Why am I writing this blog at this time when most of the world is facing a pandemic and many are worried about becoming a victim? Certainly, it is not because of any personal fear, or any perverse desire to make you more worried. So read on setting your worries aside. It is mainly to let you know that if you feel scared, depressed and down, it is a natural reaction. There are things you can do to subdue those feelings.
My first encounter with death was early in my fourth year in Kerala, India. Hearing some loud crying, I came out of the main hall into the side room of our house to see my favorite 'Shantha teacher' bawling a good four feet or away from the side exit door to our house narrating to my mother and grandmother how her younger brother contracted small pox on a train and died just three days later. There was no official manifesto for 'social distancing' in those days, but what contained epidemics to some extent was probably all the social and religious taboos surrounding death and concerning diseases like small pox and chicken pox. Those forbade visits from and to houses infected and required that their members may not touch anyone for several weeks. Not that I knew what death really was, but I could figure that something really bad had happened. I kept asking my mother and grandmother for many days as they tried to put me to bed, but was told not to think about it, and that all my teacher was crying about was that her brother had left to God's place and she could not see him any more. That, of course, brought from me many questions about God and why people go to his place etc., but no answer came that was anywhere near the truth or what I could understand.
My first encounter with death was early in my fourth year in Kerala, India. Hearing some loud crying, I came out of the main hall into the side room of our house to see my favorite 'Shantha teacher' bawling a good four feet or away from the side exit door to our house narrating to my mother and grandmother how her younger brother contracted small pox on a train and died just three days later. There was no official manifesto for 'social distancing' in those days, but what contained epidemics to some extent was probably all the social and religious taboos surrounding death and concerning diseases like small pox and chicken pox. Those forbade visits from and to houses infected and required that their members may not touch anyone for several weeks. Not that I knew what death really was, but I could figure that something really bad had happened. I kept asking my mother and grandmother for many days as they tried to put me to bed, but was told not to think about it, and that all my teacher was crying about was that her brother had left to God's place and she could not see him any more. That, of course, brought from me many questions about God and why people go to his place etc., but no answer came that was anywhere near the truth or what I could understand.
In another six months or so, my great grandfather who was living with us passed away. He had become very old (93) and had suffered a head injury from a fall, but he recovered surprisingly. But he developed a diarrhea which got worse by the day. None of the medications was working, and my grandfather, who was a doctor, had pronounced that his father was sinking, and all we could do was to make his days as nice as possible. Those were days when old people were allowed to die without more pain induced on them through heroic attempts to keep them going even if it were only to a life with highly diminished quality. One morning when I woke up, I saw the old man laid in the main hall like a stick. He seemed to be sleeping. The odd thing was his two big toes were tied together, and there was also a yellow ribbon tied from under his chin to the top of his head. We lived in a small town, and our custom does not permit moving the body to a mortuary or morgue. I saw lots of crying, some religious ceremonies being performed, and later my great grandfather, who used to make me breakfast every day, carried out on a bamboo stretcher sort of a thing and driven off in our large family car. The mood of the house had changed drastically, and it stayed that way for many days. Again, I could get no satisfactory answers from my elders.
When I was about eight, we moved to Madras (now called Chennai) where it is common sight to see dead bodies being carried in full view in a procession to the burial or cremation grounds. I was initially scared to see these, and even more scared to ask anyone at home since I knew by then that this was not a topic for discussion. But then I had classmates who could give almost an entire lecture on death, and from them I 'learned' quite a bit. Yet, the statements by some contradicted those of some others and left me with some knowledge buttered with a lot of confusion.
The time I came to understand death in a proper way was while I was in high school browsing through some medical books of my grandfather. This was something of a routine done clandestinely and started with the curiosity about certain body parts and related matters. Surprisingly, I found the discussions in them very interesting, not in any prurient sense but in a really intellectual way. I was getting wiser about life and death after all, along with information on lots of anatomy, diseases, and treatment. Wiser may be, but not at ease, as I found out later in Vaishnav College right in front of which was a cremation ground from which at times came the smell of burning bodies into our class room. Even today, the burning of flesh in a barbecue brings back in me those nauseating memories.
I must say that those were days when my agnosticism was at its peak. All the religious stuff appeared absolutely nonsensical to me. But then, other than my agnostic grandfather, the rest of the household was too religious for me even to disclose my agnosticism, let alone to have my doubts cleared. And, I kept reading and reading, trying to find answers to many an intriguing question while simultaneously going through many a religious ceremony mechanistically to please the elders, nay to avoid their ire.
