Death is absent as well as present, near as well as far, a routine occurrence as well as a rare happening. How we experience death depends on who dies and the kind of relationship we have with the one who dies.

Passing away of a single person can shatter you to the core while death of hundreds of people may be just a news, a mere figure with no intensity to overwhelm you with sorrow. One can observe that generally it’s not death per se that scares us as much as the death of someone we have been close to or could relate to in any meaningful way. So death can be both; an awfully disorientating experience and a piece of negligible information. Nature of our experience of death is usually determined by the nature of our bond that we forge with what passes away. In the context of individual what passes away becomes irretrievable and thus a part of eternity. Irretrievability is a source of unsettling anguish. So we mourn the dead and more so the eternally lost chance of changing and improving our relationship with the person - who passes away - we care for and love. We invariably realise with a sense of regret after the death of a dear one that we could have developed the relationship in a different and better manner. There are things potentially existing in a relationship we desire to actualise and nurture but keep postponing under the illusion of life being interminable which is inverted way if dealing with fear of death.

Epicurus using his clever logic says: “Why should I fear death. If I am, then death is not. If death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not”. We can logically overcome fear of death but visceral fear of death which guards life is something we are condemned to live with. Relationship remains not fully fulfilled till it’s terminated by the hand of death. That’s why in our popular tradition we come across people lamenting at the death of their dear ones with verses such as; “Had I known that you would leave, I would have done this, I would have done that…”.

Lamentation is in fact about the loss of opportunity in future to better the relationship. Therein lies the secret of glorifying the dead through wails, elegies and eulogies in public. Poet Bertolt Brecht puts it with profound simplicity: “…We have said all there is to say, there is nothing more between them and us, our faces hardened as we parted/ But we did no say the important things, but saved on essentials / Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not. Easy words, they were, pressing against our teeth; they fell out as we laughed, and now they choke us”.

Paradox of human situation is that while knowing fully well the ephemerality of our life, we subconsciously take the fact of its being there as its permanence. So much so that mystics, poets and philosophers who ponder over and talk of death are considered robed in morbidity in a hedonistic world hooked on pleasures of consumption.

Another factor that needs to be probed is the sense of absolute loss of the world built by us and those who depart. This world may be minuscule and insignificant across the social spectrum but existentially it’s meaningful for the individuals who inherit it. The dead are relieved of agony of living but the living ones groan under the invisible weight of anguish and angst. “The dead are kept alive for the sake of living ones after all / Death is a loss for those who the dead leave behind,” says a poet. This is the reason why in all cultures we have elaborate rituals to mourn and celebrate the dead.

Community instinct formed the bedrock of rituals of yesteryear which is gradually waning in the changed historical conditions of our contemporary society driven by individualistic urges that are touted as a mark of an apparently free individual. One of the important factor for the vanishing of such rituals may be an increase in population which makes death of an individual socially insignificant. Secondly, humans no longer face the threat of extinction as they did in the past when there were few scientific and technological means available to ward off the negative influence of hostile forces the old world lived surrounded by. Ironically the greatest threat we now face is of our own making; self-destruction. It springs from new times rather than the old. Of old times the poet says “already mothers tell stories of animals that drew cars called horses”.

Let’s have for instance a brief look at the way death was perceived, experienced and articulated in classical times in Punjab. Hafiz Barkhurdar, a highly imaginative and skillful poet, describes for us the death of his celebrated protagonist Mirza in his legend Qissa Sahiban [The Tale of Sahiban]: “Darkness concealed the sky the day Mirza was killed /peacocks mourned and cranes let loose their cries / Houris got girdled to beat their chests / fairies came down to condole / bakers doused their ovens and no one cooked the food / deer mothers cried on the flat plane and fawns stood wonderstruck /seven heavens shook when Mirza breathed his last”.

Unfortunately we have almost forgotten the art of mourning those who depart from this world. And it has something to do with the times we live in. Egoism is a defining feature of so-called modern individual which seriously impairs his/her capacity for empathy, the prime human quality. Fortunately our women, repressed and marginalised, still are human enough to bid those farewell who die with tears and wails. Tears embarrass men which make them less human. Sadly being less human doesn’t embarrass men even in the matters of death. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2019