Samay was having a tiring Friday at work. It was one of those days when it felt like a miracle was needed in form of motivation and on the other hand there was also the worry of having to explain the lack of usual productivity. Samay sometimes wondered if his manager looked through the cabin glass and saw machines instead of human beings working.
Next to Samay sat Vasu busy in his work, with an expression serious and opposite to his otherwise jovial nature. Samay and Vasu had been working together for more than two years now; over the time they had become good friends. Work definitely feels different with a good friend in the form of a colleague around.
Samay was a bit worried about Vasu, he had been put into a state of endless thoughts because of a dream. Vasu said he briefly saw the afterlife in his dream, it was on the other side of a white building and one had to walk through the building to go there. But, how was he so sure about it? First he had seen the building before from outside after the death of his late uncle and the second time he entered the building and found his late paternal grandfather waiting for him to tell him that it was not his time yet.
In the two years Samay had known Vasu, he never knew Vasu had beliefs of such nature but then again how often do people start speaking about something like afterlife, unless they have seen something about it on a show, movie or social media. Some topics are not part of the usual conversations and thus it may take a long time to accidentally find someone’s views and beliefs about it.
Samay did try to explain to Vasu how people dream of close ones they have lost and as a result of the mind wanting to reconnect with the thought of their presence in any manner possible, but it didn’t help much. Samay thought of it like a phase that would pass but after three days it was still there and Samay wasn’t sure he wanted to delve into the topic too much given how much time it took for him to get over his cousin’s death.
But to help Vasu Samay decided to do a little research on the rational side of it and found similar experiences of people about afterlife; a building, a gate, a passage, there were several structures involved. The psychological interpretation was that because people interact with things like doors, buildings, gates and everything associated all through their lives very commonly, hence these things also appear in dreams to act in a similar manner, to enter or access a place. It is what a mind has accepted that if there is a place, even afterlife, it would be accessed through a building or a door or a corridor etc.
Samay put some thought into it and framed lines to convince Vasu to return to his normal self and after the weekend when Samay went to work, he found Vasu smiling back to normal. Had he gotten over his previous thought? Not clearly, his focus had simply shifted to a stronger feeling that he may have ignored before, the feeling of having seen his paternal grandfather again, even if it was in a dream. He had finally realized that Samay was right about him wanting to connect to the people he had lost. Samay was glad that his friend was back to his usual self.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Through the Structure
Early Morning Memories 