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2 July, 2015 00:00 00 AM
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Living in Transience

Mahmudul Hasan Hemal

‘Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too’

-Omar Khayyám (1050? - 1122)
(English translation by Edward FitzGerald)

Persian mathematician, astronomer, and author, Omar Khayyám portrays death as something so mysterious and obscure to be acquainted that no one can know anything of it unless he himself walks down that road. All living beings are predestined to die. No one will last forever, never anyone did. Because it is death which is comparatively the only truth the earth provides an infant with as soon as it is born. It comes to our life as a last chapter, but it reminds itself throughout the whole of individual’s life. Sir Walter Scott pronounced, “And come he slow, or come he fast / It is but Death who comes at last.”
 “What else will decline if I die?”- This is probably the most terrific question I face from the part of my inner self. Reader, you may think of my hankering after the black thought of death in such an immature (I am between the age of 24 and 25) age; the answer I would like to give is “I can’t deny it, I tried to rule the thought out, and I failed.” Even the dusty guitar kept at the close edge of my room will remain numb at my death! It will not remember a 25 year old man who once went very carefully from chord to chord, threading every color of his youthful dream with its strings. Or the keyboard of my computer whose whole body is aware of the fluctuation of my fingers, who knows the emotion of my mind emitted through my squat fingers roving on hastily, will keep working with the commands of a second operator whom he had never seen before. Oh God! How can it be! If they were given a pair of eyes, would they shade a drop of warm tear for my departure?
I know, these are odd thinking; this does not bring a conclusion but paves the way to a set of prolonged sighs especially at the dead darkness of the night when I turn my light off and hundreds of night insects start amplifying their trill to make the question more heavier. Deaths are such villain! They snatch our near ones while we roll back empty handed, with deadly scar and streaks of blood inside the heart. Blood emits as teardrops. The nights that my mind whirl my deceased fathers memory inside it I try to visualize a battle between life and death. This is one of the most uneven battles I have ever experienced. While going to bed, the only title I can manage to give it is “Unnecessary Transience.” Why human beings entitled as “The supreme Creation” live so short a life where even a lower animal like tortoise lives more than five or six hundred years? It is more than painful to think of the continuation of normal order of all things after my departure for the no-return land that the eternal evenings will fall as per schedule, with the barking of dogs, sweetest chirping of unknown birds on their way back to their nest…; only I will be no more. Oh I bleed! I die hundreds and thousands of time before my death. Why my dear ones are snatched away in the name of death. It’s not fair. Not fair at all. However, I am not a coward that many of my readers will fancy me while going through this extract. Yes, of course, the thought of the dark grave lead me to the same track a coward walks. I may be a coward while looking into the uncertainty of life where every time I get in and out but am unanswered. Life is really too short to be understood by individuals.
     When I am possessed by the anguish of death in my subconscious mind, before its actual coming indeed, I always feel weak; too weak and stone to even breathe. I can remember the night I supposed the pain of my appendix infection grew, when I was in the bus, crossing restlessly the 450 kilometer prolonged track thinking the Sura from The Holy Quran, relating the description of the final moment (Doomsday) of the Earth. I consoled myself. I auto suggested. Everyone must taste it, today or tomorrow. Don’t fear, Hemal. The bus kept moving; from Chittagong to Jamalpur or I took it for life to death. The bus went on, unceasingly.

“When the earth is shaken with its (final) earthquake, and when the earth throws out its burdens, and man will say: “What is the matter with it?” That Day it will declare its information (about all what happened over it of good or evil) because your Lord has inspired it. That Day mankind will proceed in scattered groups that they may be shown their deeds. So whoever does any good equal to the weight of an atom (or a small ant), shall see it. And whosoever does evil equal to the weight of an atom (or a small ant), shall see it.”
-- Sura Al ‘Zilzal
The Holy Qu’ran

When I, along with my maternal grandfather, was waiting for my medical report in the hospital, he was reliving the painful memory of his mother’s death. He told me how fervidly his mother craved to live when she was dying of old age sickness. I found his eyes filled with tears. Death is always painful. Be it others or mine. At least the number of people who has submitted their loving parents in the cruel hand of death knows how crushing it feels in the heart. And when a man shed tears for his deceased parents, it is difficult to check the tear. I bowed down to hide my eyes. It becomes a part of my prayer to the almighty- “O death, be gentle to my beloveds.

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Editor : M. Shamsur Rahman

Published by the Editor on behalf of Independent Publications Limited at Media Printers, 446/H, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1215.
Editorial, News & Commercial Offices : Beximco Media Complex, 149-150 Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. GPO Box No. 934, Dhaka-1000.

Editor : M. Shamsur Rahman
Published by the Editor on behalf of Independent Publications Limited at Media Printers, 446/H, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1215.
Editorial, News & Commercial Offices : Beximco Media Complex, 149-150 Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. GPO Box No. 934, Dhaka-1000.

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