Coping with grief

IN life all of us suffer set-backs and lose people we love. We have to evolve our own methods of coping with disappointments and grief to regain our peace of mind. Most people turn to God and prayer. Non-believers turn to their relations and friends for comfort and reassurance. And there are those who do not believe in God or the efficacy of prayer nor do they depend on friends or members of their family, but prefer to fight their battles single-handed.

There are quite a few well-argued and well-worded pronouncements on the subject. There is the classic The Book of Job in the Old Testament. I found the treatment somewhat amoral in as much as it revolved round a bet between God and Satan to test the faith of god-fearing job. The poor man was deprived of his sons and wealth and finally afflicted with bodily sores but remained firm in his faith in a compassionate God. Then there is Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis composed in the agony of shame he suffered when he was convicted and when it was exposed in the press that he was a sodomite. Despite wallowing in self-pity, it remains a masterpiece of poetic-prose. The most recent treatise on the theme which I read only last week, on the recommendation of a friend, is A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. It was first published in 1961 but escaped my notice.

C.S. Lewis was a celebrated writer and critic. He was deeply in love with his wife. She was stricken with cancer. In its terminal phase, husband and wife discussed subjects like the existence of God, human and divine love, why there is so much suffering in life and how to cope with it. The one thing that struck me about Lewis’s thesis was that the more you are attached to a person, the more you suffer when you lose him or her. That is why the loss of child hurts much more than the loss of a spouse because love for one’s child is unqualified whreas love for a spouse is not always so. Another thought that came to my mind was the truth behind the Buddha’s preaching that one must remain detached from people and things: the more you are attached to someone or something, the more you feel hurt when you lose them. But how can one be in love with someone and yet remain detached? The two things don’t go together. Lewis chose to be in love with his wife and therefore he suffered intense grief at her going. He writes: "For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more. If we had never fallen in love we should have none the less been always together, and created a scandal."

Both Lewis and his wife were deeply religious. Naturally both turned to God when they realised that the dissolution of their partnership was at hand. He writes: "Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel his claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?"

The bitter truth is that while you can drown your sorrows in prayer as you can in work or drink, they come back in full force when the prayers are over, when time comes to stop work and effects of liquor are dissipated or turn into hangovers. Then comes admission of defeat: Jeyra bhaana meetha laagey — what the Lord wills I’ll accept with grace. That is not true because we continue to feel aggrieved at the injustice done by God to us. Thy will be done is the Christian phrase for the same tense of defeat.

The only positive idea I could distil out of Lewis’s long narration of his own grief is that the only way to cope with suffering is to learn to suffer.

Teaching child in the womb

Mirza Sajid Ali Khanis quite a character. He was born in Lucknow and claims descent from the ruling family of Awadh as well as with the descendants of Tipu Sultan. He lives in New York with his Punjabi wife and four children. He has two stores in Manhattan selling American antiques and has plenty of time to indulge in academic pursuits. Recently several US papers carried articles on his theory that human foetus after three months of growth in the womb begins to react external stimuli. For its development into a healthy baby, its mother should take care to nurture it even before it is born. We know that a mother who indulges in excessive intake of alcohol and drugs or is a heavy smoker can damage the baby she is carrying both mentally and physically. His first paper published in Bombay Psychology Journal in 1986 sought to establish that schizophrenia (split personality) begins in the womb and with proper treatment can be prevented from growing. He developed his theme further into "womb conditioning". In short you can instill self-confidence in the foetus and make it an achiever in later life.

Mirza’s theory recommends a bi-weekly gentle oil massage of the pregnant woman’s belly so that the foetus feels its impact. The expectant mother should also talk and sing to the child within her. After delivery, breast-feeding is a must. The suckling baby begins to love the feel of its mother’s breast and when it is weaned it should be fed with a bottle that is shaped and has a texture resembling female breast. Mirza has invented a feeding bottle of the kind and markets it under his father’s name, Dara Bottle. He has also invented a baby’s cot in which the child feels as snug and warm as it was in the womb. Mirza has designed the proto-type of such a cot and named it after his niece Shazia.

A child is most receptive in the first few years of its birth. It looks at everything with awe and wonder. It is the best time to tap its potential and give it direction. If it shows interest in music, play good music for it. If it shows interest in drawing, expose it to good paintings. It it likes to be in nature, take out the baby to parks and gardens and introduce it to trees, flowers, birds and butterflies. Its interest will mature with the years.

What Mirza says makes sense.

One-up on corruption

A competition was once held to establish which was the most corrupt country on earth. To the astonishment of its citizenry, India only took second place. After a time, an explanation emerged. The Indian authorities had bribed the judges.

Bribe and tell

A businessman approached the Minister of Commerce and asked for a licence

"I will pay you Rs 2 lakh if you grant me this licence," said the businessman to the minister, "and nobody will know about it."

"Give me Rs 10 lakh and you can tell everyone," replied the minister.

(Contributed by Judson Cornelius, Hyderabad)