"Let him go! You are only prolonging his suffering by holding on " – UG

 

Kamal, a long time UG friend, went through a terrible crisis during the days his dear father lay sick in Delhi battling out cancer in its most deadly and 
painful form. 

He, like any of us in such circumstances, tried real hard to save dad's life and left no stone unturned to get the best medical care out there and to see if dad could somehow survive and live on for some more years for their sake.

It was indeed a losing battle and the disease continued unabated, wreaking havoc as it spread across vital organs. I recall Kamal sourcing most expensive medication all the way from London, a single shot costing as much as $500 to be given on a daily basis! Human love and sentiment knows no limits!

Death is a 'moment of truth'!

No sooner than his father was admitted into the Intensive Care, Kamal turned to his only source of strength and succor, UG for advice! Calls to Switzerland became regular and every twist and turn was reported. UG would calmly listen to the long distance calls and let Kamal unreservedly express his pain, fear, hope and sentiment. UG did not check him even once!

As days progressed, calls from the hospital turned more frequent and the inevitable began to stare the family in the face!

Finally, in a last ditch attempt, Kamal called on his ever reliable friend, philosopher and guide UG to provide him with a solution!

UG remained a mute listener all through the call and heard out Kamal for the last time. Kamal was now almost on the verge of breakdown! 

UG poignantly said, "Kamal! Don't hold onto your father! Let him go! You are only prolonging his suffering by holding on! You have no right to make him suffer just for your sake!"

UG's words hit him hard, it suddenly opened his eyes to a piece of naked truth that had escaped him all along – the danger of human sentiments and how they could wreak a havoc in people's lives! We could remain blissfully unaware of what a suffering soul undergoes when he or she has to simply respect and reciprocate our feelings, our expression of love and affection. Sentiments could be blinding, binding, demanding and debilitating!

Kamal was a changed man as he put down the receiver. He had received a lesson for a lifetime!

This extraordinary lesson from Kamal's life helped me immensely as it was my turn to witness my comatose dad slowly decay away in front of my own eyes. As the doctors in the intensive care kept pumping chemicals into the withering body and kept resuscitating the heart every now and then, I could hear UG's words ringing clearly in my ears. They steeled my spine giving me a tremendous inner strength to take a call and halt my father from being made into a vegetable. There was even the likelihood of amputating one of his limbs as the gangrene had set in.

As it turned out, UG was my savior too! A senior surgeon at the hospital where dad lay in comatose happened to be UG's friend and he promptly came to our rescue. He greatly helped us in releasing him from the clutches of the clueless medical fraternity and technology by letting my old man slip away naturally and gracefully. He breathed his last very soon without having to suffer further torture of life support systems that had needlessly prolonged his suffering for weeks!

In fact, I had received a timely call from Major Dakshinamurti, a very close associate of UG, bang in the middle of this crisis! The call was a reminder of my responsibility and duty, a call to respect my old man's death as much as I regarded his life! It was a wake-up call not to disregard dad's situation anymore! He had already lived all of his rich and full life of 85 years, body had served him well and now it was slowly turning into a liability!

UG had strangely intervened and helped through a friend!

Countless friends have benefitted from the stoic and sagacious UG, his powerful words, when they had to confront the death of their near and dear ones!

UG never preached but lived out his words. He walked the talk!

UG's extraordinary strength and fortitude were on display during his own son Vasant's death. Kaushalya Ben, Parekhji's wife recalls the day when UG's son died. UG was their guest in Bombay at the time. When she knocked on his door early that morning with his cup of coffee, she was shocked to discover that UG had already left home to be at the hospital. UG, it appears had a hunch about the impending tragedy and had walked several kilometers, on foot, all the way from Santa Cruz to the far away hospital in downtown!

When UG discovered that the hospital would not let him have the possession of the body till he settled the pending bills, he laughed out loud at the irony and pointing to Mahesh Bhatt said, "You can forget about your sentiments and solemnity surrounding death. In the end it all comes down to money."

