And quietly she came, in the night, slowly taking away life on earth, spreading wrinkles in skin, callouses in hands, aches and pains slowing movement. Sometimes she came like the whirlwind, snatching away young life, bubbling with energy, fresh skin, beautiful hair... The body is washed, clothes changed, perfumed candles lit. Invariably, relatives turned up to weep, priests came to bury or burn, rituals performed. Then the living got on with life to face just another day.
The dead don’t worry no more about old age, fears of being poor and indigent, not whether children would fight over one’s belongings on earth. Death is eternal, inexorable and induces a hush in thoughts, in conversations. There are obituaries, increasingly exaggerated legends and hidden values of the deceased that everyone failed to see when they lived.
M.P Narayana Pillai is a writer who was much ahead of his times- A journalist who transmuted into a story writer. His works of non fiction aren’t available easily anymore. He loved to shock the gentle, staid Kerala society. He shook the notions of political correctness in an increasingly hypocritical society. He wrote on politics, sex, middle class morality and turned conventional wisdom on its’ head. He could foresee the advent of cable and satellite TV so many years before technology took baby steps. He advocated sponsorship of roads and stadiums named after dead rich guys whose relatives won’t mind sparing some rupees to get their forefathers’ names etched in stone; and not after political personalities whose successors treat the country as inherited property. It could defray the cost of construction and who cares if they are named after rubber tycoons in Kottayam or Cashew kings in Kollam. He advocated reservation for Nair caste- who else has family gods, who else usurps priestly duties, who else has matrilineal system? Tribals, of course and if the stuck-up Nairs don’t see the benefits of reservation, they ought to be consigned to mental asylums, he said. So all ye Nair warriors- stop bragging about dubious lineage and sit in dharna in Kerala Government Secretariat, said he.
And he wrote about suicides and other more painful forms of death. He advocated for the right of humans to die at the time of their choosing. Jains starved to death. Vedas spoke about spreading the holy Darbha grass on river banks and awaiting death. It was the Semitic religions that spread canards about suicide. They spread the belief that your life doesn’t belong to you but to some woozy creature in the sky called god. This wasn’t done with altruistic aims. It is smart to spread that belief to prevent mass suicide among slaves- wouldn’t it destroy the medieval empires if slaves decided to resort to mass suicide and put their masters in a spot? If poultry chicken had brains won’t they expedite their relentless march of death, thus depriving their owners of juicy meat and revenues?
If Pillai were alive, he would have reiterated his theories on suicide in these times of climate change. The burgeoning billions of living, breathing humans and their reckless consumption of energy and goods have really raised questions about sustainability of our planet. He would have advocated peaceful, painless suicides. He would have written against burning dead bodies, against using wooden boxes and marble plaques to bury them. He would have argued that it is better to dig a big hole, lower the body sans clothes, fill it with red soil and plant a fruit tree… He would have found a ready supporter in me…
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