Our Self-Written Obituaries - Sharda Mutha, Jodhpur, Rajasthan

Our Self-Written Obituaries – Sharda Mutha, Jodhpur, Rajasthan

Our Self-Written Obituaries - Sharda Mutha, Jodhpur, Rajasthan

The 251st death.

[Text and photos sent by Sharda Mutha]

There she was, in a small bright house that stood around the corner of a hill, visible like the fake-diamond piercing through her hair.

It was a clouded afternoon, and the sky was thicker than her last breaths. It seemed as though the 60-year-old woman had consumed too many memories to stay sane.

Her scripture-like wrinkles evidently spoke about how small intricate things mattered to her. Small unimportant things like a dog’s eyes shining in the sun, beautiful thoughts knocking her mind at midnight, the smell of tea-leaves mingling with the hot water, his eyes on her while she pretended to not notice, the monsoon wind that talks to the half-loved lovers, the smell of someone’s words in her car and memories that become rust when time walks past them.

Her dead fist was still holding on to the fabric of the sheets, maybe that is what holding on for too long does to you. Her home smelled like tea and she had been drowning in the steam; she was not waiting for anybody to save her, she had stopped waiting a long time ago. The last thing she did was to read every single letter she had ever written, but never sent; to different people. She had been living in a bubble of memories, longing for someone to pop it.

But was it death that she longed for?

Perhaps death came to her like another memory, in a blink of an eye; uninvited.

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.

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Our Self-Written Obituaries - Sharda Mutha, Jodhpur, Rajasthan