Eight million, twelve million, a baker’s dozen and probably more crowded in together in a city with one of the lowest percentages of roads to everything else anywhere and a shoulder to shoulder density of bodies made livable by two to three showers a day. Life is on display in HD Real TV when you walk the sidewalk, spilling out of the front rooms of the shop-houses along every street big and small, every balcony decorated with bras and underwear, around my house communal showers splashing buckets of water over bodies lathered up under sarongs. This is getting personal with the richest and the poorest cheek to jowl with the rest of us in sandwiched between while we all get on with the business of life.
And to the business of dying I attend the opening stages of a funeral of a dear friend’s father-in-law at a temple for special funerals of special people, six or sixteen blast ovens roar, I forget to count, but like the dream kitchen Viking blessed the ovens glow away and send ashes and souls to a better place. A few weeks back I watched as family picked through a pan of Grandpa’s charred bones and picked white fragments from each part of his body to put in an urn, so he can come home and rest. Where the rest of him goes we don’t know – he doesn’t care, no use for him back at home.
Each day is delivered to me as a gift, the silver spoon presumably misplaced, but thankful nonetheless for my mouthful of sustenance. Another day, many days I pray, will dawn before my time in the oven to soar to places unknown. The blessing of everyday life.
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