Death

June 28, 2013 by Venkat Ramakrishnan 4 Comments

Disclaimer: I am not qualified to write about Death, as, as far as I can remember, I have not died before….oh wait.. may be I did…well, what the heck?!

So, this happened some 15 years ago…1998…I was lying in my bed with no thoughts, wide awake and staring at the ceiling. Slowly and steadily, the heart-beat started becoming loud, and it became so noisy as though it was happening on my face!  Have you ever noticed that when you and your surroundings are silent, you could feel the blood flow in the way of a hiss noise near your ears?  What happened to me was that this hiss noise because so loud and prevalent and I totally lost control of myself and didn’t know what to do.  The heart was beating like a goods train on an old bridge.  I could not think of anything to do, nor could I even if wanted to. I thought I was finished. So, I started calling our family deity – to save me – not to take me away!  After a long wait of around 2 minutes – like the waiting to see whether Dhoni’s helicopter shot will clear the boundary line or not – the drum beats of my heart subsided, breathe came into control, and the hissing noise reduced.  Probably, it was an heart attack!

There you go, my “near death” experience for you !

Couple of years back, I was thinking about living for 1000s of years. And I was pondering the implications and consequences of such an event. One thing, the body cannot sustain itself for so many years unless you have some magic to retain your body as it is. They say some techniques are available, but I am not sure what will work for me..you know, who knows what will work for whom?

But the psychological implications were mind-blowing.  The people whom you love and want to be with you will all age away and die right in front of you. New people will come, look at you like a creature, and they too will die eventually. If you are particular, you could have multiple families and then send each one of them off right in front of your eyes.   Civilizations will come and go, cultures and customs will come and go, and you won’t be able to complain as the old people do “See, in my times,…..”. No your time, my time anymore. It’s all one time and you will have nowhere to go.

All this “Live the moment Live the moment” talk business looks funny to me. Yes, one should not be burdened by the memory of the past, or by the anxiety of the future. But what exactly is “living” the moment?  This sounds like utter non-sense to me, as there is no other way except living the moment anyway – even if you are totally perturbed by past and future. I figure this has a close relationship with the death, but again as I have not experienced death, I cannot authoratively tell anything about this.

At one point of time, it sounded to me that the whole life is just a put-up game that we play to amuse ourselves till death comes. Practically, if not spiritually, that’s the reality. Most of us if not all, try to amuse our five senses and the ego built on top of the experiences of the five senses and dance our funny dance, till that one day we lay still. And no, I won’t know what happened. I will be perfectly fine bothering others to the maximum extent that I can, and then suddenly I will lay down without any movement forever after that. Sounds crazy.

One of my relatives came to know that I do yoga. I was joking to my wife about death, and this person overheard that. He became so curious and started asking “How do you experience death? Is there a way?”  He thought I was going to give him some method to die without dying.  I called my wife and told her “Hey look, this guy wants to know what death is. And he is ready to die for that. Isn’t it true?” and I looked at that guy. That guy was taken aback and started giving excuses – “Oh, how can I die? I have not even married. I have not even settled in life….” and left the scene. Boy it was fun !

So, that’s death for you, folks. If you want to experience death, Die !