What are the Cruel Truths in Life?
An Indian's deceased relatives are laid out in pristine condition on rafts adorned with flowers, drifting on the sacred Ganges to ascend to heaven.
Float, float
Float, float
The rafts lack propulsion and navigation; they will roughly strand within a few kilometers or fifteen kilometers, far from the line of sight. The corpses swell, burst through the clothing, and are devoured by birds.
An Indian's end is half flesh, half bone, stranded with withered, blackened flowers on mudflats.
Perhaps the loved ones cannot see, perhaps they cannot see, perhaps they can see, pretending not to see.
The elders often sigh at the white funeral feasts, saying: 'Alas, life is like that – one fades away, and another fades away.'
I wish to say something more, but there's nothing left, everything is lost in the liquor.
Then, in a few years, I'll hear the same words at another funeral, this time the liquor is for the elder who sighed at the feast one last time.
Even if buried underground, it's only a few meters below the surface, being gnawed at by insects, without day or night, eternally rotting in darkness.
The cruel truth is always just around the corner; we simply turn our heads away.
