffered a strong
allergic reaction. It was around 11
pm. There were 33 people in the bus,
including 4 doctors. I asked for some
medicine and was given Piriton and some other tablet. Didn’t help. The dose was increased. I fell asleep. Not for long.
Hives had broken out all over my body. I felt I was going to faint.
About 12 years ago I suffered a similar attack and a bout of
vomiting and purging helped cure me. It
might work, I thought to myself. I went
to the bathroom in the bus and collapsed with such a crash that Dr. Lamwansa
and others heard me, dragged me out, called an ambulance and sorted me
out. ‘You lost your pulse for awhile,’
Dr. Lamawansa told me later. Kind,
efficient and professional, Dr. Lamawansa’s presence was reassuring and
critical. I believe he saved my
life.
I remember the moments just before losing consciousness. ‘This is death,’ I told myself. I felt peaceful. I didn’t want to wake anyone up.
Today, fully recovered, I am thinking of other deaths. Words, for example. Deaths and lives too, for they come and go
together. The words I used, are they the
mortal remains of others who wrote before me?
Do the words I write in their survival of my death fertilize literary
soils that give birth to other writer-trees?
I am thinking right now that funerals are all wrong. Whoever or whatever manufactured the notion
of death could have done better. About 6
years ago I asked a question: ‘When
voracious readers die why is it that their mortal remains do not turn into so
many pages that will fly in all directions celebrating literacy?’
Maybe they do, maybe not, but shouldn’t the bodies of
musicians disintegrate in a way that they are reconfigured into song and music
score? Shouldn’t the bodies of dead
cricketers be transformed into a flurry of sixers or so many doosras
that crash into the wickets? Would the
bones of liars and thieves be transformed into tall tales and loot with the
names of those they beguiled and stole from tagged as appropriate so they can
recover dignity and wealth?
What kind of afterlife should the bodies of dead chess
players have? Will magnificent
combinations rise from their ashes and stay suspended above a tournament hall
for a few minutes so the living players can gasp in awe? Will it be their monumental blunders that get
preferred treatment post-death? Will they be remembered for flaw or
brilliance?
The remains of those who till the earth should, I believe,
become manifest as all the grain they
produced so their progeny and the beneficiaries of their labour can get a sense
of what they owe the dead. And the living.
Far better, don’t you think, than grand funerals and
mourning, incineration or burial?
We all drink from other people’s wells and are fed by roots
we did not sink into the good earth. We
are all parasites even as we are givers, willing or not, conscious or
otherwise.
The dead are dead and need not worry about the fate of
mortal remains, one can argue. We all
want immortality in one form or another, though. This is why we tend to prefer our children to
do what we failed to do. If life is to
be celebrated then the kinds of death-rites I alluded to above would be
fitting, don’t you think?
Speaking strictly for myself, I am convinced that the final
resting place of a writer is a dusty shelf at the back of a used book
store. I am human and ego-ridden, though.
I prefer a different fate. Speaking
strictly for myself, I want my words to escape their page-prisons and scatter
in the winds so I am distributed across time and space in such infinitely tiny
pieces that no one can put me back together for others to dissect and
define.
I prefer to be remembered for my silences. In silence.
For a while. By those I love and
those who love me.
Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be contacted at msenevira@gmail.com
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