When the Swan sings..

Cheeniya · Oct 8, 2013

My dear Viswa
Thank you for your kind words about my rambling on ‘Death’. Dying is the biggest event, I would even say climactic event, in a person’s entire life. Reflections on it have different effect on different people. There are exceptional cases like Ramana Maharshi who used death as the window to look into the ever luminous ‘Self’ deep inside. Ordinary mortals like us are overawed by the subject and some do not want to even think about it. They thus miss its sobering effect and continue to lead a reckless life.

People like you and Shobha are a blessed lot for having been able to watch a final moment of soul leaving its mortal sojourn in such a sublime way. This is the second time that I come across death in its most peaceful form this year in IL. First it was Vish, the beloved husband of Chitra, who took hardly five minutes to leave the world that he straddled joyously for over 80 years, being completely aware of what was happening to him with his wife chanting a ‘Mantra’ that would help the soul on a trouble-free onward journey. Now we hear about a similar exit with Shobha holding her father’s hands and chanting Vishnu Sahasranamam.

It is always my strong belief that watching great souls attaining eternal rest imparts greater lessons of life than life itself. We all talk about a peaceful, painless and sublime end but we hardly seem to lead a life that can make it happen. Some say life is too important to contemplate on death. But without death, our life would be like a speeding car without a brake!
Sri

kkrish · Oct 13, 2013

Dear Sri sir
I am back from India and came here to read this as I could not sleep.

You have no idea how much your article has helped me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this balm.

My father had the same approach to death as you mentioned. He would talk about it to me often.

When I turned fifteen and still in high school my father introduced me to all the logistics involved in running a family. He taught me how to talk to officials, how to look in the eye, how to be astute, and how to be intuitive.

When I resisted learning, like a typical teenager whose life was only books, sports, and friends, he sat me down one day and explained that as an only child I need to learn all this so that I can take care of my mother in the event that he should die any day.

I didn't like even a bit that he should mention his death, but he stressed that that is the ultimate truth. Since then he has been discussing this many times with both my mother and me.

During the past few days I saw evidence of how much he had prepared my mother, having written all the details in a notebook for her that she can understand.

In end he was not able to hold a pen and write, but I saw his valiant efforts in a blotchy writing documenting some information just two or three weeks prior to his demise.

If there was one person who was not afraid of death, it was my father sir.
He left this world a content person having witnessed his grandson's wedding just a few months ago.

Your article has helped bring into fore how my father really wanted me to take this eventuality.

I have gathered the strength to move on and take care of my mother as was his wish and my promise to him.

I am truly blessed to have a friend in you who has helped me out during this difficult time.

kkrish · Oct 13, 2013

Dear Viswa sir
Thank you for you kind message.
My deep condolences to you and your wife on your loss too.
I noted that your wife is also an only child to her parents, as I am to mine.
I can understand the pain your wife is going through now.
Regards

Cheeniya · Oct 13, 2013

My dear Kamala
I am happy that I have been a source of some comfort in your hour of distress. My dad would often say that a man's success as the head of family did not lie in how he managed the family when he was alive but in how the family ran itself after his passing away. As a young lad, I could never understand the logic of it but now I know it only too well. That was what your dad wanted to equip you with when you were a young girl. There used to be a time when our ladies would often say whenever the topic of death came, 'Avare ponappuram enakku inge enna velai?' (When he is himself gone, what is the need for me to continue with this life?')

Thanks to all the education and open discussions regarding the need to be prepared for the inevitable conclusion of life, we have no heart-rending stories of families being left high and dry due to the sudden demise of the bread-winner.

I am happy that you were able to take your beloved father's end in its correct perspective. I feel truly rewarded that the thoughts that I had shared in this Snippet helped you a lot in this.
Sri

ojaantrik · Oct 22, 2013

Dear Sri,

As always, it brought me unadulterated pleasure to read one more brilliant piece from you. I don't think this is the best that you have written so far though. Not because it lacks quality in any obvious sense, but because I don't believe in the existence of a "best". I have often drawn attention to this matter in IL pages. Better is usually attainable, but best is an impossibility. That's the way humanity was created. To strive for the better. However, this has nothing to do with your composition.

I read your piece immediately before I was called for lunch and Shankari being away from home today, there was no conversation to distract me from the subject that occupied my mind. (Incidentally, it was a completely vegetarian lunch!) The subject being your lovely piece. You generated several lines of thought of course and to some extent I did get distracted despite myself, as I pursued them at random.

Regarding immortality. You stimulated my mind to no end. Do I need a swan song to my credit in order to achieve immortality? Immortality from whose point of view, I asked myself. And the answer seemed to be "from the mortal point of view". I could be wrong of course in my interpretation of your thoughts, but I asked why immortality should need a mortal support to prove its existence? Does someone have to remember me, write my name on a block of mortal stone after I discard my mortal garb. A beautiful thought might have struck me once and made me smile in childlike innocence. It appears to me that such a thought, being born once, could never have died. Whether I remember it or not is no matter of concern. Emptiness itself could well be a vessel for immortality to reside in.

I am probably not making much sense, am I? Yet, classic Japanese haiku seem to carry the sense I am trying to convey. (No typo here. Haiku is plural.) Here is one written by Buson and the translation is not mine.

A kite --
In the same place
In yesterday's sky!
Click to expand...

