Don’t fear death, celebrate it!

Celebrate a Life than mourn its passing…

Clearly, you don’t have too much time

A constant awareness of your mortality is a great way to live enthusiastically!

Interestingly, several signs and reminders on death have come my way in the last 24 hours.

It was my father-in-law Venks’ birthday yesterday – he passed on a couple of years ago, so we reminisced about our times with him on the family WhatsApp group. Besides, it was also MGR’s 100^th birth anniversary yesterday. I thought back to the day he had died in December 1987 – when I had walked 18 kms (as public transport had shut down after riots broke out in Madras) to meet Vaani; it was the first time I was visiting her home. I am glad I walked that distance – she’s sure been a great companion who’s walked beside me every step of the way, these past 30 years! A close friend wrote in yesterday saying she hasn’t been able to come to terms with her husband’s passing. A reader pinged me on WhatsApp to say she was catching up with my blogposts after a while because she had lost her mother last week. And then, of course, while watching a movie at a Cineplex last evening, the Tamil Nadu state government’s newsreel melodramatically showcased the funeral of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa!

For just a brief while, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I wondered if there was any symbolism in so many death-related references and inferences in one day. Given the fractious family I come from, it has been a few years since I have met my father although we live in the same city! Momentarily, my thoughts went to him, his advancing age and fragile health. I may well have begun to walk along the line of emotion and worry, about my inability to repay my family the money I owe them and, at least, repair my credit rating with them, even if I really can’t redeem my relationships there; but my awareness held me in good stead. I recalled Osho’s masterful perspective that Life and death are just two sides of the same coin; that death is accompanying us every step of the way, like a shadow, from the moment we are born. Or simply, as I have come to see it, we are all speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. So, no symbolism, there, I told myself as I fell asleep.

This morning, over coffee, glancing at the obituary section in The Hindu, I thought those thoughts again. If death is the absolute, non-negotiable, reality for all of us; if it is indeed that one reason which must compel us to live fuller, meaningful, happier, lives, why then don’t we live that way? Why do we fritter away our lifetimes fretting over petty material pursuits or even pettier squabbles among those that we live with?

I guess the Dalai Lama nailed it when he said, “The problem with humankind is that we think we have a lot of time!” A beautiful song from the classic Choti Si Baat (1975, Basu Chatterji, Yogesh, Salil Chaudhury, Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh, Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha) comes to mind. The opening lyrics are: “Na jaane kyon, hota hai yeh zindagi ke saath, Achanak ye mann, Kisi ke jaane ke baad, kare phir uski yaad, Chhoti chhoti si baat…”. They mean: “Why does the mind think up even the smallest memories of those who have gone away, after they have left us…?” The song’s essence (not in the movie’s context though) is a potent reminder of our mortality. It tells us, ever so subtly, that the inevitable is lingering around, just there, somewhere within our immediate circle of impact. It implores us to use the opportunity of this lifetime intelligently – to do what we love doing and to live happily, joyfully, with all those among us, in the time we still have left with us here.

I believe that fearing death or feeling sorry for the dead or for yourself is of no use. The awareness of your impending death, and of everyone you know, must be used very constructively to live your Life fully. To live without squandering even one precious moment. And the only way you can ensure living without wasting any of your finite lifetime is to only do what makes you happy and celebrate the presence of everyone in your Life – even your detractors, for they teach you what not to do! You will no doubt face your share of challenges along the way, not just with the path you have chosen but also with the people you meet on your journey, but your inner joy, your enthusiasm, will make the ride fulfilling, meaningful.

This reflection over the past 24 hours has only reiterated a truth about Life. Death is not the physical passing on of the human form alone, it is also what happens to you in every moment that you don’t live fully when you are alive! Think about it! Clearly, you don’t have too much time. If what I’ve shared here makes sense, then please go live that kick-ass Life you have always wanted to live but have been postponing for a better day and time. Remember: there is never a better time to live than now!

If you came with nothing and will go with nothing, then why all this drama?

Every time death strikes around us it is serving us a wake-up call.