In 'Mind is a Myth', someone queries UG: "Some of your followers want to scatter your ashes…" and UG replies:

"What for? Very often people ask me, ' Are you not going to leave any instructions on how we should dispose of your dead body?' What the hell! Who wants to leave any instructions? It will begin to smell and become a nuisance to society…It's not my problem, but society's"

In a dispassionate voice UG called up Chandrasekhar Babu from Switzerland and gently reminded him to extract and recover the gold tooth from valentine's body before her cremation.

One is reminded of the ancient tale from China that bolsters UG's stance on the end-game, "Death is a shuffling of atoms, a balancing of energy!"  

On seeing Chuang Tzu, the Taoist sage, playing a drum and singing next to his wife's dead body, his friend Hui Tzu was shocked and wanted to know the reason for the inexplicable behavior:

Chuang Tzu said, “That is not how it is. When she just died, how could I not feel grief? But I looked deeply into it and saw that she was lifeless before she was born. She was also formless and there was not any energy. Somewhere in the vast imperceptible universe there was a change, an infusion of energy, and then she was born into form, and into life. Now the form has changed again, and she is dead. Such death and life are like the natural cycle of the four seasons. My dead wife is now resting between heaven and earth. If I wail at the top of my voice to express my grief, it would certainly show a failure to understand what is fated. Therefore I stopped.”   

When we reached the electric crematorium to perform the last rites of my father, a huge painting on the immense wall greeted us at the main hall. This was my first ever visit to such a place. This was a painting of Lord Shiva, revered as the Lord and God Head by the Hindus. It was a gentle reminder to me that we were now guests at His abode! Graveyard is supposed to be Lord Shiva's place of residence!

I wondered at the wisdom of sages in conjuring up such magnificent and grand symbols.  What a contrast this is –Lord Shiva is sculpted as 'lingam' , a phallus, a symbol of creation in the holy temple but the same Shiva is depicted as the Lord of Death in a graveyard, the final destination in the human sojourn.

When we had set out from the hospital mortuary, a priest had joined in the hearse to accompany us and to help us perform the final rites. He carried with him a tape of Vishnu Sahasranamam, an ancient, timeless hymn extolling the thousand forms of the Lord that kept us engaged throughout the final journey.

Lord Vishnu is considered as the Lord of Life (Energy) and was being invoked even at the solemn moment of Death. This hymn is a replay of the original instance where it was first chanted during Bhishma's death in the holy epic of Mahabharata!

Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva, one a Celebration of Life , another a Celebration of Death depict the obverse and reverse of the same coin in the Hindu pantheon of gods which holds Life and Death as a unitary process!

Another equally popular hymn sang at ceremonies commemorating the dead is Sri Rudram, a favourite of UG , also immensely liked for its import and sonorous rendition by Mahatma Gandhi. There is an interesting verse therein:

 ( Oh Death in The Form of Rudra ! Those countless nooses of Yours by which You destroy all mortal creatures, we shall loosen them by the efficiency of our worship of you. I offer this sacred food offering in sacrifice to Rudra, the Lord of Death!)

When I had first conveyed the news of my dad's death to brother, he was shocked. He had hardly slept a wink during the night vigils, almost for two years and had relentlessly, untiringly nursed my dad! He initially resisted the idea of letting go of his life support before finally giving his consent, "If he gives me a chance, I would love to serve him some more!"

When the end came, my brother was deeply affected and went silent for a while. On the morning of immersing his ashes in Cauvery River, he thoughtfully observed, "See Death is so kind! Imagine if there is no end to suffering and pain –Life would then become a torture! That is why I think we extoll Mrityu Devata (Lord of Death) as part of our daily worship !"

  

In a true incident, an old dying grandmother advised her grandson, incidentally my friend, "Please tell your father not to put a tombstone on my grave and prevent grass or plant growing on it!"