Jaathasyahi Dhruvo Mruthyuhu......

Me and my wife were woken up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning around 3:40 A.M. by a phone call. The call was from Baroda and the caller is Shilpa. The news was a bad and undesired one. Karthik, Shilpa's brother died because of Respiratory failure. He is just 27 years old and was working as an assistant manager with Bank of America.

Shilpa's parents have helped me and Vaidehi in the real hour of need. They have adopted Vaidehi for the purpose of our marriage and performed the Kanyadan, when couple of people who promised to do that backed out at the moment of need. It is such a plight for the family to loose their son. I decided it is time for me to repay through gestures and we went down to their home immediately.

Apparently, Respiratory failure because of Asthma happens in the rarest of rarest cases, one in a million and unfortunately it was Karthik’s turn this time. Although I don't share a great rapport with Kartik, when ever we met, we shared our opinions on music, movies and politics, especially BJP and their ideology. He is a staunch and ardent supporter of VHP.

The family is swept off by melancholy. His father is a brave man, he resumed to immediate responsibilities hiding his anguish for the lost son. I didn't utter any words of console to them at that moment as I felt it would not serve any real purpose. In such occasions silence speaks much more than what words can do and what they actually need is a weeping shoulder rather to platitudinal philosophies.

One thing that I observed was, there is no dearth of people who suffer from identity crisis and try to quench their recognition thirst even in such sad occasions. We had an old man, a self proclaimed subject matter expert in such matters, who meddled with all people in their work right from the priest to the person who built the bamboo platform to carry the body. He advised the priest on how long the ritual should go on, claimed that he had complete knowledge of the process and could carry out independently. The only person unperturbed by the emotions of the people around him seemed to be the man who constructed the bamboo platform. He was so involved in his work tying the bamboo logs together and gauging if it would be strong enough to carry the body that human emotions, sounds of sob didn't affect him. He sounded as if he had been habituated to occupational disturbances.

Shilpa's family would take time to digest the fact. Her ICICI bank colleagues might want to call her to express their condolences, here is her number 9849990197. Death of a family member doesn’t kill him alone, it would make his/her family members half dead at least for some period of time. Your call would help them to live their life again.

May Kartik's soul rest in peace. Looks like one thing is guaranteed in life, there is no guarantee for anything. I will close this with a sloka from Bhagavatgeetha.....

“Nainam chindanti sastrani

nainam dahati pavakah

na cainam kledayanty apo

na sosayati marutah”

It means, the soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.

The body is like the clothes we wear and the soul moves from one set of clothes to another. Death is for the body, soul has no death.