Somehow the images from Tuesday evening’s public funeral of Jayalalithaa refuse to go away from my mind. Not just yet.

Here was one of the greatest and most powerful leaders of our times, from this part of the world, yet she was so powerless in the face of her own mortality. As I type this, she lies buried some kilometres away. History will surely remember her. People will continue to tell their versions of her story – of her beauty, her fame, her struggles, her triumphs, her power, her wealth, her compassion, her wit and her brilliance – for generations to come. But, for now, her human form lies there alone, at the Marina, in abject surrender to Life’s will.

Death, we must all realize, is a great leveler.

The moment you are born, the only predictable aspect of your Life is your impending, inevitable, death. You cannot negotiate with death. In fact, all of us are speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. You have to go when your time is up and your number is called. So, the most intelligent way to live is to live fully, celebrating this lifetime being happy, doing what you love doing.  Yet, thanks to your social conditioning, you go on getting attached to material stuff, wanting to accumulate more wealth and more things, than experiencing Life, its magic and beauty, in all its grandeur and majesty. Simply, you go on postponing living. When you invest your present in grieving over the dead past or in worrying about an unborn future you are not living, you are merely existing.

Think about it. You – and I – didn’t ask to be born. So, this lifetime is a gift. And this gift is perishable. Each of us comes with an expiry date, except we don’t know what date it is. Of this lifespan that we have, assuming we live to be 60 years old, it is only up to the age of 40~45 that you can be reasonably assured of good health. It is only when you are maintaining good health that you can experience Life fully. But think of how most of us are squandering this peak phase of good health, investing precious time and energy in materialism or living our lives trying to please others or brooding over what we don’t have. By the time we wake up, if at all we do, to realize the ephemeral nature of Life, it is often too late. Sadly, some people never quite wake up in realization at all!

Clearly, nobody who has inhabited this planet has ever been able to take anything of what they created or accumulated with them. You come empty-handed and you will go empty-handed. Death unfailingly serves us a wake-up call, reminding us of this unalterable law of Life, every time it strikes around us. But are we listening, are we waking up, are we willing to change the way we think and live?

After watching Jayalalithaa’s funeral on TV as we stepped out on the street for a walk, I found a bed of leaves under a tree in my neighborhood. Intuitively, as I shot a picture to post on Instagram, this line completed the imagery in my head: “If this is where we all have to end up finally, then why all this drama that we enact all through our lifetimes?”
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You don’t need a wake-up call if you are awake!

A Life challenge arrives only so that you awaken from you stupor, from merely existing, and start living! 

I was asked a very interesting question by a young medical college student in Chittoor yesterday: “AVIS Sir, why do we need a tragedy or crisis in Life to start living intelligently? Can’t we in the normal course learn to live happily, accepting Life for what it is?”

I thought that was an intelligent question from a very beautiful mind!

Of course we don’t necessarily need a tragedy or crisis to wake us up from our stupor. But the problem is that most of us don’t even know we are steeped in stupor. We imagine that earning a living is what Life is all about. So we run after name, fame, money, qualifications, material things and everything else that is impermanent and perishable. We kid ourselves to believe that we can postpone our happiness, we can postpone who we are, postpone living the Life that we want to live, even while we prioritize other people and things, over ourselves. We miss the most elementary point that Life is a limited-period offer and if we don’t live a moment fully, the way we want to, then we have lost that moment forever.

So, in a way, we are lost but in a bigger way we are pretending we are lost. Don’t we all know that we will die one day for sure – sooner or later? Then why do we choose not to live fully and instead squander our lifetime accumulating things that are going to perish or are not going with us when we perish?

Therefore, it is because we pretend to be dumb that we find a Life tragedy or crisis awakening. A tragedy or crisis is nothing but an event. Just another event. Just as your graduation is an event or your marriage is an event or your vaccination is an event so is your lay-off or your divorce or your chemotherapy. But only when what you don’t want or what you don’t expect lands up in your Life do you realize that you are not in control of your Life. That’s when you reflect and realize that had you lived your Life more intelligently then when the unforeseen and unwanted happens, when pain arrives in your Life, you can at least console yourself that you lived well and happily until now.

