Obituary of my dad

It has been a week since the sudden demise of my dad (at 72 years) and through our bereavement mom and I have had a lot to contemplate about his life. As a person, he was outright, outspoken and honest, a little too much for his own good. As a caring son and loving husband he was peerless and as a father he was borderline maniac. Nothing I did ever impressed him. He always believed I could do better. Grow more than his 6 foot 90 kg frame for starters. I have been literally hounded and abused for being a poor eater. Other than a chronic acid reflux issue and vitamin deficiencies, he was disease free. All organs, blood sugar, blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium were stable and in good condition. In 2021 he started going to the gym but loss of protein made him quit. This post is not to eulogize his life though.

Dad and his mom were endowed with extremely good genes. Grandma was also completely disease free. Both were addicted to sweets and drinking sugary water of Indian sweets and still their blood sugar never went up. Grandma went silently in her sleep in 2010. After a bout of acid reflux, dad developed slight respiratory problem and I took him to hospital. ECG, brain CT scan, chest x-ray all came out normal. He was given sedation to sleep and was sleeping soundly when silent cardiac arrest took him, just like his mom.

What I have learned from their lives is, as they grew older they found happiness in two things. They were able to eat and do mostly anything they wanted (dad had to take medication for acid reflux). Both dad and grandma loved animals and both kept in touch with the people they loved. Dad was a jovial man and loved cracking jokes all the time inside the house and with his friends, even the ones from his childhood days in Calcutta. Many of dad’s friends are far younger than him but all crazy like him.

People I talk to are surprised that disease free people can die. Prana or the life force that runs through our body is the cornerstone of all ancient healing methods like yoga and acupuncture. More prana means better health and less prana means weaker pulse and weaker immune system making us vulnerable to diseases. No matter how healthy we are when there is no more prana left in our body we die.

Many cultures believe in rebirth after death and rebirth depends on karma of our past lives and the state of our mind when we die. Dad had his share of regrets but I hope a good death in this life will give him a much better next life.

Leaving our imprints in the sands of time

This is something I had read on Facebook a while back and every time I think about it, my mind gets shaken. If there was a planet somewhere in the universe that was behind time measured in number of years on Earth by 65 million years and if there were living beings on the planet who could observe Earth, they would be seeing dinosaurs and the calamitous asteroid strike that destroyed them. This can be so true because light from supernova explosions that occured deep in the Universe millions and even billions of Earth years back is reaching us only now. So if we consider a planet that is a few thousand Earth years ahead of us, then the planet’s inhabitants might be seeing our future. What this essentially means is, if we are able to traverse through the Universe, we would be able to take snapshots of our planet throughout it’s life time. Sounds crazy? Yes it does. Now what should we understand from this?

First of all, we should stop thinking in terms of time. Time is simply a measurement based on a spacial body’s rotations and revolutions and it varies from one body to another. In the dark void of the Universe, time is immeasurable and immaterial. What this translates to us is, there is no good or bad time to do anything. Since we do not know if the life force or spirit within us is confined to our planet only, we should also stop counting our age. By measuring time and everything in terms of time, we have created perpetual walls around our minds from where what comes forth is only constricted thoughts. If we learn to manage our time properly and know how to do the things in our lives effectively, we do not need to live by the needle of our watches or the clocks of our mobile phones.

There is a whole lot of hope riding on our desire to become space travellers and loads of money and effort is being spent to leave our foot prints in our solar system and beyond. But to what end? When we calculate time in millions and billions of years, it says two things. One, we are allowing the monstrosity of distance to stifle us from thinking and seeking knowledge beyond the realm of what we know now and two, the technical knowledge we have now is simply not good enough for space travel because it is doing nothing to reduce our perception of distance and time.

I happened to read recently about the ancient Egyptian belief that three things essentially constitute a human being, body, life force and a personality which is unique and created in the life time. When we die, the life force goes away but the personality remains. No wonder that in Hindu tradition, when rituals are done yearly for the deceased in the families, the crows who answer the beckoning to eat the offerings of the rituals are considered as reincarnations of the dead because no matter what life form the dead may take, the personality will remain the same and that’s why the crows respond to the calls. Mummification of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs and high priests and their eventful burials with large quantities of food and wealth along with servants was supposed to be help them in their after life. But ancient aliens theorists are claiming that the bodies were preserved that way because Egyptians believed their Gods would come back some day and they have the power to give life force to the dead, so the buried ones could be brought back to life with their same personalities.

We are all essentially trying to leave behind a legacy of our own in the world, which is why we are always striving to achieve more. But nothing stays forever in the sands of time. In our world, everything is open to interpretations and the legacy we leave behind today may not be interpreted in the same way 50 years later. The birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, who spearheaded India’s freedom struggle, is now remembered more as a “dry day”, when shops selling alcohol are all closed down.
The value of everything in the world diminshes with the passage of time. If we can see the past, present and future of our planet from other far away planets in the Universe, how do we define what is true and what is false and what would we believe in? What happened, what is happening or what might happen? So essentially, everything fades into nothing. What would remain is the personality we create for ourselves. An endearing personality would live on through the thoughts of people who knew us and if we choose to believe in rebirths, a well developed personality will help us no matter what life forms we take. There are no other signatures that will stand the test of time.