by Mayur Chauhan

Mayur Chauhan, *I Am Glad You Are Here,* Micron color pens and printer paper, 8.5 x 11 inches, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Stop Gentrifying

the Afterlife

Mayur Chauhan | MAR 2024 | Issue 31

Dearest people of earth,

We, from the afterlife, have a teeny-tiny favor to ask all of you. Can you please stop dying and gentrifying the afterlife?

At first we were like okay a new face, yay, we’d invite you for coffee or fucking. But now everything is so expensive we can’t even afford a cup of coffee.

We have special powers here but we aren’t equipped to deal with you, your purchasing habits or your incessant need to impress others.

What is kombucha? And, who hurt you?

Why do you always carry your selfie-cameras? Vincent van Gogh did not take a picture of himself and called it a self-portrait.

Which of you perverts brought these scooters? Do you know what doesn’t take up space on the sidewalks and isn’t an eyesore? Flying.

We’re losing our culture because of you. Ever since this gentrification started, instead of working on art, Mozart bakes, Jane Austen doom scrolls and Frida Kahlo complains about her “restless legs.”

We never liked your lifeless fonts. Every store name looks bland.

Also, night-life sucks.

You keep your purgatory. We are happy dead. Well, we were happy dead when we could afford to be dead.

Some of our long term inhabitants are now being forced to leave the afterlife and are asked to either move out or reincarnate. One more life? In this economy? No thank you.

You’re the reason why Lincoln drove away, Rumi has roomies and Shakespeare lives in a park.

If it makes you happy, take back your high-speed internet, air-fryers and noise-canceling headphones. It will be an inconvenience, but we’ll manage.

We have no doubt that you can come up with a different solution that wouldn’t involve you moving to the afterlife anymore. So please put your brains to work and figure out something that doesn’t involve you dying.

Here are some do’s and don’t for not dying:

Eat well, exercise, hydrate, meditate, or evaporate. Look up cryogenics. Move to mars.

Please don’t slip on a banana peel, don’t step on a lego, don’t choke on a fish bone, don’t film bears, don’t fall out of bed, don’t fall in love, don’t run naked to an oncoming traffic after you solved the rubik’s cube for the first time, don’t trip on your beard.

Knuckleheads.

We wish you all a never ending life. This place is not for you. You’d get bored here in ten-twenty-thirty years tops.

You will not receive another warning letter. If you don’t stop dying we will have to kill you.

Sincerely,
The Society of Afterlife

Mayur Chauhan is an L.A-based immigrant, writer, actor, and teacher of creativity. He grew up in New Delhi in such a loving family that when he was leaving for the US, all his relatives came to the airport to ensure it was a one way ticket. Mayur is a Key West Literary Seminar and Bread Loaf scholar.