Once upon a time there lived a Gurung woodcutter. What little he earned out of a hard day’s labor scarcely made both ends meet. Nevertheless, he stuck to his tough line of trade.
One day he collected a lot more of firewood than usual and, as he tied the faggots into a sizeable bundle, he fondly looked forward to a better bargain that day. But as he bent down to lift the bundle onto his shoulders, the bundle hardly budged-it was too heavy for lean, tired limbs. He heaved a deep and long sigh, cursed his old age and thought aloud, “Alas, Death would be a deliverance.” He uttered this death-wish so loud indeed that, surprised, he looked to see if anyone had overheard him.
Well, someone indeed had. For, suddenly, a figure materialized before him and asked, “Why did you call me?”
“I didn’t,” the lumberman protested, his countenance betraying still greater surprise and awe. “In fact, I don’t even know you!”
“Well then”, said the figure, “let me introduce myself. I am Death, and I’m here in response to your death-wish, just expressed.”
The old man stood still, speechless and unbelieving. “Don’t you believe me?” asked Death again and added, “Then I shall have to prove it to you. Look at the woman who is bathing in the pond yonder-do you see her? She has outlived her allotted span of earthly life and it is time I take her to the world beyond.” So saying, Death picked up a small pebble from the ground aimed at the woman and threw it at her. The pebble touched the woman just very lightly, but that did it. She instantly crumpled to her feet and lay there motionless, dead.
This brought the wood-cutter sharply back to his senses, and with a visible effort at composing himself, he said, “Oh yes, I remember having bidden you to come, for I wanted help in lifting this bundle of faggots onto my shoulders.” Death pushed the bundle with just a finger and, lo and behold, it almost jumped itself onto the old man’s shoulders!
As he was adjusting the bundle of wood on his shoulders, it occurred to the wood-cutter to enquirer how long, he would live. “Five year to a day,” replied Death, as he left.
The old fellow had a restless night. Strange imaginings came flocking to his mind the whole night. Next morning, he left for the forest unusually early. There he stayed for days on end, without returning to the village. The villagers were surprised at his prolonged absence from home and some even went to the jungle to see if he had an accident. But nowhere was he to be found.
The old man, however, was right there in the thick of the forest. He had, with his axe, cut a huge hole into the trunk of a standing simal tree, and entered it and had all the time been busy there carving a niche for himself. Months passed into years and still he was meticulously busy carving out the inside of the truck; and in about five years’ time, he had carved for himself a four-storeyed residential accommodation inside it. But he had seen to it that none could either enter his tree-trunk home or leave it except from a single hole at the bottom.
Right on the date specified earlier, Death appeared before the old man. “I will go with you,” said the old man, “but before I leave this world for good, I would like you to see a marvelous piece of workmanship that I wish to leave as a legacy to my posterity.” So saying, he led Death inside his tree-trunk house. One storey after the other they climbed till the two reached the very top one. As Death was busy admiring the rare piece of human handiwork, the wood-cutter begged his excuse for a call of nature. But the moment he came out of the main entrance, he slammed the heavy wooden door shut, bolted it from outside and returned home.
Days passed into months and months into years. Humans and animals kept on procreating young ones, but Death came to none. Over-population resulted, famine and pestilence followed in its wake and there was a terrible commotion, all over the world. Even the gods were alarmed and they decided to approach Lord Shiva, the Great Destroyer. The Lord assured them that all would be well.
The next day Lord Shiva donned the garb of a human being and alighted unto the earth. As He entered the wood-cutter’s cottage, He saw the old man lying on a cot. “Aren’t you fed up of this life yet?” He asked, “Would you still like to go on living?”
“I have had enough of it,” replied the old man, “but in my unrelenting zeal to live longer, I had Death locked inside a tree-trunk house that I built myself. I would like to release him from there now but I am too feeble to even to reach the place.”
As the Lord helped the old man get up and slowly walk to the forest, had him unlock the door of the tree-trunk prison, and guide Him to the chamber, Death himself, the Lord noticed, had been gasping for breath and looked half-dead. The Lord sprinkled some holy water on Death and slowly the latter stirred himself to life. But as soon as he saw god Shiva standing in front of him, Death clung to his feet and said, “Lord, I am through with it. Give me any other work, but the onerous burden of heading your Death Department is beyond me.”
“Don’t you be worked up,” the Lord said, “such things do happen once in a while. But each one of us has his or her own responsibilities and we simply can’t wish them away.”
“If it is so, my Lord, then listen to this,” Death replied with an air of finality in his tone, “My physical appearance, I discovered, is precisely at the root of my troubles. If my visitations to these earthly creatures continue to be visible to their naked eyes, they will keep on devising ways and means to stave me off. As such, you make my form invisible to earthly eyes or else, I can’t work anymore.”
“So be it,” said the Lord.
From that day Death has not been visible to mankind, though he sees us all.
(Based on a Nepali folktale)