MORBID

This was the word that I had to guess while playing "What's the Good Word?" with my husband. The clue was deathly. And I guessed pale, eerie and the list went on. Finally, I got the word- Morbid.
Morbid. That is the perfect word for the latest story I worked on for India New England. An Indian man was killed in a car crash just a week before he was due to return to India, after the completion of his project.
"It might be difficult to speak to some of the people," cautioned my editor, "just explain to them that we don't want the death to be a footnote, but rather want to know more about the man." After speaking to the police, who did not even know the name of the officer heading the investigation, I tried and called the deceased's friend at his office. "I'm busy right now," he said, "I have a meeting and don't know how long it will take." I wondered- Is this what man's life becomes at the end? No one even wants to talk about it? I tried the spiel about wanting to know more about the man, etc. - he just asked me to call back.
Then I started to wonder- is a Man relevant only till he is part of another's living life? Living in memory is obviously a term reserved only for the very close. Then, I banished all thoughts in that direction- it was indeed possible that he had a meeting and I could always call him back.
When you think of it from the friend's point of view, though, it doesn't really matter to him. Does it even matter to us? Are we concerned more about him than our pages and words? If a great big full page ad appeared the next day, would we still want him to be more than a footnote? And if my friend were to pass away tomorrow, would I really care that he be represented properly in a newspaper that I would probably never set sight on?
Death always brings its set of questions to us. It represents the end of a paradigm, and forces us to think about what that was that just went by- the thing we call life. Like the temperatures in Arizona that force us to appreciate some of our colder weather, we think about life very subjectively, until we are faced with the state that it no longer exists- as we surely know we will- all of us.
To the man that passed away, added is the fact that he is in a foreign country- not that it matters to him, but it does to the family- the wife with the 3 month old son. The support system that relatives and friends that you have known for a long time provide you with is irreplacable- especially when the alternative is friends of the deceased that the surviving might not have known too well. Again, things that we are loathe to think about, but are morbid truths.
In any case, after trying to track the friend for my story for 4 days, I called an acquaintance of mine, who gave some contacts as well, and I am going to call them soon.
For several people, battling Death is the most important thing- that they actualy did not give up. Like the inevitable crush of any cricket team against Australia, all that many want to salvage is the satisfaction of not conceding- of trying their best. Is it they who are the winners, who don't let Death gain the satisfaction of taking a life too easily? Or is He more excited at seeing people battle it out for the thing they love most, and gloat on his eventual victory?
In Death arrives several paradoxes- what is best for the living is often not for the dying. As we grow older, I see myself, in fact shifting from one extreme to the other- from where I thought that having a person alive, albeit in pain, was better than letting them die quicker, to now thinking that the correct time is when the surrviving come to terms with the impending onslaught. I now also understand my mother saying that the best Death was her grandfather's, who just collapsed while signing some documents in his Bank. Just shows my evolution from a person who has been born into this earth to a person who is living- the next step obviously a person who is walking towards Him.
I saw a movie yesterday- Sunset Boulevard, where a dead man narrates his own life and death. If the man who died in the car crash could do that, what would he think of me? That here is a reporter who is only interested in the story, or that here is a reporter who is obviously not suited for the job?
Dark thoughts, indeed. Morbid, morbid thoughts.