I didn't attend my grandmother's funeral or my grandfather's. In fact, I've never been to one. I have always avoided them because I was too frightened to accept that people just leave, and their physical presence gets wiped out forever. "You won't see them again. It's okay that you don't want to go, but just don't regret it later," my Baba had told me, hoping to convince me to accompany them to the last rites for both my grandfather and grandmother. And I refused both times.

Now, note that death is inevitable; this way or the other, you're going to find yourself in or around one.

One evening, I was walking past ugly, cramped buildings that were silhouetted against a clear, bright yellow dusky sky. The sky radiated with a fiery orange, a tad bit of pink and lilac, subtle strokes of bright blue: all the way up to an unfathomable ocean of darker, distinct shade of blue.

I came across a shady looking astrologer looking closely through his thick glasses into a young man's charts under the evening light that was gradually getting murkier. One man's "fate" lay on the other's hand, and the astrologer, apparently the wiser one, had the power to shape the young man's future. Had it not been for the troop of monkeys that lurked around, I would have probably stayed around to eavesdrop, or at least watch the two men's faces change with either one's statements. The customer smiled with relief as the astrologer pocketed his price, and I made my way avoiding the monkeys and entered a foreign alley that led straight to the funeral pyres near Pashupatinath Temple.

While one says that Pashupatinath temple premises, despite being fairly huge, can be explored in a day, I was yet to do that. I had been to the main temple several times, but I had never really explored the place. I had never been to the temple's ghat, one of the most-visited areas inside the temple's premises. I had seen it only when walking out of the temple's gates. "It's just very sad there," I remember telling Sanjiv a couple of years ago.

But that day, I found myself near the ghat. It took me a while to figure out where I was, and as soon as I did, I was overcome with a desire to be somewhere else.

One could hear the crackling of fire accompanied by a morbid smell of burning skins and bones that rose in ugly smoke until it finely blended with the sky. On the other bank, at a distance, I could see people rushing with the aarti essentials while Jogis, who adopted a nomadic lifestyle, posed for tourists, probably alien about the culture. One could always find the atmosphere at Pashupatinath Temple intriguing: it is a mixture of emotions, of sacrifice, and of life and death.

"Oh, boy, walk!" I mentally said as I tried to make my way past a horde of people. A kid in the crowd looked as confused as I was, except he had a lollipop, and he probably had no idea what was going on. It was only natural for him; I, on the other hand, chose ignorance. As I raced ahead rushing past people, on one of the pyres, I caught a glimpse of a charred hand slipping out and dangling from its torso almost effortlessly, like a fruit dangling from a tree. I froze on my tracks. If the hand were tossed out on the street, one would probably mistake it for an odd-coloured mannequin. When I saw that my five-year-old cousin had peeled her skin right to the bone against a nail, I lost my senses. But seeing a charred hand dangling from a charred body made me completely lost my composure. It was only after the cremator lifted the dangling hand and put it back into the fire that I got back to my senses.

A part of me, bewildered, looked around for something to comfort me and take my mind off of what I had seen, the rest of me was surprised with how scared I was of myself, of what is an inevitable aspect of my being. There were several mourners around me. A glum emotion hung on me, and I felt sad and sick and angry at the merry teens, tourists with a hint of curiosity and wonder, and others observing the rites nonchalantly, unaffected, ignorant probably. But inside me, all that loomed was sadness as I looked hither and thither at the differences. And I sprinted, dodging past the many people, my mind filled with questions: how one could be so indifferent about the other. Much of the sky was now dominated by the darker, distinct shade of blue from early evening, and by the time I had stopped running, a confused stray dog was staring at me, wagging its tail trying to woo treats out of me.

I broke into tears, and probably for the first time after their demise, I missed my grandparents. I don't remember missing them otherwise.

Aama used to sneak in bidis and smoke them in the kitchen next to the fire. I would catch her in the act every once in a while, and she'd flick what remained of her bidi into the fire, and the partly dried, rolled leaves would hiss and disappear. I never told anybody in the family about it, and she never told anybody when I smuggled junk food for the night.

Buwa would crack my fingers just for the sake of it. I disliked it when he did that, but then he would give me three bits of his kheer, and that was always enough to lift my mood.

For the first time after their demise, I missed their presence, and I wanted to talk to them.

In the distance below, conches blew to announce the evening aarti. By the time I arrived, three priests had swung larger than life oil lamps in synchronisation, as the pujaris sang bhajans, and devotees and spectators alike, with ample time, sang along, and some danced. It was beautiful; it is beautiful every day. But that day, everything seemed fallacious, so callous.

There are two certain bridges on the premises of Pashupatinath—I stand on one of them and watch.

On this side of the bridge, two women and three men danced; on the other side, a corpse waited for its turn to be washed.

On this side of the bridge, people were singing hymns; on the other side, there was wailing.

On this side of the bridge, devotees were so engrossed in the evening prayer; on the other side, everything felt deranged, disconnected.

It was just so difficult, how a tiny bridge separated two completely different worlds and emotions. Never until that day had I watched life and death so closely connected.

I headed out, and as I did, I took one glance at the pyres, and bowed, and exited the temple.