Vertical Till The End

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I am sure, I never wanted consciously to be born. How was I born into this hot, flat and perpetually overcrowded world, I don’t know. Is it process and reality? Is it  nature’s urge or as they say, God’s will - the biological inevitability of dynamic nature or what? I am not convinced by the logical and mythical arguments of people who were born before me; the theories of divine will, Karma or Original Sin or even Darwin’s Evolution. By fact check I know I was born by the sexual union of a man and a woman whom I call father and mother. The sky and earth are not my parents, but my present father and mother – both dead - who had nursed my growth and upbringing, educated me and did everything possible to let me fly my way in my part of skyspace.

From the early dawn of conscious living- I am sure I grew into a mature conscious being very early in life - I never obey orders: I obey laws, regulations, rules but not commands. I did my  school home task as it was routine. I trusted people, followed all disciplines as I was influenced by the Bhagawat and The Mahabharata at a very tender age. My values came from those epics. My sense of rhythms came from classical songs and also from Upendra Bhanja and Gangadhar Meher. I tried to create and compose songs and I did choric songs all my life, not as a professional but just to please myself. And I know I am a difficult man to please for I always search for alternatives in ideas, beliefs and rituals. My parents were deeply religious.  Every month they performed fire rituals and yajnas. I always opposed them much to their chagrin but I never tried to break their rhythms of life. I read whatever was available at home, at school and in public libraries. My favourite pastime was debate just for the heck of it. I often challenged my own convictions.

As I grew into a self-confident earning person at the threshold of youth my ideas gradually became more and more rebellious. I questioned the process of this birth, procreation and death routine of life enforced on us by so called civilization. Birth is a biological fact. Hunger and thirst are natural urges which must be constantly satisfied for survival. When assured survival leads to growth the sex urge disturbs for which marriage is institutionalised in societies, otherwise perversions will vitiate the moral equipoise of the society. Marriage or consensual living or just matting and aging, lingering with sans eyes, sans taste for a final heave of the frame before cessation. Then follows other rituals of the living for the dead.

 Well, why this process is enforced on man by civilization? If you ask a person, are you happy – he will say no in many devious ways. Man is never happy with what he has. No tower for man is tall enough. Empire State Building is now dwarfed by others, the Twin tower destruction notwithstanding; man will go on building towers touching the moon, till the moon and stars disappear from our galaxy. Man today wants to live for more than 150 years. Google team is researching to see that life attains double century now that a century is almost assured by our advanced medical science. The hospitals are ever increasing in number and size. Obamacare, Modicare , Ayurvedic , Homeopathic, Psychic cure, Yogic, Magic, Faith cure and exotic centres are ever growing everywhere. The reason is no man is ready to die.

I don’t know whether I should celebrate man’s obsession with living and the desire to continue even in a horizontal stage as a burden on the children, denying their fullness of life or to lament over human foolishness which has found no intellectual refinement down and up the centuries?  The surprise expressed by Yudhisthira in The Mahabharata answering the query Of Dharmabaka that every moment people die but those who are alive they think of life’s immortality. The irony of it all hits you on the face.

On the one hand we should be proud of man that his battle against death and disease continues unabated. The three original enemies of man were and are - Hunger, Disease and War as Yuval Harari puts it we have conquered to a great extent hunger. But not fully.  We now fight malnutrition, unhealthy eco –system and search for a home and sartorial joys.  Sickness and disease are almost conquered but not death. Wars continue, declared and undeclared; terror continues to walk in daylight.

I celebrate life, my personal life in many ways. I have lived life my style. I have loved soulfully. I have read beautiful things with love.  Why then should I yield my body to wither and waste surrounded by children and friends, causing pain to them, weaning them away from their life? People who vegetate in a hospital bed apply for euthanasia – a word I learned only in this century. I will leave the world while smiling at my beloved’s pranks; while singing for her my lifelong devotion to love; while lecturing in intellectual gatherings on the virtues of life, the joys of living and the divinity of human vitality and love. I will not apply to man or god for permission. Let me enjoy the pride of having ended my life as god’s rival.