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bhishma-stuthi-4

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M K Sudarshan • June 4, 1997 


srimathE lakshmi-nrsumha parabrahmaNE namaha
sri vedanta guravE namaha

Dear "bhAgavatOttamA-s", 

It's not a bad idea to begin discussing the subject of "antima-smriti" and
the "bhishma-stuthi" with a narration of personal encounters with death !

If you think I'm joking, you're wrong ! 

I'm deadly serious when I say that a proper appreciation of Bhishma's hymn
is virtually impossible without each of us first vividly recollecting our
respective brush with death or with the "act of dying".

At some point or other in our lives, each of us comes face to face with
Death, don't we, even before the time arrives when we have to be ready to
face our own. 

Usually, our most intimate encounters with death involve the passing away of
somebody very dear to us.... an old parent, a close relative or a bosom
friend. At other times we encounter death in impersonal but equally
impactful ways as, for instance, when we witness a fatal accident on a
highway or, in a hospital  we're visiting, we suddenly find a corpse being
wheeled past us into a mortuary....

While we become familiar with dying, Death itself, nevertheless, remains an
abstraction and an experience well beyond our mortal reach.

Which is perhaps the reason why our encounters with Death... or the physical
act of dying... produces in us a lot of mixed feelings. While sadness and
shock are the most common feelings that readily surface in our minds, we
become aware, too, of much more complex emotions lingering in the depths of
our heart ....long after sadness or shock has vanished from it.

When we are relatively young we are usually indifferent to such feelings. As
we grow older, however, we usually find that it has become very necessary to
unravel or define those complex feelings to ourselves in any possible way.
We then begin to feel, with a growing sense of urgency, that such definition
-- vague and incomplete as it may well be -- has, indeed, become central to
a real understanding of our own selves and of everything else in the world
about us. 

It's that gnawing need to unravel such complex feelings which is at the root
of man's religious endeavour.
 
Little do we realize then, that, even as adults, most of us remain no less
ignorant or mystified of Death than we were as children when we'd happily
been led to believe "dying" meant simply "flying away somewhere deep into
the skies". As the years roll on, our feelings remain as complex as ever
.... a strange mix of fear, awe, wonder, curiosity, resentment and ... and
utter powerlessness. 

As we grow older in age, we feel the pain of personal bereavement in a more
real sense than we did as children, perhaps ....but the mystery of death
continues to remain as baffling as ever.
                   
Without being be-stirred by one's own complex feelings about death, it will
be impossible to truly appreciate the underlying message of "bhishma-stUthi".

                    ************************************

My own closest encounter with death, many years ago, was watching my 90-year
old paternal grandmother, in my native Tirupati, pass away right before my eyes.

She'd lived to a ripe old age, leading a robust and ever-cheerful
SriVaishnavite life-style for many years. 

She'd never been inside a hospital; I'd never known her to suffer from any
ailment more serious than the common flu or mild indigestion; she'd never
needed an hearing-aid, bi-focal lenses or dentures.

But in her last days she became unrecognizable from her usual hardy self.

We found her one morning bed-ridden. She'd lost consciousness; she'd soiled
her bed in sleep.... like a baby. 

The friendly family-doctor was summoned. He examined her and left after a
few minutes, without scribbling down his customary precription.

We realized it meant the curtains were going down for my grandmother.

We then moved her quickly out of the inner-quarters and laid her out on a
bare straw-mat in the ante-room -- called "rEzhi" in Tamil -- of our big
ancestral house in Tirupati. 

The neighbours on Govindaraja Sannidhi street where we lived suddenly
started pouring in from everywhere.

They came and sat by my grandmother's side for a few minutes. They looked
into her impassive face and glazed eyes; they held her hands, shook their
heads and wept silently. Then, in a moment, they all left as silently as
they'd entered.

Telephone lines buzzed everywhere.

By late afternoon more relatives, from outside Tirupati, arrived. The whole
house was full of people nervously readying themselves for an imminent
funeral. Silently and discreetly, in the background, arrangements were being
made for all the ritual fuss and ceremony that death entails in a
SriVaishnava household .

In the midst of all the commotion my grandmother lay perfectly still.

Her face, although as immobile as stone, had a strange quizzical look on it.
The eyes, half-closed and half-open, stared fixedly at some distant
point....at some distant vision that only she, perhaps, could see.

Other than the hoarse sounds of her loud, laboured breathing, she was
utterly speechless.... entirely soundless.

Now and then, a relative would walk up to her and pour a spoonful of holy
"perumAL-theertham" into her dribbling, dry and limp mouth. Or a neighbour
would hold her head up and call loudly into her ears,"Pankajam, my dear
Pankajam, can you hear me ? Speak to me, my little Pankajam ! Are you there
? Don't you recognize me, your friend? Speak to me, dear Pankajam ....".

My grandmother did not as much as twitch a muscle. 

Only her breathing became more and more laboured.... and hoarser....until it
sounded to me -- a boy at that time --- like the low, measured whistling of
a simmering pressure-cooker.

A distant relative who'd rushed from Madras to pay his last respects to my
grandmother abruptly sat down by her side and began to chant the Vishnu
SahasranAmam and some so-called "karaNa-mantram-s". 

Everyone else fell silent.... until the only sounds that filled my big
ancestral house were the strains of my grandmother's agonized respiration
and the lilting cadence of ancient "vEdA-mantrA".

For two whole nights my grandmother lay exactly like that.... in what we
commonly refer to as "the throes of death". 

None could fathom what went on in her mind.... or in her soul...

She spoke nothing ..... not even the trace of a soft moan or an inaudible
cough was heard.

She didn't seem to hear anything either.

She recognized none of us; she did not even faintly acknowledge anyone's
presence..... not even her many sons, daughters and grand-children ....

She didn't have a morsel of food or a drink for over two full days.

My grandmother just lay there --- as inert as a human bag of flesh and bone
can be. 

She really teased and harried us all those two days and nights; she truly
tried the collective patience of everyone who'd gathered there in the great
house in Tirupati, expecting her "journey's end" to arrive soon. 

Supremely unconcerned about anything, she lay there in the "rEzhi" all by
herself, lost in some unknown reverie ....that only the dead and dying know
of.. ...

In retrospect it appears to me that, even without uttering a single word,
she was mishievously telling us all, loud and clear :

"Don't hustle me, guys! I'm going to take my own time! I'll depart when I
want to ..... in the Lord's good time."

                       **********************************

On the third morning, in the very early hours, someone raised a loud alarm,
"Ai-ya-yO .... Pankajam has left us for the Lord's World !".

The entire household erupted, as if on cue, into an orgy of mourning.....

When I, her youngest grandson, was shepherded into her presence to take a
last good look at my grand-mother, I peered intently into her lifeless face. 

The quizzical look was gone.

It was replaced, instead, I remember, with one of utter, nameless serenity.

                      ----------------------------------
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srimathE srivan satagopa sri narayana yathindra mahadesikaya namaha
sudarshan