"Nobody knows my name" is the title of one James Baldwin's celebrated books. Who knows the mane of the old man sitting amidst ruins pondering over his hubble-bubble? We do not. It does not matter. He is there like the North Pole, the Everest and the Alps but with one difference. The North Pole, the Everest and the Alps will be there when he is not there any more. Can we really say this? "Dust thou act to dust returneth" was not spoken of the soul. We do not know whether the old man's soul will go marching on like john Brown's. while his body lies moldering in the grave or becomes ash driven by the wind or is immersed in water, such speculation is hazardous. A soul's trip can take one to the treacherous shoals of metaphysics where there is no "yes" or "no". who am I? asked Tagore of the rising sun in the first dawn of his life, he received no answer. "Who am I?" he asked the setting sun in the last twilight of his. He received no answer.
We are no more on solid ground with dust which we can feel in our hands, scatter to the wind and wet with water to turn it into mud. For this much is sure, that in the end, when life's ceaseless labor grinds to a halt and man meets death, the brother of sleep, his body buried or burnt, becomes dust. In the form of dust he lives, inanimate yet in contact with the animate. He settles on files in endless government almirahs, on manuscripts written and not published on all shelves, on faces and hands. He becomes ubiquitous all pervasive, sometimes sneaking even into hermetically sealed chambers.