#244 Surrounded by Sleep- Akhil Sharma
Ten-year-old Ajay is dealing with grief. His brother had a
near drowning accident in a local pool and is in a coma. Ajay and his mother
desperately set up a shrine and plea to God for help, any God will do.
Prayer became a hodgepodge of beliefs. They would make
appeals to the cross, the star of David, the altar even had a picture of Gandhi
on it that they would sprinkle only water on because he was fasting. Ajay
prayed to the “S” on superman’s cape.
“Prayer, Ajay thought, should appeal with humility and open
heart to some greater force. But the praying that he and his mother did felt
sly and confused. By treating God as someone to bargain with, it seemed to him,
they prayed as if they were casting a spell.”
At night, while he slept he would imagine conversations with
God. His projection of God became his mourning, as he went through the stages
of grief. “But now Ajay was starting to
understand that the world was always real, whether you were reading a book or
sleeping, and that its eroded you every day. He saw the evidence of this
erosion in his mother, who had grown severe and unforgiving.”
Life goes on.
Notable Passage: “People will cry with you once, and they
will cry with you a second time. But if you cry a third time, people will say
you are boring and always crying.”
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