To live intelligently you need nothing but an awareness of your Life being a gift and a limited period offer. But to awaken to this awareness, you sometimes need a reboot, a wake-up call, and that’s precisely what a tragedy or crisis does to you! They shake you and wake you up! But if you are awaken, then you don’t need a wake-up call at all, do you? Even so, you will wake up only when you are really asleep, but if you are pretending to be asleep, you may still not wake up. Think about it – it makes a lot of sense!

How about a Death-Day party?

Don’t mourn the dead, celebrate their Life instead!

An elderly resident in our apartment block has had a bereavement in her family. Normally, she leads the community navarathri celebrations in the building. But she cried out this year saying she was in mourning. Her choice made me wonder if we should at all mourn our dead.

I often hear people say that when someone passes away, you should not offer prayers for three to 10 days, depending on your closeness to the departed; you should not celebrate festivals, birthdays and anniversaries for a full year and, in some cases, I have noticed people even abstain from visiting ‘big’ temples like Tirupathi or their native shrines. Now, my perspective on this is limited to the way Hindus, particularly TamBrahms, mourn as I am exposed primarily to this culture. I must add here that my views on God and religion are significantly skewed to the journey within, to Godliness and to the religion of humanity. Even so, this is not even about God or religion. This is about, as I see it, the wasted, often dramatic, practice of mourning.

Yes, when someone you know and love dies, you will feel sad. And you can’t and you should not avoid that grief. Hold it and allow it to hold you. It will last for a while. But as it wears off after some time, and it will, let it go. By imposing socially – as dictated by the high-priests of religion – prescribed mourning norms, you are missing the big picture. Death is not a dark, monstrous ‘something’ that must be feared and abhorred. In fact, death is the only constant about Life. It is the inevitable. It is the only certainty you have in Life: if you are born, you will die! And as long as you live, death is your constant companion. It travels with you along the course of your entire lifetime, as a shadow will.

I learnt an important Life lesson from a slum dweller several years ago. One afternoon, I found traffic slowing down on Greenways Road. This was surprising because this is one of the freer thoroughfares in Chennai. In some time, the traffic came to a grinding halt. I stepped out of my car and walked a few metres ahead to find that a funeral procession was winging its way out of the Sathya Nagar slum in the area. As the flower-bedecked cortege of an old man snaked forward, I noticed several people, young and old, mostly men, dancing to the beats to a drum. They were leading the cortege. They danced furiously. And I could make out that several of them were drunk. I had seen this happen on the streets of Chennai many, many times before this one. But this time I was keen to understand why slum dwellers acted in such drunken frenzy while seeing off their dead. So I asked an elderly member of the procession if he could tell me what was going on. He reeked of cheap sarakku (liquor) and was probably in his 70s. He was not dancing; but he was swaying to the drum beats and the effect of alcohol nonetheless. He paused though and answered my question: “Saar, we are celebrating that our man is dead. That he has found viduthalai, freedom, from this earthly existence. He’s gone to a happier, prosperous place. We are happy for him. In celebrating his death, his freedom, we know, ours will come too. Soon!”

I found the man’s perspective to be a revelation. I had not thought of death from that point of view ever.

It is so simple. Celebrate the departed’s opportunity to be free from real world issues, challenges, attachments, bondages, whatever! I extended the thought and have since held the view that our dead must not be mourned but their lives must be celebrated. On the night when my father-in-law died, two years ago, I sat quietly and drank all by myself. I recalled how much I had learned from him and thanked him for his compassion and trust in me – beginning, of course, with his choice to let me marry Vaani, way back in the late ‘80s, even when I was barely out of college, and unemployed! It was a quiet communion and a personal celebration!

