Our Self-Written Obituaries – Mystery Woman Pooja, Somewhere in Delhi
The 177th death.
[Text and photos sent by Mystery Woman Pooja]
Note from The Delhi Walla: The other evening a mystery woman left a very brief loving note for me in a Delhi café. Turned out she had paid for my espresso and had left a handwritten note for me with the server. She’d signed off as Pooja. Well, the mystery woman has now e-mailed me her self-obituary… in her handwriting!
She was never found dead. Yet she died one night . . . after a long succession of nights. One final night, one after the other, parts of her being indulged in acts she had deemed unimaginable in the three decades she had existed.
Faith was found on the chair with slit wrists. The ruby red blood had covered the ‘apple’ it was trying to cut. Faith was blind, you see.
Commitment was found hanging from the ceiling, after it had jumped down all thirteen floors, yet still not died. (She had never liked the number thirteen; now her friggatriskaidekaphobic mind knew why.) For a fleeting second she had admired the temerity of her vow, her word, what it meant, once she saw it coming back after the fall. But it soon put the noose around its neck and found its release.
Respect was found drowned in the tub. The rich violet gown it had worn all through had strangely changed to a mouse grey-brown colour as it lowered itself into the water. Now that blind faith had gone, she realised it had always been taupe. Baked-in-crap, bathed-in-piss-and-tears, sprinkled-with-spit (to let some parts shine) kind of taupe.
And dear old love had shot itself in the head. And heart. Repeatedly. Till what was left of it was nothing. And what was left of her was everything.
It is said she came alive for the first time in her life.
Our Self-Written Obituaries invites people to write their obituary in 200 words. The idea is to share with the world how you will like to be remembered after you are gone. (May you live a long life, of course!) Please mail me your self-obit at mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com.
1.
So intense in every way