January-04-2014. Early in the morning, at about 6 am, I received three telephone calls. I let each of them go because I thought they were wake-up calls from my mother, back in Nepal.

Going back to sleep, I pulled up the blanket and covered my head. As the phone rang a fourth time, I got up to receive the call. The news that was relayed to me in that conversation sent a shiver down my spine. Thus, I despised the sun that day.

“Did you wake up?”, my father asked in a soft and grey-faced tone.

“Yes”, I replied, still not completely awake.

“My son, your grand-mother is no more. She went to baikuntha [a Hindu word for “paradise after death”] today morning.”

Ending these words, hastily and impatiently, my father told me not to worry. Then he told me what to eat and what not to eat, but I was apathetic to all that, and simply agreed, trying hard to avoid a two-way conversation. I was rather trying to process the information he had given me: my grandmother had died.

In the midst of it, I decided to leave my room and get some air. It was still early morning, and the twilight sky still had stars. The morning was dead silent. With a mild breeze blowing on my face, I marched towards a place on the campus where I normally go if I want some peace and quiet. It felt natural that at that moment I would go to this place. There, I wept for my loss.

As my tears subsided, I recollected many great memories of her. About six years back, I had had a long chat with her, where she had spoken about her life, and how she perceived the existence of everything. Our discussions had ranged from her childhood, of which she had happy memories, to her married life, which was a majority of her life because she got married when she was eight.

My grandmother never went to school, but she could recite many religious books, understand them, and teach others whatever wisdom she had amassed, solely through self-education. She was extraordinary. When I had asked her to define life, she had said “Physical life is an ephemeral mechanism to rescue our soul. Heaven is here and so is hell; they don’t exist physically but in our imagination.”

I could still see many stars in the sky, but my eyes were stuck at one particular star, as if I was seeing something mysterious. Staring for minutes, I was feeling deeply connected with it, as a breast-feeding child would feel for his mother. I suddenly remembered what Neil deGrasse Tyson had said, “We are all connected; to each other, biologically; to the earth, chemically; and to the rest of the universe, atomically.”

But I thought that my feeling of connection with the star was certainly more than this. As the inky sky slowly changed colours with the lurking brightness of the sun, the star I was staring at for nearly an hour was becoming dimmer, as if it had grown too old to fight the sun.

Where would my grandmother go after her death? She would always remain in the Universe, I thought, because the Universe was all there was.

Heaven doesn’t exist, nor does hell. Of course, her body would be reduced to ashes, leaving no trace of her behind. But her consciousness, her true being, would always remain around, floating in the cosmos, perhaps like the stars in the night sky.

Of course, we won’t be able to see her physically. But what is the ultimate essence of physical existence? Why should her mere physical invisibility be an excuse to say that she has ceased to exist? After I pondered about this for a while, I could not see the star any more, and the sun had just appeared on the horizon. But I knew the star was still around.

Perhaps my grandmother has only vanished from our sight just like the star disappeared upon the coming of the sun. Perhaps her consciousness is still around, just like the star is around. Perhaps she has become one with the cosmos, dissolved in its entirety, so much that it would be impossible to separate her soul from the Universe. That day, the star taught me something that I will remember for the rest of my life: Given that a human being is not just a bag of skin, death, if the word means end of life, cannot happen. Our body will perish at some point, but the real us, consciousness if I may call, always remains alive, deeply etched in the vast fabric of the cosmos.

The sun was blazing starkly on the sky, perhaps proud of demonstrating to me that it could easily nullify the light oozing from billions of stars. Perhaps, it was also trying to send me a message that it ridicules all the stars for being unable to make the earth bright when in fact it could do so single-handedly.

Perhaps, the sun is right but I could not prevent myself from despising it that day. After all, it had taken away that mysterious star from my sight, and my grandmother had left her body just as the sun rose at my hometown in Nepal, almost as if a submissive servant had to pave way for his overbearing master. How could I not detest this pompous sun when it had cut my communion with the star, leaving me vulnerable to the mundane worldly affairs, just as a lamb becomes a prey of the wolves in the darkness of the night.

Above all, the coming of the sun had marked the end of my grandmother's physical life, which meant I would not be able to see her in person, speak to her about our lives, and hear her calling my name when I go to my home. I was left utterly heartbroken. I needed to take refuge somewhere, as the pain of sheer bewilderment was already becoming overwhelmingly impossible to withstand. Thus, I despised the Sun that day, in quest of some solace.