Death is a Thing

Entries from January 26th, 2021

I have been sitting on a piece about mortality since April 2020 and I don’t know if I will ever allow myself to finish it so here are ~unfinished~ thoughts.

I am scared of death and my own mortality — not because of my sins but because I am in love with life. I am going to blame this on Jaun Elia because he makes me deeply uncomfortable about the joys in my life. I just want to exist without thinking about the end sometimes. But he just had to kya sitam hai ke ham log mar jayenge everywhere in his poetry.

In the beginning of quarantine, as I was grappling with feelings of loss — of so many things — I wrote a post on my Instagram with the caption “aik wade pe umren guzar jayengi,” questioning myself as to how that is possible? What love did Nusrat sing about? What promises was he talking about? Aik wade pe umren kesey guzarti hain? At that time I was thinking of death and all the broken promises it leaves behind for a lifetime.

On my bike ride some months ago, I was listening — really listening — to Aziz Mian’s Samne Tera Ghar Ho and I think I found the answers I was looking for since my post — or something close to it. In the qawwali, he says, “un ke waade pe mujh ko bharosa tou hai, zindagi mukhtasir ho tou mai kya karun.” I was smiling from cheek to cheek when the line finally settled in my heart. What are our promises in front of the one who owns all promises, who owns both life and death? And kya kya karne jo para hai is mukhtasir si zindagi me. Aur kya kya haqq ada kar gaye all those before us. I will hold on to so many promises that I can spend lifetimes dwelling on but for a moment on my bike ride, I experienced true letting go. Though I trust all the half broken promises with my life still, zindagi mukhtasir hai, zindagi mukhtasir thi and none of us can control that. Maybe my own death won’t be so bad — after-all, Elia had experienced only life, right? And my Imams have promised me other joys and my God has promised me mercy so maybe the real tragedy is life itself and not death.

And maybe just maybe the line to focus on here is sirf zinda rahe ham tou mar jayenge and nothing else.