As I grow older, I find the rituals that impose mourning very meaningless, in fact, stifling. On the contrary, I find the slum-dwellers’ practice of dancing for their dead, of celebrating their dead, deeply spiritual. Many of them may well be uneducated. But perhaps they are more evolved than us. They surely know what it means to celebrate the lives of those who are gone. So, I believe mourning as a practice must be expunged. Instead we must do all the stuff that our dead would have loved. And through doing all of that, let’s celebrate their Life. As for me, I have advised Vaani and my children to abstain from all rituals and instead host my Death-Day party! I have asked them to play RD Burman-Gulzar-Kishore Kumar songs and hold a toast with the finest whiskeys as my celebration at my death!!!

PS: The image in this Blogpost has been updated in 2020.

Life = It is what it is

Life can be both an irony and a tragedy at times.  This isn’t the problem. Because such is Life’s nature. The problem arises when you don’t understand Life’s true nature and expect Life to be in a certain way – as you wish it to be!

Prasanna, A R Rahman and Vivek Picture Courtesy: Internet

This morning’s papers carry the poignant story of Tamil comedian Vivek’s 14-year-old son Prasanna’s untimely death. The boy succumbed to suspected dengue and brain fever after 40 days in hospital. One of the papers pointed out the irony – Vivek has been an ambassador for the Tamil Nadu government’s dengue-prevention campaign! My auto-rickshaw driver amplified another angle to the irony: “Saar, Vivek made so many people laugh their guts out as a comedian. Poor guy, he is now having to cope with such a huge loss.” When I heard the news first, I remembered A.K.Hangal’s immortal dialogue (written by Salim-Javed) in Sholay (1975, Ramesh Sippy): “Jaante ho duniya mein sabse bada bhoj kya hota hai? – Baap ke kandhe pe bete ka janaaza!” It means: “The heaviest burden in Life is a child’s coffin on a parent’s shoulder”.

I am sure everyone today must be sending Vivek and his family a silent prayer and positive energy. Of course, beyond that none of us can do anything. The truth is, when our time comes, each of us has to deal with our own Life situations. This is perhaps why the famous Hindi poet, Harivansh Rai Bachchan (1907~2003), said this: “Jeevan ka matlab hai sangharsh”; “Life is a struggle, a challenge.” It doesn’t mean that Life is only full of pain and challenges. It means that you have to go through your share of challenges no matter who you are and no matter what you have done or not done, no matter whether you think you deserve it or don’t deserve it.

This is where the Buddha’s advice is very relevant. He said this: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Suffering is a human, self-inflicted condition. You suffer when you expect your Life to be any different from what it is, from the way it is. Someone dies and you feel the grief. That’s because your pain leads you to grief. And that is natural. But the moment you ask why should this person die or ask why should this person die now, then you have invited suffering into your Life. Who is going to answer your “whys”? Actually nobody has any answers. So, following any painful event or situation, only when you keep clinging on to the grief, do you suffer.

A friend, a retired Wing Commander from the Indian Air Force, who lost his grandson within a day of the child’s birth, had this to say: “Well, he came, he fulfilled his time on the planet and he went away. That was his design. We can’t do anything but accept his reality.” I agree completely with my friend’s outlook to Life. In fact, the simplest way to live Life is to be prepared for anything – and everything. And let us not ask the “whys”. Just take it as it comes. For it was what it was, it is what it is and it will always be what it will be. 

Dive into Life with complete abandon!

Don’t approach the future with fear.

Many a time, thanks to the blows Life would have dealt you, you may choose to tread warily, cautiously. This innate human nature to be forewarned sometimes evolves into fear. Fear breeds insecurity. And that leads to worry. How can you deal with what’s coming up in your Life when you are not even present – in  the present moment?

A friend who had a terrible experience almost losing his Life to a chronic gastro ailment refuses to experiment with any new cuisine or with anything other than home-cooked food. His entire day is packed with planning what to eat – and importantly, where to eat. Every moment that he is awake he is fearing a relapse of his ailment. He is petrified of dying because of which, I suspect, he has stopped living and instead is merely fearing death – 24 x7.