Was yesterday's sky an instance of mortality? Nature abhors vacuum. Nothing that happens can ever "un-happen". Including emptiness, including total vacuum. Take for example yet another classic haiku by Moritake.

A fallen flower
Returning to the branch?
It was a butterfly.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you will point out that I am moving along the wrong track. It is the written haiku that is immortal, not the idea that gave birth to it. That could be one way of looking at it for sure. Yet, the pure abstraction of the idea itself appears to me to be the only proof of immortality. Wouldn't the thought underlying the haiku live on endlessly even if the haiku were not written? The total darkness that greets me as I watch out of the window of a night train is immortal. The fact that I noticed it will live on, even if I don't.

And then I changed gears and wondered about some of your own lines:

I take this as an opportunity to remind myself that now is the time to undo the effects of all my past mistakes so that I’ll be remembered as a good man.
Click to expand...

We have discussed this too in the past. Undoing my past mistakes looks like an impossibility. The suffering I had inflicted cannot be "un-inflicted". It remains as firmly immortal as yesterday's sky. Every ugly bit of thought that has struck me, adds to the ugliness of my immortality. It doesn't matter that people do not speak about it or write about it.

Immortality, it seems to me, is an abstraction by its very nature. To me, to the mortal me, it resembles the absentminded smile of emptiness. Emptiness, yes, not eternity.

Finally, your quote from James Farrel.

A wise man is one who knows all about death, including his own. Death never takes a wise man by surprise. He is always ready to go.
Click to expand...

Includes Nirbhaya? I know this is a silly question. And I know you will have an answer. Probably I can even anticipate the answer, perhaps not. However, at this point we are not talking about immortality anymore. Are we?

It's wonderful to see you writing again. I wish I could write too.

I mean WRITE.

You do know what I mean.

Right?

oj

Cheeniya · Oct 23, 2013

My dear OJ
Your mind is indeed like one of those aerial crackers that are made in Sivakasi for Diwali. You know the kind that goes far into the sky and explodes in a million hues in all directions. It is just a joy to behold it in action, both your mind as well as the cracker. Good, better and the best are all for people who write with a purpose and not for ramblers like me. If I write as good as my previous one, I take it as a great blessing. I must tell you this. A couple of days back, I met a very dear and close colleague of mine from the Bank. We joined the Bank as probationary officers on the same day in 1965. We had right through our carrier a healthy rivalry and we were not bothered about becoming the best officer of the Bank but were just interested in becoming the better of the two. It was a kind of see-saw battle between the two of us.

I retired ahead of him voluntarily and it was reported that he heaved a sigh of relief because he could be himself and there would be no pressure of a competitor! When I saw him just two days back after a long gap, I could not believe my eyes. He was in an advanced stage of dementia wearing a copper plate bearing his name, address and contact number. He did not remember me at all. Our friendly banters, healthy competitions were beyond him to recall. His wife told that the Doctors gave him not much time and when she said that to me, I could even sense a feeling of relief in her voice. I could feel my heart weighing a ton all of a sudden. You know OJ, this good, better and such things get a severe beating when we encounter tragedies like these.

Coming to our subject, it is easier to become immortal than having to explain it! My dad would always declare that he was immortal as long as he was alive! On a serious note, he would tell us that if we looked at the utterances of scholars like Adi Sankara in sacred texts like Bhaja Govindam, everything seemed to stay constant from the time of Big Bang though in different states. Our immortality was irrefutable according to those highly evolved souls. When someone asked Ramana in his end stage, ‘Where will the soul go when the body
dies?’, he replied ‘There is no necessity for it to go anywhere!’

The haikus that you have quoted are exquisite and profound as usual. The relationship between the kite and the sky seeks to explain the connection between the Now and Eternal Now. Buson must have had his Sufi links to have been able to explain Immortality through a simple haiku. And probably Moritake too. Coming to undoing past mistakes, I have just spoken more in the spirit of Ulysses. How beautifully Tennyson sums it up:
“Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.”

Sri

iyerviji · Oct 23, 2013

My dear Anna

Sorry to Interrupt

Reading your reply to OJ da brought me memories of my working life. Earlier I was working in Hyderabad and in 1965 we came to Mumbai as my brother got a job here , so we shifted to Mumbai. Since my father was no more he was taking care of us. In two days only I got a job in a Private Company through my boss in Hyderabad. Me and another friend also had rivalry. Her name was Jaya and my name Vijaya. As long as we worked we had competition in everything. She used to get angry more because her boss used to praise me saying I plan my work properly and work. She was very perfect in her timings and used to be in time to work and also leave in time. But once in a way when she used to go early she used to be caught. She was the eldest daughter in the family so she had to struggle a lot in life. Only after she took VRS and leftthe Company we became goodfriends

ojaantrik · Oct 23, 2013

Dear Sri,

Your reference to the haiku I quoted assures me once again that I was able to communicate. Here are two more haiku for you to contemplate on for the rest of eternity.

1.

Reflected
In the eyes of the dragon-fly
The distant hills.
(By Issa)

2.

The moon in the water
Broken and broken again
Still it is there.
(By Choshu)

oj

Srama · Oct 23, 2013

Dear Oj da,

The second Haiku is simply wonderful. It touched me right away, especially having had that treat of a moon the past few days. Thank you for sharing that....off to that wonderful land

PS: Cheeniya sir, I know you will not mind this intrusion so took the liberties.