Arun Shourie on coming to terms with death as final truth

Parbina Rashid

“It is in the mind that birth and death, pleasure and pain, in short, the world and ego exist. If the mind is destroyed, all these are destroyed too. The grief will have no background and will disappear along with the mind,” said Sri Ramana to a grief-stricken devotee who came to him after the death of his wife and children.

Since I firmly subscribe to the majority belief that “I will not die this year, in any case not this month and certainly not today”, I find Ramana’s advice difficult to absorb. The fact that so many ‘wise men’, who preach detachment throughout their life, but rush to some ultra-modern hospital to be on a life-support system when the end nears, has done nothing much to change my mind.

Arun Shourie makes a concerted attempt to change the likes of me by citing examples of the great men from history in his book, ‘Preparing for Death’. He devotes chapter after chapter to describe the last days of the Buddha, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Ramana Maharshi, Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave.

From their lives, he infers that “even the noblest have to suffer the afflictions that strike us ordinary folk, the broken arm of Sri Ramakrishna, the broken collarbone of Sri Ramana, the duodenal ulcer that plagued Vinoba, the cancers that ultimately consumed both Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Ramana. The difference is that they didn’t wallow in self-pity. They strove on and reached unimaginable heights in spite of the afflictions”.

What set the thoughts into motion for this book was Shourie’s painful stay at the ‘departure lounge’ (read the ICU) after he suffered a brain injury. But probably the seed was sown long back by his father, HD Shourie, about whom he talks briefly.

After losing his wife, HD Shourie systematically reduced his food intake. Closest to his daughter Nalini, he began to detach himself from her as well. He was active, both mentally and physically. At 93, he passed away peacefully, leaving a letter that read, “I have had a full life. Dayawanti has gone. My time has come…”

His letter led the family to wonder if he took his own life. For, he had been a strong advocate of euthanasia and even penned down a book called ‘Life’s Finale: Voluntary Exit’.

HD Shourie’s preparedness for death sounds more relatable than all other observations Shourie has based his book on.

Shourie discusses santhara or sallekhana mentioned in Jain scriptures, which is a form of voluntary death. Jainism disapproves of suicide but approves the act when a person abandons all food, water and medication and lets life slip away. The practice was challenged when Vinoba stopped taking food, water and medication. A few years ago, the Rajasthan High Court was petitioned to outlaw santhara on the ground that it was just a way of committing suicide.

Shourie’s intention is not to initiate a debate on either santhara or euthanasia. His aim is to help his readers come to terms with death as the final truth and he leans heavily on the spiritual path for that, so much so that at times his own voice is drawn in the teachings by the great men he has quoted so generously.

For instance, Shourie says with conviction that the theory of karma is just ‘convenient fiction’, because the ‘entire theory always ends up blaming the victim’. But when he quotes Ramana on the state of a person before death — ‘when a person gasps for breath, it indicates that the person is unconscious of his body; another body is being held and the person swings to and fro… the oscillation between the two bodies due to the present attachment not having been completely snapped’ — a reader is clueless whether Shourie too subscribes to the theory of re-birth.

While the book emphasises detachment at length, it leaves an important aspect out when it comes to preparing for death — how does one conquer the fear of the unknown? Isn’t it, in fact, the very premise on which religion is based?