Who's Afraid of Death !

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

What is this death you are worried about? From the amoeba to the  bulkiest  elephant death is a constant worry to the  creatures. Nature is not worried about death. If a flower blossoms it must fall else its beauty will be taken for granted. We love beauty, youth, ebullience, sprightliness , puckish mischief and all sorts of heroic display of men and manners simply because there is death. If we lived for all time our seeking bubble reputations, song-dance orgies, love for the tearful joys of life, wasting a life for an insensitive paramour would be mocked at by time as a routine gimmick of deathless creatures. It is death that makes life so lovable. It is age  that makes youth so charming. It is sorrow that makes joy so desirable. It is separation that makes love so very soulful.  Contrast and binaries make the story of life on earth so endearingly meaningful. It is meaninglessness that is death; it is the end of beauty, lovemaking, waiting for dreams to materialize, hardwork,  aspirations and other legitimacies that men and women gain through a lifetime. But after death the legitimacies are gone and the body must be burned or buried to save  the living from the festering flesh, polluting their breathing space. If this be the process why be afraid of it which is inevitable?

But in all ages, all civilizations man tries to conquer death. A heaven where men and women in their fineries move celebrating immortality ; a Jannat of bliss is the hope and desire of the earthly creatures, especially of the intelligent species: And this hope is kept alive by religion, except Buddhism. Is it the glory of civilization or a death fixation of cynical insipidity which religion instills in man through self-denying rituals? Even modern men of scientific temper spend hours in laboratories to discover and invent medicines to prolong life. Google has invested a few billions on the projects of lengthening the span at least to 200 years, now that a century of life has been almost guaranteed in most cases. Why? Is the earth now a heaven substitute or we want to deplete all available resources of nature and leave her as a dead planet? Nature has already given her SOS call. Her climate has changed, the beautiful naturalness has now been deformed by our imaginaries. Human population has increased at the cost of biodiversity and all leaders of the world meet once or twice a year to brainstorm how to restore nature to her pristine symmetry. The earth has now an incurable fever. Her temperature swells the seas and the seasonal cycles are now truant. Why should we do all these to postpone death till the earth's enforced doom?

No one says that we should welcome death. No. Death should come naturally without any provocation. All saints have forbidden self-slaughter. But by delaying death are we not causing the death of many species, ideas, beliefs, practices and also causing the slow death of the earth which holds our shenanigans?

Poets and other creative men have two views of death. One group treats death as an ogre: calls death the leveller. The terminator of life. The other group defies death . Tagore called death his shyam, his saviour and rescuer. But before him the other poets in different languages called death a fearful antilife. Donne however challenges death- Death Thou Art Dead-; Shelley wrote "How wonderful is death/ Death and his brother sleep", and others wrote of death as an 'easeful' benefactor who releases man from life's torments. The lovers put death on a higher pedestal and prefer it to a life of miserable separation from their beloveds. The heroes always brave death and prefer to fall on the sword than to swallow their pride and kneel down before their challengers or the tyrants. Honour in life is a more soul warming value than all other values for the men of heroic temper. For them even death is a trophy.

Those who cower under the threat of death are not worthy of life. Death challenges man to live meaningfully: to utilize every moment for enlightenment of life. I do not mean ' reason, science, humanism and progress' as Emmanuel Kant would have it. Enlightenment is the discovery of the illumination within which brightens the area of reality a man traverses in his life span, thereby brightening life and nature by his divinity. Therefore you men and women never fear death: Fear dying. Fear the thousand martyrdoms which you suffer by your dark desires. To overcome dying death must be conquered by your activities . Live with honour and dignity, with your head up and even , eyes focussed on all elevating elements like love, compassion  and sacrifice to alleviate other's suffering.  And live your life in full defiance of the terminator.