Conversations with the Dead

With every passing day of life and despite the integral presence of the mundane, (which is nice but I don’t always appreciate it) the thought that I am here for a limited period of time has not failed to cross my mind several times. I am still trying to grapple with the purpose of life, the basic reason for my existence and of course where am I headed from here. 

I have been immersed in the sacred scriptures, they are the source of all wisdom that has percolated into my mind. They are extremely enlightening in their poetic realm and yet I feel the lacuna, that I am not doing enough to answer this very deep and pertinent question. It has been even louder ever since two individuals left their earthly states, one who I loved dearly and one who I didn’t. They both affected me, in good and not so good ways. One ensured she remained relevant emotionally to me and the other ensured she messed with me completely, not intentionally though. They have left without a trace, owing nothing to the world and probably never to be remembered again. They had little to share materially and yet they had a significant impact on my mind.. the living mind. To keep it simple, let me refer to them as the good one and the lost one. 

What intrigues me is not just their exit, but the way they left their earthly sheath. The good one led a life of authority, keeping her herd together, ensuring the “family” didn’t break into nucleus bits. She guarded her fort ensuring no trouble from the outside and ensuring no trouble from the inside though she did come with a bus load of bias. She made rules and we toed the line. For all her autocracy which did get to her children at some point as they took pleasure in letting her know she needed to withdraw rather than govern, she did what she had to despite the inner opposition. Blamed, defamed and shot at almost every day, she ensured her pack stayed close to her taking all the brickbats in her stride. What mattered to her was a homogeneous family though that rule had started to fade quite a bit. What may have looked like an old age of turmoil, culminated into the most peaceful death within half an hour. She suffered no disease, she simply gave in to the call of death when it came… yes she had been waiting, we all had been waiting. She had not been super spiritual, she had deep attachments and she ensured she fed that desire well. She had outlived her time and yet it was the most peaceful exit that unfolded in front of our eyes. I held her hand one last time before she turned cold, she had left but her body remained plugged in at the hospital… just the mass of flesh breathing, the consciousness that was her had found its way out of her earthly sheath already.

In contrast, the lost one had been nothing but a trouble maker and maybe she didn’t even know how much of a trouble maker she was. She had given sleepless nights to many, created chaos in households and believed she wasn’t wrong at all. Spinster till death, she proclaimed to be the mystical one, the spiritual one and yes, we have crossed swords in the past. She defined her life differently, scoffed at the institution of marriage and the fall out that are children. Men were still her prey, and she craved for that attention. And yet, spiritualism for what ever reason was her definition of who she was. A master at communication with a charm that I could die for, yes she had a presence that couldn’t be ignored no matter how much I tried to push her out of my world. She came to haunt me in the weirdest of ways. For the spiritually inclined and one who had dedicated her life to Arunachala, apparently, her passing was a hell only she would have known how much she was subjected to. Lonely, misguided and with a host of physical ailments she fought her last war with the God of death, screaming her way through uncontrollable pain before she succumbed. She left me even more baffled, as the news of her last days trickled into my world. How or why was a person so mesmerised by the spiritual given such a torturous death? 

It has been a while since the passing of these two women, and yet their last days remains etched in my mind, keeps me speechless and makes me wonder about what impact the nature of the passing has with respect to the life we have chosen to lead. I wouldn’t believe it if we said, we have no control… we have all the control, we just need to define how we want to use it. It would be naive to believe that the one who was seeped in attachment of the family should have been granted a more painful death than the one seeped in spiritualism. And yet the reverse logic made me sit up and think, what exactly is the purpose of life and does it have an impact in the method of what death is inflicted on us. Death has intrigued me a lot more than life, and I have contemplated endless hours on the connect between these two realities. The life I live is incidental, what I make of my death is more important. And if I have to ensure the peaceful exit that I crave for, what would it take to fix the remaining of my life while the clock ticks on. 

I am still thinking, while the loud mundane shows its glamorous self to me I am trying very hard not to be enamoured by its presence. The silence that beats within my mind while I watch the chaos outside, is something I want to explore more… the answer lies there. I am here, you are here, we have a relationship undefined. Is there more to this connect or are we just spending our time coping with the mundane around us… its a decision we need to take, now, seriously to ensure a little that we have some answer to our earthly presence before we let go this sheath. The question really is do we fight the Lord of death, or embrace him. 

