They say your whole life runs in front of your eyes the moment before you die. Emigration is a figurative death, so in the last days before my departure two years ago, my life began flashing before my eyes.
I wrote this in my journal –
‘It’s not the images that you’d expect. Decades-old random memories flood my mind, stuff I haven’t recalled for ages. Obscure shows I had visited, songs that were the ‘It’ of the day, or a random dude that once gave me a ride. Places, faces, and events that I haven’t recalled in a decade. ‘Tis an immense reservoir showing me that I have already lived a full life. I’ve experienced enough to fill one human life completely. Perhaps that is why I now must die and start a new life.’
What is left then?
What is to remember?
Let me pick one image from the flooding memories…
I am eleven years old sitting in the auditorium of a mega theater. The musical rendition of Count Monte Cristo is on tonight, performed by the country’s foremost singer. He is dark and haunted, a diabolical legend. His story is one of a life driven by wrath, a promise of vengeance for a great injustice. Then, at one moment, I can see how something cracks inside him. The Count turns around and sees something else he hasn’t seen up till now; a new perspective, a new meaning. He breaks down in tears and sings, ‘I shall leave vengeance to the Gods’.
There is more to live for now.
