Of Death

Having failed, miserably I am afraid, to discover a Guru adept in the art of blowing one’s own horn, I have been fortunate enough to be spared by vicious thoughts concerning whether my absence from IL has been noticed anymore than my presence. That does not mean, however, that I have been biding my time like that “fat weed / That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf”. Quite to the contrary in fact, the part of my brain that is responsible for inspiring fearful portends about the near and distant future has been super active. In short, I am scared to death.

Interesting you know. The word “death” I mean. For it is death, or at least Lady Death, that I wish to pontificate on. And should you feel inquisitive, let me go straight on to the heart, or possibly “heart-attack” of it. Not too long ago, I discovered that “Death” was a woman and continues to be so. And, to the best of my knowledge, IL is (over-) populated by females. Even a person of Cheeniya’s eminence will not deny the veracity of this claim. The claim I mean, that there are more women than men in his favourite e-haunt. But even he wouldn’t be too sure if this particular lady has begun to blog at his “can’t live without you” site. Worrisome this! Attempting to live without death in the company of Lady Death appears to me to be a contradiction of sorts. But then Cheeniya could well be Lady Death herself, dancing merrily in the guise of Cheeniya.

Now if this doesn’t sound threatening to you, you are supremely courageous in my opinion. May you live forever, which as you know, most probably you won’t. I mean I am not absolutely certain whether you will end up defying mortality, nothing on earth being a purely non-stochastic event. Who knows, it may be the western horizon that will witness sunrise tomorrow and time begin to travel backwards. Can’t rule out the possibility, can you?

Don’t begin to blame me. Like you, till a few mornings ago, I too used to believe that the world of Death was governed by a bull or whatever riding male God called Yama. Not Indian mythology alone, the Greeks too assigned the function to a guy called Pluto, didn’t they? That’s the way it’s always been. Females create life and males destroy, or at least most of them do. And then I suddenly come across this lady called Mrityu. I stretched my imagination to its limits, exercised my brain till it really began to hurt and the only conclusion I could come to was that while Yama is Lord of Death, Mrityu is Death itself. Not that this distinction helped me a great deal, weak brained that I am.

But where on earth, you may well ask me, did I come up with such revelations? And fortunately, I will not confuse you here. I discovered this Lady in the Mahabharata. The Lady shows up in the Dronaparva of the epic, which happens to have been covered in Volumes 21 and 22 of the version I possess. Pretty heavy, this set I purchased in a moment of weakness. Two bagfuls of it that I had to carry back home from the Book Fair. But I am digressing.

Actually, the Lady in question does not appear in person in the battle ground, but she is referred to soon after Avimanyu is killed and Yudhishthira begins to lament lugubriously as was his wont. In fact the decibels he reached were so high pitched that they woke up Vyasdeva himself from wherever he was hiding and made him fly down to Yudhishthira’s immediate neighbourhood. Having been the creator of the original mischief, the Mahabharata itself I mean, he had to make amends I suppose. He began to soothe his great great great grandson or whatever, but Y was not to be appeased. Instead Y kept on yelling “Why?” and “Why?” again till his throat was so parched that he had to fall silent. Or, almost so, for he did manage to speak out a full sentence towards the end of his monosyllabic shrieking and the sentence in question was a question itself. “Why,” he asked, “does one of the two equally strong persons die when they vow to fight until death?” A pretty dumb question if you ask me. I never tried to fight with anyone till death. I don't possess the desire to identify who killed me, especially if I have the choice not to be killed.

No one really asked simple questions those days. Unless you added a dash of philosophy to your quest for knowledge, you would be ignored lock, stock and barrel. So, he argued that, since in his opinion, it was impossible for one of two equally skilled warriors to kill the other, there must be a third person involved in the event. Who then is the real killer?

V-deva was made up of “sterner stuff” than crybaby Y of course, so he quickly spun a tale, a footnote of sorts, to the Avimanyu episode. In classic Hindu fashion therefore he went backwards in time in search of the ultimate thruth. Long, long ago and that means really very long ago, for Avimanyu had just passed away at the time this tale unfolded. Cheeniya might know better of course, but I have this strong suspicion that neither he nor I had arrived yet on earth. Well, it seems there was a rather ambitious king called Akampan. He fought many battles but was ultimately subdued by his enemies. Worse, during the battle he lost a favourite son called Hari, a son who was learned, intelligent and physically as strong as Lord Indra himself. Nonetheless, Avimanyu like, he was surrounded by enemy forces and destroyed.

King Akampan perfomed the last rites for his son, but his heart had been torn asunder as was evident from the woebegone expression he wore on his face. And as is always the case on such occasions (I mean occasions relevant for guys such as Akampan, not for you and me), Devarshi Narada appeared with a song or two to help Akampan rise up from his depth of depression. And Akampan too, like Yudhishthira had a hard question ready for the Devarshi. But his question was simple too, grammatically speaking I mean. “Who is Death, ” he wanted to know. “Who?” mind you, not “What?” A personification was built into the question. A’s query was only a micro-millimeter away from Y’s and Narada, according to V-deva, was as unmoved by the question as the Rock of Gibraltar. This means, according to V-deva at least, that he came up with yet another story. There was this story within the story you see. This is turning into a telescoping story series I think and if you have lost count of the number of stories by now, I can’t help you out. My arithmetic has never been my strong point. (According to my wife, she will have people recommend me for the Fields Medal, if I could solve the problem 1+1 = ?) Besides, unless you have forgotten by now where I had started, let me remind you that like a Dostoyevsky character, I have been communicating with you immersed in what appears to be a brain fever.

