No divisions either

I have written a lot on the subject in my columns and in a long introductory chapter to my book, Death at my doorstep. I believe that everyone over 50 or 60 should ponder over the inevitability of death and evolve his or her own formula of how to cope with it. Neither going to temples, gurudwaras, mosques or churches nor spending long hours in prayer or religious rituals should be a thinking person?s approach to the enigma of death, it amounts to avoiding a confrontation with reality by escaping into make-believe about existence and its extinction. I got more reactions from readers than I received on the other topics I have dealt with in my columns. Among them one was J.M. Rishi, a Punjabi industrialist whom I have never met. Our correspondence continues. The latest from his side is a book entitled Tuesdays with Morrie ? An Old Man and a Young Man and Life?s Greatest Lesson by Mitoh Albom. It has been on top of the world?s best-seller lists for many weeks. I am nor surprised. It is written in the simplest of language, in short sentences and chapters. It tells one of the futility of wasting one?s life in making money. Even if you pile up a huge bank balance, it gives no sense of fulfilment. Buying latest model cars, large houses, and living in luxury ? all that has become an accepted part of American life ? are in the end futile. Even if you win the rat race, you remain a rat. The constant reminder you can?t take any of it with you should make you think.

The story is built round Morrie Schwartz, retired professor of Humanities at Brandeis University, a Jewish institution, and one of his students, Mitch Albom, the author of the book. Mitch attended Morrie?s classes every Tuesday. They were more like discussions on the values of life than lectures. After graduating, Mitch joins the Detroit Free Press and becomes a very successful sportswriter. He loses contact with his old professor till he sees him on TV, being interviewed on the purpose of life and the meaning of death. The professor is in a wheelchair. He is paralysed from the waist downwards and stricken with a terminal disease. He is not expected to live beyond a few months. Mitch re-establishes contact with his professor and makes it a point to visit him every Tuesday (as he had done in college) carrying a tape-recorder with him. On successive Tuesdays they talk about moral values in the limited time given to them. Professor Morrie upholds most of what Americans believe in: happy families, sanctity of marriage (no cheating) importance of friends etc. He likes being hugged, kissed, massaged and frequently breaks down ? not because he is afraid of death but owing to his pent-up emotions. He dreads the day he will be unable to wipe his own bottom. Nevertheless that day comes. He also has to have a catheter pushed inside his penis to take out his urine. He has long bouts of coughing, phlegm oozes out of his nostrils and mouth. The disease continues in its remorseless invasion of his body. When the end comes, his wife and sons and friends are in his home. However, he is alone in his study when he takes his last breath.

It is a moving tale in support of conventional American values. But it is disappointing on practical tips to face death. Morrie makes passing references to the Buddhist concept of the need for forgiveness, compassion and detachment. How can you be detached when you crave for human company and physical contact? I believe in the Hindu-Buddhist advice of the need to distance oneself from the world ? first vanaprastha and then sanyas before one sets out on the long, lonely road about which no one knows anything.

Poetry sans border

His real name was Chiragh Deen. Daman was his takhullus (poetic pseudonym). He was the most celebrated Punjabi poet at the time of the partition of India in 1947. He refused to accept the division of the country on the basis of religious differences into a Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly non-Muslim India. He was a Sufi mystic who spoke his mind without fear of consequences. And a severe critic of military dictators who ruled over Pakistan for many decades. His most quoted lines censure the state of affairs in his country:

Pakistan diyaan maujaan hee

maujaan

Chaarey passey faujaan hee faujan

(Pakistan is great joy and more joys/ Wherever you look/ There are sepoys and more sepoys.)

He goes on:

Jidhar yeykho sirgat paan

Zindabad meyra Pakistan!

Jidhar veykho kulchey naan

Zindabad mera Pakistan!

(Wherever you look its shops selling cigarettes and paan/ Live long Pakistan!/ Wherever you look its shops selling bread and naan/ Long live my Pakistan!)

After his reciting the lines at a public mushaira in Lahore, he was handcuffed and locked in jail.

Lesser known than the lines quoted above is the epitaph he composed for his tombstone. His grave is in the compound of the mausoleum where Madho Lal and Hussain, two homosexual Sufi poets of the early 17th century are buried. There is reference to the Punjabi habit of throwing one end of the shawl over the left shoulder before leaving, known as bukkal maarna. It runs as follows:

Sarsari nazar maaree jahaan andar

Tay zindagi vark utthalya main

Daman koee na milya rafeeq mainoo

Maari kafan dee bukkal tay challya

main

(I cast a cursory glance at the world/ And turned over the pages of my life?s story/ I, Daman, found no friend anywhere and so/ I threw the shroud over my shoulder and started to go.)

Foreign trip

After returning from a foreign trip Banta asked his wife: ?Do I look like a foreigner??

Wife: No, why do you ask?

Banta: In London, a lady asked me if I was a foreigner.

(Contributed by Shivar Singh Dalla, Ludhiana)