Life’s inevitable situations are agreeably numbing. They just leave you scarred and socked. But don’t let a past experience prevent you from living what you are endowed with right now or prevent you from approaching what’s coming up, freely. Anchor in faith. I am not talking about faith in an external God. I am saying that you must believe that if you have been created, you will be cared for, provided for and taken care of. Also, know that if you have lived through your worst times, then you are ready for anything. And believe me when I say that what you fear most never happens. And if it is death that you fear, then that’s foolish. Because if you were to die, you would not even know you are dead. Someone else will have to be called in to certify that you are dead!

By letting fear get to you, you are losing Life as it is happening. Going through challenging times IS Life! While planning is important and we should all work towards higher fiscal and physical efficiencies, we must also understand that Life’s Master Plan is above all else. And when Life happens, you better be present. If you are busy planning, fearing or are swamped in the past or worrying about the future, you will miss living. And when you think you are ready to live, it’s already too late for the time to die, to depart has come!

Remember: Life is a bunjee jump; dive into each moment with complete abandon, in a total let go! Every moment of Life is a leap of faith. Either you can let the fear of the unknown cripple you or you can anchor in faith and know also that during the course of your jump, even as you think it’s all over, you will either be given wings to fly or a hand will haul you up! 

Death is a celebration: accept it when it comes calling!

Death is not something negative. There’s no point in you fearing it. It is the only constant about Life!

Ever since my father-in-law’s passing away a few days ago, there have been scores of rituals that the family is being asked to follow. I am not ritualistic but in the context of the extended family’s preferences, I am having to live with whatever’s going on. I find it particularly ridiculous that people want to ‘purify’ our living space (my father-in-law passed away at our home). The reason given is that the ‘negativity of death’ needs to be driven out of home so that we can live without its ‘ghastly shadow’ looming over us. So, we will go through an elaborate ritual that will, in the sweltering heat of Chennai, leave all of us drained and consume a full day! This is apart from the several days of rituals that my brother-in-law has undertaken to perform as part of the obsequies.

I see all this as avoidable. I am not saying that rituals don’t have meaning. They may be very well-intentioned. But I would much rather celebrate the departed person’s Life than conduct rituals. For instance, my father-in-law was a career teacher. It would warm his soul surely if an endowment to educate needy children was set up in his name and memory. My wife and I had set up one in my mother-in-law’s memory a few years ago – but owing to our bankrupt situation, we have had to pause the activities. If we had the means, this is what we would like to do for my father-in-law too. And let me hasten to add that rituals don’t come cheap anymore – and rightly so; after all priests are also knowledge workers and so their time and inputs must be duly compensated. But the moot question is – do we want to do something that no one enjoys, understands or will remember or do we want to invest in a creating a lasting legacy that will remain a celebration of the departed person’s Life?

Also, how can a navagraha homam (an elaborate ritual to appease the nine planets) drive away the shadow of death; how can it ‘purify’ a living space of death’s ‘influence and negative energy’? Also, why is death seen as a negative event or energy? The unalterable reality is that death is always an integral part of every Life. The moment you are born, your death is waiting for you. The truth is we are all speeding towards our death – albeit at different speeds. You can’t escape death. You can’t avoid it. You can’t postpone it. It is your most logical, inevitable, destination. And death may perhaps not even be an end. As the proponents of the law of karma believe, death may just be the beginning of yet another, unknown, journey. By fearing death, by imagining it to be a negative aspect of your Life, you are only being immature and unintelligent.

I also find the entire gamut of rituals very discriminative and gender-biased. I had a rather ugly debate with the priest when he would not allow my daughter – my father-in-law’s only grandchild available at the time of the last rites being performed at my place – to light the fire to be taken to the cremation ground. The priest’s argument that women must not participate in the funeral rites and that they must not visit the crematorium did not cut any ice with me or with my wife and daughter. They did go to the crematorium to see off my father-in-law. And I am proud that they went ahead and did what they believed in!  

