Grieve, My Country, But Don't Capitulate Before Death. It Gives Meaning To Life

The spectre of unrelenting death has leapt out of the sub-conscious to overwhelm a whole nation, writes Raghav Bahl.

Like millions of fellow Indians, death has saddened and dominated my thoughts through the incessant tragedies of the last few months.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

We’ve had a tragic tryst with horrible deaths over the last few weeks. On 22 April, 26 innocent men were brutally shot at point blank range in Pahalgam. Their “folly”? They, 25 of them, were Hindus. The sole Christian could not read the Islamic verse, or kalima, so was taken to be a Hindu and shot. Fathers and husbands were slaughtered in front of terrified kids and wives. The inhumanness was blood curdling.

Barely 42 days later, on 4 June, 11 young cricket fans, all under 30, were trampled to death in a stampede in Bengaluru. Their “folly”? They were thrilled their home team had finally triumphed in cricket’s glitzy India Premier League (IPL) after 18 years. Manoj Kumar (18), a BBM student; Divyanshi (14), a school kid; Akshata (26), a gold medalist-chartered accountant; Sahana (21), a newbie at a tech firm… all they wanted to do was celebrate a famous victory. Instead, they were asphyxiated, condemned to a horrid, painful death.

Barely eight days later, on 12 June, 241 people crashed to an incinerating death within 32 seconds of take-off on AI 171, flying from Ahmedabad to London. Their “folly”? They wanted to get to the United Kingdom, to return to loved ones, or go to work, or join college, or enjoy a vacation. Another unspecified number—among them several young doctors—got bludgeoned by the plane’s debris as the ill-fated machine ploughed into buildings. Their “folly”? They just could not finish lunch in time to get out of the way.

While each death was an aching story of loss, some went beyond the threshold of pain. Two little girls in London, 4 and 8 years old, whose father had gone to India to immerse the ashes of their mother who had died of cancer just a fortnight back. But now their 37-year-old father was dead too.

Or those three other kids—five-year-old twins Pradyut and Nakul, with big sister, 10-year-old Miraya—giggling in their seats across the aisle as parents Pratik and Koni took a beautiful, cheerful selfie and posted it just before taking off, only to die within a few minutes, their innocence charred by burning aviation fuel.

Death, The Inevitable

Death! Its shadow lurks in the sub-consciousness of every human being. But since the incredible cruelty of Pahalgam, the spectre of unrelenting death has leapt out of the sub-conscious to pervade and overwhelm a whole nation. Like millions of fellow Indians, death has saddened and dominated my thoughts through these incessant tragedies.

Death has also inspired copious thoughts from the most profound philosophers for centuries:

• Death is the great opportunity no longer to be I. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

• Anticipation of death is what makes authentic existence possible. ~ Martin Heidegger

• Come to terms with death. Thereafter anything is possible. ~ Albert Camus

• Life is made meaningful precisely because it ends. ~ Viktor Franki

While western philosophers have used the inevitability of death to call for a vigorous, meaningful purpose while alive, I am fascinated by how the Mahabharata has articulated its treatise on death.

Of course, the most celebrated enunciation has come from Lord Krishna’s sermon to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra: “For the soul, there is neither birth nor death; as a man discards worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so the soul discards worn-out bodies and enters others; perform your duty, ie karma, and abandon attachment to success or failure.”

With apologies to Lord Krishna, He segways to the indestructibility of the soul, without squarely confronting the mortality of those who are “not worn-out”—ie those who are young, energetic, and full of the zest for life— but they suddenly die in a terror attack or stampede or plane crash. If life is going to be so unpredictable and fragile, how can or why should people bother about karma?

So, there’s a sharper death-vs-life-vs-karma dialogue between Yudhishthira and Yaksha/Yama, the God of death, in the Aranya Parva, or Book of the Forest, in Mahabharata:

Yaksha: “What is the most astonishing thing in the world?”

Yudhishthira: “Day after day, countless beings die. Yet, the living believe they will live forever. This is the most astonishing thing.”

Yaksha: “What is the greatest of all wonders?”

Yudhishthira: “The greatest of all wonders is that every day people see others dying, yet they live as though they are immortal. This is the greatest wonder.”

Without specifically invoking karma, Yudhishthira does make a telling point, viz that the inevitability of death is the motor fuel of karma. Because life is impermanent and transient, human beings are driven to karma, not because they are oblivious to death, but because they are alive to the limited time that they have on earth to strive and succeed. So, pilots will skilfully fly aircrafts knowing that others have died in terrible accidents; fans will still sway and wildly cheer in jam-packed cricket stadiums.   

Brave New Life  

Let me end by reclaiming a book that influenced me deeply through my teens, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The author hangs the story on a stark question—what would happen if human beings were to live forever, become immortal? Stunning answers crystallise as the plot unfolds. 

Immortality kills human ambition. Since there is no loss or sorrow or suffering, human relations become temporary, driven solely by pleasure and instant gratification, not commitment or love. The totalitarian state provides an endless supply of soma, a drug that suppresses negative emotions. The entire population is happily hallucinating and consuming goodies, uninclined to and incapable of questioning or rebellion. People lose all individuality. They become willing slaves. Society descends into a vicious emptiness.

Why have I chosen to essay into the Demon of Death? For one, it’s been a dense, eerie, numbing fog that has engulfed us for weeks now. But more importantly, to blow that fog away, to understand that death, while utterly gloomy and desolate, is also the progeny of every meaningful human life.  So, we need not capitulate before such unimaginable grief.