Death In Delhi

The one thing that has kept me perplexed in the last two years of my stay in Delhi is that what is it that makes me and probably many others of all sorts to love and hate it at the same time. From what I am able to conclude about based upon my own experience is, it’s the difficulty in our home towns more than any thing else that makes it attractive.

I love travelling; and that I loved always because the wanderer in me is powerful than so many other things. I have travelled a lot in Delhi also. Just yesterday, you won’t believe, I went to AIIMS mortuary and then to the Safdurjung mortuary.

The plan was to meet the people who actually handle the dead body and get clue of how I can do a video story of around 2 min. It was difficult. The first time I had thought of doing this story was last year when I had been to AIIMS to record the ambience in a hospital premises as part of our radio assignment.

But yesterday’s was much tougher than what I would have otherwise imagined.

The moment I reached, I found a dead body lying wrapped in the lawn. For a moment I thought like returning, like thinking bad about what kind of project I have planned!

I waited for around 15 min. thinking about my pressed jeans that I wore just the same day and will have to cleanse once I am back. I also thought that some day I will also be wrapped liked the one lying in my front. That no one has ever avoided death, nor can I. that I too will need to handle a body of people who I love so passionately. And that they will show no emotion once they are dead. I felt about my parents, about my grandpa who died when I was a kid. I thought about my kids who might have to handle my dead body. I thought about the business of handling dead, about the people who handle one every day.

It’s not normal.

Why not? It’s like anything else. It’s like just handling a chicken, a lamb! Nope! Definitely not! Man is not chicken. Man is not animal. He is more than an animal. A chicken can’t build institutions, a lamb can’t build empires. And man can’t stop resisting for if something unwanted happens to him or her.

It was my first conscious encounter with death. I had seen many deaths around me. We all have seen. But I had never thought of presenting death. I had never thought of reporting death. I had never thought of looking towards a dead body just like a body.

Am sounding stupid? I hope so! Not because I think it’s bad. Not because it’s not normal. But, because like everyone else, I also fear death. In our lives of struggle, we never count death as a factor. We earn to live, we give to earn again. We don’t do anything to die peacefully.

We run away from dead body, from flyovers where a person meets an accident, from a collapsed building where a family is buried alive, from a pond where a car jumps drowning and killing all inside, from hostels where a student hangs himself, from a village where people die after drinking spurious liquor.

Hello, death is unavoidable. But we can be much more responsive towards people who die due to negligence of us ‘will die later men’.