Life is For Ever

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Does anything end in this world? Man visualizes the last scene of everything because man is mortal. Anyone born on this earth dies. Anything that begins ends. Dreams end in nightmares, a smile ends in tears, the most beautiful rose fades away into black morbidity. A man celebrates birthdays and his children, if at all, remember his death anniversaries. A song, a play, a book, a building begins only to end at a point. All these are scenes of a reality which records many a repetition of a process - Beginning, Middle and End. If there is no end it becomes a drag on our time. If a man lingers painfully the children lose patience. They pray 'O' God don't give him more pain. Let him go peacefully. We wish everything to end in an orderly fashion. We glorify life and often glorify death too.  If somebody dies serving the country we call him a martyr. A brave soldier who measures his bloody length on the ground is crowned by his death. The end is natural but we wish to make the end grand.  The stoic philosopher's generalizations are not very welcome. If the beginning was grand the end too should be fantastic. But how many people accept the end of things in their own life? When youth ends a  strange cynicism begins although we say age brings wisdom to man. The end is never accepted gracefully.

A love begins, grows, deepens, matures but does not endure. All great lovers glorify separation and pain. Except in the poetry of Upendra Bhanja, the most respected Kabi Samrat in Odia literature, love has not been shown by any other world poet as the most sustaining value of life. This love begins in courtship of a classical kind, fructifies in passionate union, matures in separation and attains wisdom in old age. When the lovers sit in languor wearing silver crowns on their heads, love's timeless kingdom rules and reigns with love. But this poetic stance and worship of love cannot transcend death. Love may outlast the lovers but the lovers must die as is the law of life. Fame, glory, poetry, virtue may be immortal but they cannot conquer mortality. The end must come to everyone, everything even our planet and solar system. If the Earth started with the Big Bang it may end with a bigger Bang. But should we write the scenario, the screenplay of the end?

When the Two World Wars in close succession raged the civilization of half of the world the end of the world was grimly predicted. The doomsayers and negativists thought the end had come. But No. The green shoots of life reappeared under the debris of civilization. The prophets of doom are always overeager to visualize gloomy scenes where murky death overpowers life. When the last scene of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy is viewed by a sobbing audience the next sunrise seems to be beyond the human sky. When Gandhi died many thought India's soul was permanently lost. But no such thing happened. The great Ashokan massacre of Kalinga could not decimate the Odia; he arose within a few hundred years to build the Konark and other architectural masterpieces. River Saraswati died or rather dried up into a sandy bed. But that did not declare the end of Indian civilization. Civilizations change external contours for the inner soul never dies. The Greeks today are no more what they were in the Homeric times but they will have the revival of the Ulysses spirit one day,   maybe in centuries ahead. India was almost written off during the Mogul- British Rule. But see where she is today in the 21st century. The end is not a finality; it is at best a pause into a new melodious thunder.

Man never accepts an end, especially the Hindus never take death as final. A tree falls but the tree is never dead. As clouds all on a sudden darken the bright blue sky, some calamity, death or defeat motheats the human grain but in a brief while the sky returns to a brighter, clearer glow and life resumes its flow. But most human beings particularly the 'educated' ones see death everywhere. The opposition parties in democracies see the ruling class as harbingers of death. In India, many politicians of such mindset think of Primeminister Modi as the  Covid virus, as if covid will take India back to the stone age. Nothing outlasts the process of change; no death disease disaster can ever seal the fate of man. Man is the only creature who fights all calamities, withdraws from the burning fields to fight another day and fights. After the Kurukshetra India was not destroyed. After the 1929 Depression America was not impoverished. The Spanish Flu, Sars have not struck infertility to the human womb. This Covid too will be defeated. But man by habit will write, predict and talk about Doomsday.

No one has seen the last scene of anything. If Hamlet's last scene is littered with dead bodies Elsinor will not die under Fortinbras. Life will spring piercing iron surfaces and new roses will always bloom. Time has no end only stops or pauses. Therefore my friends never write The Last Scene of anything. The last perhaps is the First of the new Resurrection.