My personal view is that the only necessary process to be undergone when someone dies is the act of cremation or burial. Beyond that we must ideally spend every resource in celebrating that person’s Life. Investing in rituals because you hope to drive away or keep at bay the influence of death is a redoubtable choice. As Osho, the Master says, “Death is not an enemy. It is a friend. It is an absolute necessity for Life to be.” Isn’t it beautiful? It surely inspires me to live Life celebrating death and accept it when it comes calling!

Your age is a mere data point – it is not the focal point of your Life!!!

Age is but a number. Don’t ever get taken in by it!  

The other day I was sitting at a coffee shop enjoying my “quiet, me-time”. A bunch of 20-somethings sat at the adjacent table. And they were a riot. They ribbed each other, laughed loudly and were so full of Life. One of them even chided the others for being so noisy and said, “Stop behaving like teenagers!” To this, another among them asked her to how old she was, and she replied, “24”! And everyone burst out laughing!

I thought about those young folks at the café for a long time that day. And I thought about the question: “How old are you?” Closing in as I am on my 50s – just two-and-a-half-years away – this is a question that I have often found an interesting one to answer. To be honest, I never imagined I would be this old someday. Deep within me, I carry an image of me, of a boy wearing a blue printed shirt. I must have been 11 when that picture of me was shot by a Japanese guest who I befriended at the swimming pool at Taj Coromandel Hotel in Chennai – where I took my first swimming lessons. The gentleman, Yoshiro Kizuka, was a long-staying guest at the hotel and he liked me and my brother as he too had children our age. He snail-mailed me my picture when he went back to Japan (those days you had to process film rolls and print the pictures at a studio/film lab!!!). I still have that picture with me somewhere. It’s a picture that’s very school-boyish – a lot of curiosity and wonder in my eyes, the feel of being on the cusp of adolescence evident on my face, a certain innocence and an unstated ambition lend that picture a unique quality. Even today, within me, I feel the same way – curious about Life, naïve about how to deal with its trials and tribulations, despite having faced innumerable crises; and, importantly, I feel that I am still to grow old! I must confess, quickly, that with my progressives arriving last week, with my rheumatoid arthritis reminding me of the withering nature of the human body and with all the shades of grey that adorn the sides of my almost bald pate, I do have Life pointing to my biological age more frequently than I would like! Yet, I look around me and I have enough inspirations of people who are biologically older than me, but who are still young at heart and with all that they continue to do – Amitabh Bachchan, Apollo’s Dr.Pratap Reddy, Vyajayanthimala Bali (who at 80 performed at the Chennai Music & Dance Season last December), the dancer couple Shanta and V.P.Dhananjayan, my dear friend – the unputdownable and peripatetic Ejji Umamahesh, my father (who at 76 despite chronic diabetes remains active) and my father-in-law (who despite a stroke and Parkinsons Plus retains his zest for Life). And so, after unwittingly eavesdropping on the youthful conversation at the café the other day, I have decided to deal with my age as a mere data point from now on.

Indeed, your age is but a data point. It is when you make it the focal point of your Life that you miss the plot! This is what I have learnt from Life: the body is a vehicle, an instrument, to live and enjoy Life. Like all vehicles, all instruments, all machines, it ages and, through wear and tear, keeps withering away, until death, the inevitable end, consumes it finally. So, the body ages, the body dies. Not you. Not me. This is a natural cyclical process that encompasses all forms of creation from birth to death. No other aspect of creation, however, agonizes over aging and withering away or dying. Only man is obsessed with aging and dying. For instance, the leaves of a tree don’t agonize over falling off and being consumed by the earth. But we humans rue the same destiny, however intelligent we may be to know that such an end is inevitable. Which is why, we don’t live our lives fully. We are constantly, foolishly, fearing an end that we can’t really avoid or prevent.

Refusing to be taken in by your age, which is just another number, is an important step to live your Life fully! Nurturing this attitude to living does not mean you will not feel the body’s aches and pains as it ages. It only means that you will exercise your choice to live each day better, making it count, than pay heed to what you cannot change, what you cannot undo and what you cannot reverse. So, rather than crave for an ageless body, celebrate the timeless spirit within you. It is like pure wine – getting better and better as it grows older!