Afterlife

 I need to think of a reasonable way to die. A story can’t start with me being in the afterlife, just feels weird. Hmm… let me Google the most common cause of death among young people. Oh, it’s heart disease.

I woke up one day. As usual, I didn’t want to get out of bed and had a strong urge to start my day by mindlessly browsing through my phone. But the resistance was particularly heavy this day. There was a numbing pain throughout my body and I could only feel the tightness of my chest. I had to be somewhere in half an hour, so lying in bed wasn’t an option. Exhausting every ounce of my willpower, I got out of bed. I entered the bathroom, squeezed some paste into my brush, made it wet and united it to my teeth. For some reason, my arm had lost all its strength, even lifting the brush proved to be an arduous task. It felt as if my legs weren’t strong enough to support my weight, like my bones had forgotten that they’re meant to keep to upright. I collapsed to the floor.  

When I woke up, I was on top of a hill. It never occurred on my mind to turn back, but in front of me was a path that went up. I started walking and realized there was a girl beside me. We were in the same class when I was 10 years old. I hadn’t seen her in almost a decade and struggled a bit to remember her name. “You just had a heart attack- you died”, was the first sentence that came out of her mouth. That didn’t surprise me; for some reason, I knew it.

While alive, I had never accepted mortality. No amount of philosophy could remove my fear of it. I had a strong desire to live and see how my life would unfold. Maybe, like most pursuits, I overestimated how hard dying would be.

I’m already dead, so what’s the point of trying to be social, I thought. We walked together silently for a couple of minutes. When I looked down after reaching the top, I could see nothing but whiteness, we were standing above the clouds. A large eagle pierced through the clouds and floated right in front of us. One of the naïve beliefs I held during childhood was that eagles were the largest birds, maybe this is how big I thought them to be- the same size as me.

“Welcome to after-life”, it announced enthusiastically. It paused for a second, as if to allow us absorb the message. “Although you had your fair share of flaws and mistakes, you have, overall, been a good person. As a reward for all your efforts, take this.” I extended my hands and it placed a *Hajmola on it.

(Hajmola is a popular candy in Nepal.)

I took the Hajmola in my mouth. I suck on it and its flavors color my mouth. I bite it into two, then four, then sixteen until all that’s left is dust. The flavors are more intense if you chew the whole thing but they last for a shorter period of time.

“Judging by how you ate the Hajmola right now, you are going to hell”. I become lucid. “What the fuck, I’m dead” I thought. My anger, which was at the forefront of my unravelling emotions, burst out in the form of words. 

“What inane bullshit is this? All the good that I’ve done in my life in hopes of salvation in the afterlife and in the end, the judgment is not based on how I live, but rather on how I eat a fucking Hajmola? What’s the use then? Of having discussions about morality, of trying to think about the meaning of life, if in the end it’s all determined by how one eats a Hajmola. What a sick joke.”

The eagle’s calm demeanor was unfaltered. After it thought I had finished, it began, “That is exactly the point. Are you doing good so that you get rewarded in the afterlife or are you doing it just for the sake of it, the latter reflects moral character. That judgment can be made when you think you are in heaven, when the fear of mortality is completely removed from you. Would you still do good or would your soul finally unveil its corruption.”

“But how the fuck can that judgment be made by how someone eats a fucking Hajmola?!”

“Morality is subjective. There is no universal way to measure goodness in a person or to measure how moral the person is. The metric would be different for every society. Hundred years back, if you wanted women to stay in the kitchen, you’d have a high score in morality. No matter what the context, character boils down to the perception of reward. Do you want to get a hollow reward in the present or do you want to suffer a bit in the present to get a meaningful one in the future. Do you have the patience to forgo your selfish needs for something greater? How you eat a Hajmola is a perfectly reasonable way to find that out. Do you immediately crush it and get an intense taste that lasts for a few seconds or do you suck on it slowly, enjoying a moderate amount of flavor that lasts for a longer period of time. You crushed it. You want to get rewarded right now. You don’t have the patience to live a more meaningful life.”

“What the fuc-”, it felt like I got teleported to hell before finishing the sentence. I look around and I’m in my bed. It was all just a dream. A range of emotions swirl in me that I don’t have the words to describe. The only thing I feel for certain is that I will never crush a Hajmola or any chocolate, I will take my time to savor all the flavors.