Angel of Darkness

At the side of our main gate, I noticed a group of people crowding and watching something. Next to them stood a Matador vehicle, and it did not take me long to understand that someone had died in the family – the Muslim family which had made the footpath just at the side of our gate for the past 25 years or more. Death, the familiar guest at all families, does not spare any one, high or low, rich or poor, men or women. But this is perhaps the most uninvited guest we have ever known on earth; there is hardly anyone we have known, who willingly and joyfully welcomes Death. This is the season of Lent, and so it is appropriate to think about death, not only as Jesus triumphing over death, but how we carry our death in our bodies and minds. In fact, a serious contemplation on our deaths can serve to energise us to live more fully and joyfully.

Tony D’Mello in his famous book, Sadhana, a way to God, presents to us a meditation on our own death bodies. See and smell it, as it decays, infested with worms, and becomes earth. This is what we all are; perishable… we carry on our bodies the label “Perishable”, but unfortunately very few behave as if we are perishable; we are happy to think that we will live forever, and there will be no end to our life on earth. If only we consider our life on earth with a limited time and space continuum, then we will spend most of our energy to make the best use of the time to be happy and leave joyful memories. In such cases, death cannot come as a threat, but as a welcome guest, who comes to take us to give wage for our labor; is that not something that we should be happy and proud about?

We are drowned in sorrow and agony when someone dear to us depart this earth, and sometimes it is hard to accept this reality; such was the case with my sister, when her husband died all too suddenly, unannounced, and at a moment when she wanted him more. Her life was devastated when she knew that she has to fight with life (with the additional burden of carrying cancer in her body) all alone, helping her daughter find fulfillment in life. My brother in law was not the only breadwinner, because my sister was able to earn a living as a teacher, but what was more important for my sister was that her husband had turned a new leaf and was going to care for her. Death came one fine morning and took him all too soon, and neither she nor her daughter, nor any of our family members were ever prepared for it.

It may be easy to preach about death, and how we should welcome it with outstretched arms; but it is a different kind of reality when it does approach us. When we hear about the brutal killing of several men and women, or the accidents and mishaps which kills hundreds of people each day, we are not so much moved; but when it happens to one of our familiar persons, we are shaken, and find it hard to accept. Unfortunately no one teaches us the secret of embracing death with open arms, and except for a few brave sages and saintly persons, all of us find it a challenge to think about death, especially as it approaches us gingerly. This is one reality that perhaps the human race will never be able to undo, just as we have very little control over births. We are just pawns in the hands of creation and nature.

We are told that in death we enter into a different kind of reality, which cannot be compared with the earthly reality. The Bhagavad Gita talks about the nature of the soul in Chapter 2, when it leaves the perishable body, because it is something that knows no end. No one who has experienced it has ever returned to tell us how it is to face death; but one thing is for sure, whether we fear or not, whether we are happy or not, death will come to us at its own time and lead us home. We may say a thousand things in philosophical terms to explain how wonderful it is to welcome death, but it is a different reality in concrete, especially when the human bondage is thicker than blood. We look at the death of Jesus as a different kind of reality, where he subdues death and reigns victorious, and when we die, we too share in his glory, which is a new kind of identity and home address that we all can be truly proud of.