THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Not a drop of tear shed, not a sob of mourning heard, poet A Ayyappan died the way he lived. Except for the media and a few curious gazes, there were not many in front of the General Hospital mortuary to shower their tributes as his body was taken to the ambulance. Only nature seemed moved by the death of a poet whose life was an obdurate disregard for the smug selfconsciousness of society. The sun that had blazed bright till then hid behind the shroud of clouds and wept for a while, but not for long.
A lone fly buzzed around his parched lips and settled on the unkempt face of the poet who had by then been deserted by everyone.
For someone who had always relished his sloshed slumbers on the filthy streets, the kind of death he died was the most befitting. He spent a whole night at the mortuary, unknown and unrecognised, after a police ambulance collected his body from Thampanoor on Thursday evening and brought it to the General Hospital. It was just like one among the unwanted corpses that are brought to the hospital every day and was hence sent to the mortuary right away.
The corpse was recognised as the body of the poet A Ayyappan only on Friday morning. ‘’He was already dead when he was brought here. But no one recognised him and we could not have done the autopsy in the evening, which we do only in broad daylight. It was today morning that we recognised him,’’ said Dr Joy, RMO, General Hospital. It was just months before that Ayyappan had left the General Hospital hale, after being brought there unconscious. But that was not to be this time. In fact, the poet would not have wished otherwise. His soul would have repented had he died like a king. For someone who cared two hoots for his life, any kind of celebrated death would have been a grave injustice to his revelling soul.