Death and Nepal

I do not know why but I always find death...compelling. It's not that I love death. In fact, I have great respect for those living. One achievement that came through the subject that I dislike - biology - is that we're born on extremely unlikely chances and we take all of that as given. A lot of creationists fail to understand that. Science does not take away the beauty of living. In fact, science enhances it in multitudes. I firmly believe that you cannot truly appreciate life if you ignore biology and stick to some all mighty being 'designing everything - when it was in fact, it was millions and millions of years that produced it. Anyway, my great admiration of life gives me a path for a great tool to explore tragedy. Death cannot be any more tragic than this. The living thing that strode through physical quantities that we barely understand goes away in a second - but its physical forms still remain there...just...different.

There were times when I had directly confronted death in its most physical form. Human deaths...do get personal and I won't talk about my personal losses. But one event that still remains in my mind is when groups from our year in Highschool went to Nepal. We had a couple of days to explore its capital, Kathmandu, which is a Buddhist city riddled with failing modernity. On one part of the city is deeply faithful - monks and beautiful architecture cradled with decorative ropes. On other hand are drug addicts, failed modern architecture cradled with not-so-decorative electric wires (tangled by thousands) and thick smog (or duststorm) created by cars or factories. Upon arrival, one can easily 'breathe' this atmosphere. It immediately makes your breath shorter and your nose clogged. Yet millions live in this country - living a life that we simply cannot care.

One time, when our group was going through Kathmandu shops The shops in Kathmandu basically sell tourist goods, T-shirts, some semblance of food and knives. Rarely, you'll find water - and if you do it'd be pretty expensive in Nepali terms. After an hour or two of going through these streets, we went through a juncture. There a boy around our age - around 15? - started straggling us. Once we had to wait to regroup, a boy came pretty close to us and he reeked of...something chemical. His eyes were unfocused, his mouths drooling. His feet were basically dragging on the floor - and his shoes were almost torn apart. He was mumbling something to us, snickering in between the mumbles. The boy was clearly high on something and he was trying to 'go' at my female friends. It was clear that he was pointing at a few of my female friends and snickering. One of my male classmates - let's say he's an 'aggressive jock' - claimed he would easily push the boy into oncoming traffic if he came closer to us. He said it in a sort of 'proud' tone. I initially thought he was joking, but I realised that he was starting to plan this with his friend. He was discussing where to grab him and how to push him. Thankfully the boy left us soon after when the local shop owners started screaming at him.

As we went through Kathmandu we came across a monks' cremation ceremony across the river. The air was thick with a burning smell and across the river were towers of woods with bodies inside. The tour guide explained to us that the dozens or so monks being cremated were part of their penance. We could also hear a child crying over a monk. The guide explained that the child was probably a brother of the monk. Soon we could also hear the popping sounds. Like a small firework. The guide explained that was the brain being cooked inside the skull and expanding, eventually popping once the temperature was too high. Behind the burning piles of woods was an 'Organ Doner Centre'. The guide explained that's where the monks would donate their organs to others before being cremated. The site was brutal. The smell was head aching and the crying was harrowing. We quickly left the site, and others seemed not so bothered by it. But a thought kept stuck in my mind. A dozen bodies that used to be living things were swept away with a flame and while others will profit in ways of improving their disabled life, others were scarred for the loss of a loved one. All this, for the penance - to achieve the ultimate sense of truth.

I think from that day with two different experiences, I had a different perspective on death. I had recognised that death exists and that it's not so far away from me. The equally important life of someone else was gone and yet just a few hours ago and many of my friends were pervy to the idea of taking another life...and I didn’t do anything about it.

This I think is only integral to the growth of a human being. No matter how shielding your parents are, you eventually experience death beyond the words of mouth, pages of books, flickers of the screen. Without that realisation, I don't think we can quite appreciate life as what it is and what it isn't.

This sensation happened to me once more today. I am doing a mandatory service for the Korean government - working at an election commission doing some minor daily tasks. My house is pretty far from the place so I commute every day with my vehicle. Although this neighbourhood is failing, the parking spaces are rare if you arrive late. So oftentimes, I find distant places to park, oftentimes parking at a distant long road. Today, after driving slowly due to morning rain making roads slippery, I arrived at work later than usual. As a consequence of being late, the cars were all parked in almost all available spaces. However, driving over spots I realised that the spot of what many would consider the 'perfect parking spot' was left alone. I found this odd but I went past it to find my parking. Once I parked my car, I returned to go to my workplace - and then I realised why other cars had avoided that particular spot.

A cat was lying...funnily on the road, its fur all messy as if it was wet. Its limbs were stiff, almost floating in the air - and its eyes were open, aimlessly staring into the concrete floor. Beside it was a plastic bag full of...something red. It didn't take long to realise that the cat was dead. I hurried away as I almost smelled its decay.

During the day I tried my best not to pay too much attention to it - but then something clicked in me and I reported to my superiors that there was a dead cat near the workplace. I got permission to go retrieve the body and perhaps bury it someplace. When I walked to the spot I realised that the carcass was gone. Instead of the cat, the plastic bag was now torn open - and bits of rib bones were scattered on the road. The red I saw earlier were bits of meat that were starting to rot. I bagged it all up and put it in the bin.

I do not know what had happened to the body of that cat. Or why the plastic bag was there in the first place - or how it was torn apart. I sincerely hope that no one had deliberately littered the cat and the plastic bag on the road - hoping someone would take care of it. But my mind still races, pondering about what had happened. How did the cat pass away? What did those pale eyes see when it stopped being alive? Naturally, my mind then ventures about the bones and bits of meat. Those too, belong to something alive one day. So were these monks who gave penance. So were all these other lives that existed before us and are dying as we are right now. Time is an endless march and it will never stop killing. And yet we talk so easily about the murder when ultimately we all are heading to that conclusion. It's the inevitable process of taking away the very beauty that we all possess and yet we forget about the beauty and its conclusion so often as we are caught up on living through it, no matter how horrible or happy it is. These thoughts raced through my mind, so I write it here, just so I can come back once I encounter and experience some form of death.