My Tryst with Obituaries

My Tryst with Obituaries

I have always remained fascinated about reading obituaries in the newspaper. It sounds a bit weird to some people. Obituaries have taken the place of epitaphs in our modern day existence. If we visit the graveyards of the city we can see the old tombstones and the dust covered messages carved on them, message of love, longing, reminiscence, spool over our eyes and we feel a touch of remorse instantly. The other day I went to visit the South Park Street Cemetery of Kolkata. The afternoon sunlight inclined slowly over the gravestones, dried leaves scattered everywhere rustled in the wind. The air was melancholic and it felt that deep sighs could be heard in it. In the distance I spotted a group of young students who were gossiping so loudly that the stillness was getting shattered at some moments. Couples were huddled in the small corners, trying to hide themselves in the small crevices, reclining on those old epitaphs which stood like mute spectators. Only the leaves from an old tree and the branches mimicked their movements by swaying gently in the breeze, imitating the lovers’ motions. The dead never bothers you with their presence, nor asks questions to you about their absence.

I stepped on the small alley where the large obelisk graves stood tall on both sides of it. Time has caressed these stones with its gentle touch of forgetfulness. Here rests the graves of Englishmen and women, people from different ages, women, men and children, all born in the rich upper class family. While some saw death while fighting on the front line for the British Empire, others glimpsed death during their moments of giving birth to a new life, some due to venereal diseases and some out of common ailments such as cholera or malaria. Life in the colonies is very harsh and takes a toll on the bodies. These English people had their lives cut short much earlier. Different people died during different years, all buried in the same graveyard, living together in their life after death.

More than the graves, what fancied me were the messages written on those graves. Some had beautiful poems inscribed on them. I am quoting one here-

Mary Couldhawke

The Wife of Neil Couldhawke

Who Departed This Transitory Life

And Shuffled Out This Mortal Coil

On the 30^th Day of October, 1813

Leaving her disconsolate Husband

And unto Her Son

ALL IS VANITY

The rest I couldnot decipher properly. In all the graves what was important was the messages, the tone of longing, the shock of separation that suddenly severed the deceased person from the mortal members. At the same time this brief requiem is a final effort made by the family members to try and make his memories remain even though the person is left no more. These memories , emotions would soon be wiped away in the continuities of life. However the gravestone shall be a reminder to those who will come to visit it even after many years. Oblivion is the biggest curse which falls on our lives. As long as we are alive, we are in control of our actions, trying to justify every individual act with the sense of logic and purpose. What was the greatest desire of mankind which resonates through all the ages? The desire of immortality has ruled over every other aspirations. From Odysseus, Achilles to the great kings of history, this desire of permanence of life after death has haunted them in their living days.

It is said that when Shah Jahan had built his Taj Mahal, he wanted it to be the replica of heaven on Earth. Therefore for its exquisite beauty he had ordered special white marble from Central Asia and different parts of Europe. He wanted his name to be etched eternally as the King who had made such a masterpiece. Similarly in Egypt, we had seen how the pharaohs had built pyramids, wherein they believed in the continuity of life after death. So from this point we come to this question- Why do we suffer from this desire to eternalise our existence? What can be the possible reasons for it?

This can be connected to the idea of a narcissistic self, the self who believes in its immortality. The self loves itself to such a extent that an end to it is an anathema to it. It wants to live in a different way, in a different form, if not corporeally then through inanimate beings. For artists it is different. Art as a medium dissolves their physical life all together. That is why even when they are alive, their artistry speaks about them. Death can never be a stop, a cessation to that artistry. People continue to worship them in their art. Thus they are the one who become really immortal. Art is never dead and the artists melt and sink and flow on in this world. Needless to quote Shakespeare’s famous couplet of Sonnet 18,

“So long as men can live or eyes can see

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

Another thing happens when we read these messages. We start to imagine the kind of person he or she would have been, how they would behave in their mortal life. Reading such messages opens the frontier, the gap that separates the present from the past, where words try to bridge this caesura that would remain agape forever. ‘Time is out of joint’ as Hamlet said to his friend Horatio. Indeed writing a message for your loved one who is no more is an attempt to recapture the lost time with utterly fragile medium of language. Perhaps it is only words which remain at the end, long after words stop and death as a silence replaces it with stillness. Obituaries at the far corner of the newspaper, lying unattended is a gentle reminder that we are surrounded by death all the time. Walking out of the cemetery, life awaits us with this full noise and vibes. The boundary is a thin wall. We are travelling seamlessly through it all the time without knowing ourselves.