The Cashier

They say that death is a shape-shifter. It’ll come to you the way you imagine it to be. For the fun of it, i imagine death as a cashier.

As luck would have it, I’m dead and I’m standing in front of the cashier. His eyes are tiring, and his shoulders are drooping. This guy has had a long day, i suppose.

‘So, you’ve come to cross the mythical river. I’m afraid you’ll have to make a payment.’

Caught off guard, i stutter, ‘payment?’

Sensing my fear, death is emboldened.

‘Do you have enough tears to fill the parched river, so that you can row the boat across? Do you have enough people remembering you so that they offer you food for the ravens to collect?’

For every question he posed, i nodded my head sideways. He lost his marbles.

‘ then what do you have?’, he thundered.

‘Well, i think i have collected a few tears of my own when i watched movies and cried when a sentimental scene came up. Oh, and i also have tears that i collected when i made folks laugh witless’

‘Meh. I don’t get enough reward to think. Here, it says you need tears to cross the river. And, you have it – technically. So, go ahead. Don’t bother me.’

‘You mind if i sit next to you, watching you work? I think i can learn to be assertive from you.’

‘Assertive? Me? Mkay’, he shrugged.

The next soul came, and death transformed into an enormous black wolf.

Anchor for your knees

To think about it, nothing stops us from doing whatever we want. Nothing stops you from doing what you want. Drop the sham, let the morals slide, wait for the ethics to evaporate; there isn’t really anything that stops you from doing what you want. Of course, there’s conditions that apply – seeing through the farce of what we call a society, and not having a family to care for.

Almost all of us are trapped in either or both of the conditions. The one who is truly free will not end up reading this. I’m not saying that a family is not important, but that it is not everything. Maybe I’m blabbering out loud, maybe I’m the one in bounds and not the world, or maybe we are all the parents of Harrison Bergeron.

I lost my train of thought. So, what was I saying? Yes. Anchor. A family is like an anchor, keeps you rooted. No one likes a wandering ship – a ghost ship. The open ocean is not exactly open for all.

If that is the case, then why do they feel like this? So, what do we do when we feel the way i feel? We express. The way it works is this – our thoughts are like a rabid dog in a cage. Kept within oneself, the dog will end up dying and rotting in that cage which is your mind. Think of rotting potatoes – a waste of good vodka material.

So you express – write, sing, dance, paint, do anything that you like and speak your thoughts out loud. You live a normal life but secretly think of being a recluse? Go on. Express. You enjoy your time but want to do something else but can’t? Go on. Express.

Let the dogs out. Let them infect someone vulnerable. Maybe someone else will live your dreams? There’s reason to be happy if that happens. Because, they’ll be able to trace their inspiration to your existence. Oh, they’ll lie. But they know. And that’s good enough.

It feels like i got on the train to Bangalore and landed in Hawaii. That’s how words work, really. They’ll make you feel things you’ll never feel otherwise. They’ll also help you live more than one life.

But why do you need an anchor, anyway? What makes the ship get carried away? The ship knows that it is not made for the shore. It remembers that the shore is not all there is, that the shore is of so little a consequence that it can afford to see it once a year.

That, dear reader, is dangerous knowledge. We make mountains out of the eye of a newt. We don’t know that we don’t know.

Find an anchor, reader. Be a shipwreck, for all I care. The open ocean is not open for you – you haven’t worn the three piece suit for the occasion. Your shoes aren’t clean. Your face is not kempt.

Shoo, go to the salon and sleep well when you get there. Tuck yourself properly, and don’t worry about the monsters under the bed. They’re long extinct. Do worry about the wolves in your head – the white and black. No matter who says what, don’t wake up in the middle of your sleep – or you’ll startle them. The chairs that you keep on the pile of clothes – they’re watching you.