By Soumya Bisht, Batch of 2019
Death never intimidated me. It pains, yes, but the process lasts for a minute or two. I don’t believe in the Grim Reaper or the ‘light’. I am a realist and prefer believing in a scientific process of death wherein your heart collapses and then gradually, your brain does. What gives me horrible goosebumps is the idea of the blackness after death, and while science describes the decomposition of a body after death as the only event, my mind refuses to buy that. And that is the only time, I, a student of science, leave that very subject behind and dust the Vedas and frantically look for an alternate theory- Afterlife? A haunting Spirit? Paradise? Rebirth?
Science doesn’t believe in souls or conscience for that matter. But I refuse to believe that human beings are any less complicated than this. When we can have the capacity to instinctively judge right from what is morally wrong, surely we possess something more than just the brain.
Years of memories woven from the echoes of million laughters and the wetness of thousands of tears, all the lessons learnt in class and those learnt outside, the times you failed and the experiences that moulded your soul- how can the end of all of this be a simple decomposition equation?
What do I believe in? Nothing. I shall let this suspense work the wheels of my mind until the day arrives when I will be on my deathbed and my life will end with perhaps the biggest truth being revealed to me. For a person who craves knowledge, I don’t think this will be anything less than the perfect last gift.
However, I can tell you what I want. I want the essence of my soul to float through the winds but have the capacity to steer itself to whichever direction it wants. And I will travel. Travel to all the places out of bounds for me as a human. I will go to the tiniest corners of the world and watch the people move about and rejoice about not being stuck in a claustrophobia-inducing coffin. I will watch families grow and celebrate their life’s milestones like I did during mine. I will sit in classrooms and learn history the way I had wanted to. I will watch as science progresses and the world looks like a movie that I could somehow be a part of. A tiny wisp of something. Yes, some ’thing’. I won’t be a human for once. I won’t have society telling me what to do, what to study, how to sit or how to breathe. I will be free and I will realise how I wasn’t really free before. And I will be happier than I would have been in a coffin or as ashes in a tiny pot. I am worth more than that.
I am a soul, a mind and magic.