The time death really hit me hard was when I was in my early forties and when a young colleague at Bellcore died due to a recurrence of his sarcoma. His cancer had spread to his brain, and details of his last days filled with unbearable headaches and his resisting to take morphine so that he could take in every waking moment in the company of his mother who had come from India broke my heart as of many of my colleagues. Sitting in his memorial meeting, something really snapped inside me making me wonder whether I could go too just like that, and what would happen to my whole family. The only thing I could do was to take out some insurance policies on myself and my wife; I did that. But that did not help with the other challenges imagined for those dependent on me I would leave behind. All this, combined with a discovery of a cyst in my wife's brain that took two years and three divergent medical opinions about surgery to resolve into a diagnosis as an 'arachnoid cyst' that was not growing and didn't pose a risk, was driving me up a wall. Retrospectively, I must say that what I went through as a consequence was really an utter depression, although at that time, I thought my doctor was jumping to conclusions and most likely wrong. Prozac, Zoloft, and a series of medicines helped me to appear normal to the rest of the world, but there was a deep abyss in my own mind known mostly only to me and my wife. Trust me, pretense is not a pleasant game.
An American lady, who was a Ph.D. class mate of my wife and also a Counsellor, suggested that I read, "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life" by Gail Sheehy, a book that I would highly recommend to all as one that details the ages 20-60 in very insightful ways. Just to cite one example, explaining the so-called 'midlife crisis,' the author says that around 40, some young friend or relative dies and that changes one's personality much; men begin to become mellow shedding their previous aggressive quest to succeed at all cost, but women begin to become suddenly self centered complaining how they have spent their prime years serving others like a husband, children, et al. That book was certainly an eye opener in many ways, but unfortunately not a solace.
Then I hit the jackpot in the form of a small book titled, 'Teaching of the Bhagavad Gita' by Swami Dayananda Saraswati. Written in captivating prose, it started expounding the lessons by pointing out how inconsequential the problems we worry about really are, and how there is a big macrocosm that makes our microcosm and its issues quite irrelevant. It was as though I suddenly became an Arjuna being told by Krishna himself: 'asOchyAn anvasOchastvam (you are worrying about things not worth your worries).' That set me off on a serious study of vEdantA which, as a system attempting to answer many fundamental questions, was the perfect antidote to my hitherto agnosticism. It cleared many a doubt in my mind and gave a level of incredible peace. More importantly, the mathematician in me was fascinated by its unquestionable logic and consistency of thought.
Here I am at 70, immune compromised, and facing a virus that is causing enormous devastation all around and killing many. Yet, I could not be more at peace with the notion of death than ever or anyone. It is true that I have been fortunate to be blessed with many wonderful people and things around me and to have some accomplishments. I could also look back at my life and claim that I have lived a good life in the sense of having been blessed to do some things of value and usefulness to others. But they are not the real reasons for my peace. Like everyone else, I too feel my life as incomplete and want more time to achieve a few more things. But I know, to hope that some day we can claim our life to have become complete is a futile quest. In any case, none of that matters.
My peace comes from the Vedantic view of our world and our existence as a small part of an infinite continuum of repeated states of being manifest and unmanifest of the Supreme Consciousness that the true Self in me is. Many may applaud, "Cowards die many deaths, the valiant but once," but to me the most appealing tenet is that of Vedanta that the real I does not die. I accept that model and many of its explanations as the best I have seen based even on many observables. How else does one explain how even members of a twin often are different in diverse ways, even as babies exposed only to a common environment? But the real reason of my acceptance may well be the underlying cogency and logical foundation on which the concepts of Vedanta stand. Among the many privileges of my (this) life has been to have had my eyes opened to this great system of thought and the opportunity to delve into it seriously and to attain a level of peace that is indescribable.
If one death can have profound impact similar to that of my colleague on me, it is no wonder that news of many deaths every day, day after day, and worries for oneself and the near and dear could become quite onerous. The right way to uplift ourselves in such an environment is through taking on a quest to understand what this life is all about through the teachings of the wise across many generations that have preceded us, and to fill our minds with those thoughts and inquiries thereon rather than be consumed by what is being played out incessantly on television and the newspapers. In the least, hear some nice lectures, or pick up the phone or connect through the Internet and talk to some who can give you the right perspectives. Above all, stay safe, and be proactive.