The Dilution in the Institution of Marriage

Originally, when this ideology was formulated there were 4 stages to living that were tuned towards the overall development of a person from Birth to Death. These 4 stages were conditioned to enable comfortable exit from life once a person had led it “to the fullest”. It started with Gurukula, Grihasta, Vanaprasta and Sanyasa as a broad classification that covered a range of years in the person’s lifetime. Along the way, gurukula was a must have for men and a nice to have for women but Grihasta dominated the whole social landscape so much so that Vanaprastha and Sanyasa are unheard of in today’s lifestyle, in fact they may be ridiculed. 

Its unfortunate, but the need to live with one's own self has been overshadowed by the need for companionship. Grihasta is integral to the social system for it ensures procreation, immortality in some form by the extension of the genes. It doesn’t focus on the inner development of each individual in the relationship and the outcome on the relationship there after. Following a set of rules for comfortable living isn’t exactly living life to the fullest. Knowing one's own nature, coming to terms with it and attempting to live with one’s own self is far more challenging that just leading a mundane existence by following a set of rules. In fact, it may just get restrictive. Everyone is growing old, a day less towards their exit with every rising sun. Self discovery, self stress, self love, and self preservation do take precedence but it doesn’t appear as if we are getting any wiser with age. Yes, the metamorphosis from youth to old age happens anyway without our consent, and we are left coping with it, trying to appear young and acceptable to the world around us, in an inner desperation for acceptance in the familiar world.  

Why is it so difficult to acknowledge old age? Why is it a larger nightmare to face than death itself. I have seen people struggle to be wanted, to be of “use”, escapists from the dignity of isolated living. We eventually are thrown there anyway by the younger less respecting folk in the family. In a changing universe of fewer human principles of good living and larger tilt towards greed, how can we claim to be superior when we are tumbling down into the very marsh of inferior thinking. 

Two people meet and decide to join forces to lead a life, procreation ensures a bond and progeny. The deed is done, stability largely has been achieved on the exterior. What about self growth, what about the challenges of dealing with one’s own self, the inner aspirations that haunt us while the outer social rules prove challenging to accept our way of thinking or being. I have seen a lot of people go through stress post 40, when they take on the baton of responsibility, when the older and the younger are dependent on them emotionally or financially. Added to that is the compatibility quotient between the pair. Even if it strikes a full 100% is that called complete living or is it convenient and are people missing a larger point altogether? Any one of the pair will quit sooner than the other, what happens then? Why is the mind so stitched into heavy emotional dependency outside of oneself when the hard truth at the end of the road is - you die alone, you can’t quite take your companion with you!

People change as they grow up, they may not remain the same for too long. As they discover themselves through the call of fate, they realise deeper aspects of living along the way. The same companion may not have done that distance hence that maturity to understand the change is not achieved. What degree of hypocrisy does the relationship face when one can’t share one’s own learning curve with the companion who apparently started out as a soul mate. This puts a lot of question on the permanence of marriage as an ideology. Clearly it was not meant to be a permanent affair as self growth and realisation at some point overshadows procreation which is done and dusted. Is the mundane the only way to lead life? I don’t think so, there is a lot more to discover about oneself beyond stability and procreation which unfortunately will not be achieved if inner contemplation isn’t exercised, given the looming presence of old age. 

Vanaprastha has unfortunately taken a turn for the worse. While there are old age homes cropping up everywhere the intent appears extremely negative as discarding of the older folk because of their lack of usefulness and greater irritable presence. Compare that to a decision taken by the elderly to lead a dignified old age in isolation, on their own. Vanaprastha is not as much a physical shift from the family but an emotional and mental shift of disconnection. The larger nightmare of old age sees quite a bit of uncertainty in one’s life. In the ancient times, Vanaprastha was meant to solve this very discord in the mind, but it has been done away with by society for all the wrong reasons. So is society right when things change for the worse and none of us can individually control it. Be it heightened interest in materialism or abysmal interest in goodwill, this society has done nothing right to enable itself to get wiser. So how do we claim to be superior except by feeding our egoistic nature within the same pool of crabs? Are we just not ridiculous as a species?

Sanyasa, a state of non expectation, a state of wisdom with detachment towards the madness around us is the perfect place to reach before death. Unfortunately neither the environment nor the self drive enables us to reach there. With the given landscape a peaceful death will only remain a far fetched dream… leave alone the need for accomplishment. No wonder… there are no Sages in our times….