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!"
