Symbols of terror and fear

Symbols of terror and fear: Behind the ancestral joint family house we were living way back in the twenties of the last century, there was a hill known by the same name as that of my family. It was a hill with naturally terraced slopes thickly vegetated and with wild growth of tall trees like teak wood, jack fruit, mango, and a large number of other jungle wood. There were even a few sandal wood trees. While climbing up one could see hares, rabbits, and wild fowl running about. At night we could hear the howling of jackals, wild cats and the hooting of large owls, known to be an omen signifying death somewhere in the area.
Once we reached the top of the hill we could run on flat plain ground carpeted with green grass stretching from one end on the right to the other end on the left, where there was the famous Siva temple. Portions of the flat plain nearer the temple was rugged with black boulders. During the Onam season we, the group of boys and girls in the house, of eight to twelve years age, used to climb up the terraces to reach the top where there were plenty of bushes on the sides full of flowers of all hues to pluck and gather.
I would run up the first few terraces with all energy and enthusiasm, but would have to immediately slow down breathless while others would happily proceed to move up much ahead. I would feel tired with a sort of heaviness crushing my chest. Stopping for a minute or two, I would attempt to catch up with the others. But a sort of fear and loneliness haunted me then making me afraid of being left alone Yet, I would push myself up, not wanting to be considered unfit to go up.
On the third or fourth day of the first truck up on my being allowed in the team, as I parried for breath, I noticed some newly half burnt and charred logs of wood kept by the side at the edge of one of the terraces. Suddenly, a funny feeling engulfed me making me sad and afraid. Something was eerie there! Other boys told me in whispers that the logs are left-over of the cremation of some dead body. Somebody had died a couple of days earlier. Terror struck me in the pit of my stomach as if it was waiting for a reason to strike. I somehow pretended as if nothing had happened, but while returning made it a point to walk as far away from the logs as possible covering myself from it behind other boys. The fear remained and haunted me at night, the dark, charred logs appearing before my closed eyes.
Thereafter, I felt terror and torment whenever I crossed the charred logs, any charred logs, and sometimes even those which had no connection with any cremation or death. It was as if the terror was always there within oneself waiting for an opportunity to haunt. Charred logs, a symbol of death served as a trigger.
As time passes one wards off from the mind all fearful and uneasy thoughts and symbols to get along with day to day life. Emotional upheavals of everyday life and absorption in work help one to keep aside what is unpleasant and fearful. But they are never forgotten altogether. They come up and surface later on whenever the mood is depressing.
The opportunity for going into the phenomenon came when I suffered a heart problem at the ripe old age of seventy-five years. I had to get an angiograph done. Now I have a CD showing the beating of my heart and the blood vessels supplying blood to my heart. From the time of my birth I have been having an insufficient blood vessel supplying blood to my heart, and I have been living all along only because of a not-so-efficient connecting vessel from one side of the heart to the other known as a ‘collateral’. A sinking feeling, with fear and terror, is part of the problem whenever any exertion is done with an insufficient heart.
Connecting everything together, I came to the following conclusion. The insufficiency of my heart started manifesting itself as soon as I climbed a few terraces of the hill of my childhood. I started becoming breathless, started having the sinking feeling and the fear of death. At that exact moment I noticed the charred logs that had a connection with death, and got mentally fixed to it. A coincidence or not, the insufficiency of the heart, the breathlessness, the fear and terror, the charred logs, cremation, dead body and the natural fear of death, all combined together to create an obsessive fear of charred logs! Does Destiny or Almighty pre-plan such a thing to teach a person an elevating lesson? I wonder.