Narada takes us further back in time, pretty close to the big bang event now, and stand face to face with Brahma himself. It appears that Brahma was mighty angry with himself after creating life. And, believe it or not, he was angry because he had created life at the height of his potency, but felt totally impotent when it came to the question of its destruction! Why this should displease him is a question that will crop up later on of course, but for the time being, his anger took the shape of violent flames that emanated from his nostrils and ears. Being endowed with several heads, this meant several nostrils and ears and a lot of firework. It began to devour all creation, which is a bit of a contradiction it seems to me. This chap had just told us that he was incapable of causing death. Don’t trust these Brahma type guys, Cheeniya included. Few artists to my knowledge wish to destroy their work unless there is a dearth of art collectors willing to pay through their noses to purchase them. (But these collectors are always hiding round the corner with their fat purses. I know this, since I didn’t see why I should have purchased Picasso’s Weeping Woman, but P didn’t destroy the painting.

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Here is a quick view of it, should you wish to make a bid.) Anyway, Brahma, we must assume, was not concerned about the marketability of his produce.

This Brahma rage induced fire therefore was devouring up all living beings and it would appear that Brahma’s problem was thereby solved. But that was not to be. For it was now Mahadeva’s turn to show up. I have noticed that he has this tendency to meddle in other people’s affairs ever since the beginning of eternity (or even earlier for all I know) and he began to prevail upon Brahma to bring the fire under control and asking why on earth was Brahma engaging in this strange exercise in the first place. And you know what Brahma had to reply? He said that Mother Earth had apparently been complaining. This growing body of living beings was creating extra weight for her to bear everyday and she was probably slipping away from the orbit selected for her by the solar system. “This is too heavy a weight to bear,” she complained petulantly and since Brahma couldn’t find a quick solution to the problem, this all consuming fire began to emanate as you should know by now, unless you have fallen asleep.

Anyway, Mahadeva finally prevailed upon Brahma to control his fire and this was no easy job as you can well imagine. Such devastating holocausts are not easy to wish away and Brahma therefore metamorphosed the fire into a woman who emerged out of his nostrils or wherever there were escape routes in his sense organs. Her skin was a mixture of dark and red, her eyes and tongue were of the colour of blood. She wore earrings and other ornaments whose texture resembled molten gold. Having made her appearance, she smiled slightly and went and took her position to the right of the two lords. B and M that is, if you have lost track. No leftist she was.

Upon which, Brahma commanded her, addressing her as Mrityou, to begin to destroy all living beings, idiots and learned included. No, no, this is no joke. For this is a part of what Brahma told her: tasmat samhara sarbastwom projah sajadapanditah! Do this, for this alone will bring you salvation. The lotus eyed Lady, to be fair to her, was most disturbed to carry out Brahma’s wishes and began to weep in the sweetest of voices. I doubt that she resembled Picasso’s Weeping Woman at this stage of her existence.

And Brahma extended his palms to collect her tears before gravity could intervene. The weeping woman pleaded with Brahma, but Brahma was unrelenting. “I have created you for this purpose and this alone will be your path to virtue.”

The lady was somewhat adamant though and questioned why she should be made the cause of sorrow for human kind, since no one is pleased to die or witness the death of his or her kin. And then she disappeared into Dhenuka Muni’s ashrama (no, I don’t know him or his address) and began to perform severe penance standing it seems on one leg for millions of years. Literally so. Add or subtract a month or two. She tortured herself in several other ways too and at one point survived on air and water alone. The exercise turned her into a thin and emaciated shadow of her earlier self and Brahma reappeared of course and asked her why she was hurting herself so. And her reply was the same as what she had said earlier. She was unwilling to kill or visit Yama’s abode. They didn’t tell us what Yama’s response to this last bit was.

Finally Brahma assured her that she will not really be required to kill. It will be her teardrops (which Brahma still possessed) that will assume the shape of illnesses as well as mean human qualities. And these will be the killers, not really she. And in any case, Brahma assured her that no sin will visit her anyway, since it was Brahma who had ordained her to kill.

Well this exactly is not where the stories end, there are a few other embellishments that I left out, but the important point to note is that both Akampan and Yudhshthira found back their peace of mind (or pieces of minds, don’t know which) to hear the tales in reverse order. Akampan was older than Y you see, so the reverse order was natural.

Even though these people ended up happily for the rest of their lives, I am suddenly worried. If this woman is the ultimate killer, I wish she is not hiding in a crowd with intentions that are not exactly the best as far as my interests are concerned. Also, tear shedding women have ceased to arouse my sympathy.

As I said, I am scared to death.

Of death.

 

Dear Pashenka,

Sorry about this delay in responding. It's sweet of you to find pleasure in posting the first fb to posts. It makes the bloggers feel wanted. Even if no one else exists, Pashenka does, I tell myself. As the world grows into an increasingly lonely place to live in, assurances from a person such as you lifts the gloom and fills up my abode with sunshine. Keep well good friend and spread your message the way you do.

Love.

oj-da