Mimie: A Requiem

Mimie: A Requiem

           I have died recently. In this space I now habitate, Time is not a dimension. Not just Time but Length and Breadth and Depth also do not exist.  Of course, that doesn’t worry me at all because the space-time conundrum was never of any importance to me even when I was alive. Surprised? Well, for a dog, time and its three sister dimensions are of no consequence. Since I was a dog, a rotund cream-white Labrador Retriever, time had meant nothing to me. I had never counted its passing, neither by the ticking of the clock nor by the movement of the sun across the sky or the seasons over the hills, nor by the number of laboured breaths I had to take before life ebbed away from my fur covered body. So I am not at all distraught or even concerned by this dimensionless state of existence that I currently find myself in. On the contrary, I am quite comfortable with this light airy feeling, this sense of weightlessness that fills my being. What makes me sad though, is the state of those two-legged tailless creatures with whom I had been living before I landed up dying. I can sense them and the cloud of sorrow that surrounds them because of my passing. This cloud is thick and grey and almost impenetrable, like the monsoon clouds that overcast the July sky.

I can see them clearly: the tall dark one stands over the pit they have dug to bury the cream- white fur covered shell that had been my home till now. He is crying, red eyes and a rasp in his deep bass voice. The short fair woman, his companion sniffles. Her constant buddy, the cell phone is in her hands. The little one from the home upstairs stands beside them with her father and I can clearly feel the question amidst her sorrow.. “why?” Death is not new to this little thing, for her dog had died not long back and I think like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, touched by death, she too can see the Thestrals and therefore, perhaps she could see me. Jaya, my ever favourite is also there. I know how fond of me she must have been to venture out so early in the morning this wet snowy dreary day. She calls herself a ‘one-dog-woman’, the one dog in her life being me. She now watches, with a sad, silent face.

They place my furry home into the depths of the soil and the tall one places my bowl and the Chewie treats I adore beside my shell. When they start to pour the dark earth over it, the Short One cries out, ‘I want to say something!’ She reads from her cell phone:       

“vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya navani grhnati naro 'parani
tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany anyani samyati navani dehi”

              Her voice breaks, tears streaming down her face……They cover up my shell with earth as the Short One lights a diya and the Little Thing places a single pale pink Christmas Cacti over the dark earth.

      They have buried my shell but are unable to bury this constant cloud of sadness that envelops them and follows them around like a grey shadow. The dark one spends too much time on the bed, empty ramblings on his phone and brown shadows deepening the lines on his face. I love him though; I cannot tell you how much for as I have told you before, I have no sense of dimension, of measurement. But I love him enough to read his emotions and feel his thoughts and want nothing more than to sit in comfortable silence with my bum against his side (except perhaps an extra chicken leg). Our companionship and our camaraderie prompts the Short One to say, half joking: “Mimie, you are stealing his affections….!” She actually thinks I love him more than I love her; but she is naïve like all other tail-less two-legged  creatures. She doesn’t know that my love is not ‘more’ or ‘less’, it is simply ‘love’! I have tried to tell her that but she doesn’t understand. But on certain days, on our walks outside the house, when I stop to wait for her to catch up with me and the Tall One, I think she senses the endless love I bear for her. 
      Sometimes I have noted her feeling that she herself loves me a lot less than the Tall One. That of course, is only her two-legged frailty ……. She doesn’t herself know the depth of her love for me, the silly thing! I catch her almost every day, tiptoeing back into that cool blue room where I died, misty eyed, hoping against hope that she could see me there. I’ve even followed her venturing out into the cold winter night to stand over my earth covered shell, her heart drumming her hopeless wish to see me there. I’ve caught her sitting over her work, spectacles on her nose, water rimmed eyes glinting behind her glasses and heart beating her question, “Oh why, why, why……..?”

If this is not love, then what is……………!

Their sadness envelops me and binds me to them. But Karma beckons and I must move one, from this dimension-less realm back to the physical world. Yet I cannot bring myself to do that till they conquer their sorrow of loss. So I send them my love through the one way I think would help them cope and recover: I send them Bliss, the three legged pest, I send them the chocolate fudge Alu, a Pahari dog with the gentlest eyes in the universe, I send them tiny Oreo, gray, husky-like, born only a few nights back and finally, I send them the Seven Siblings, Alu’s babies…….

And just like I had known it would, they are healing now: all of them: the Little One from the home upstairs, the Short One and the Tall One.

Still sometimes, though much rarer now, when the sorrow draws back over their eyes, I stand by them and whisper:

‘vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya navani grhnati naro 'parani
tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany anyani samyati navani dehi’

-As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones…….

I tell them: 

Don’t be sad darlings.
I haven’t gone anywhere.
I am a part of your existence and have always been so, since Time was born. 
In varied roles and new forms, I am here with you 
.....and will be forever……