Death vs Life

How often do we hear... Poor guy suffered a painful death.

How can a person suffer painful death? The pain is felt when person is alive. So should not one say...painful life? Why blame death?

People are always afraid of dying. Infact why should  one be afraid of death...scared of death...has anybody known what is beyond death. Life on other hand can be scary....still we cling on to Life and fear Death.

Is Death really bad...and Life always good?

Death and the organized mind

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure – Dumbledore (J K Rowling)

Came to know of two deaths recently, one of a person who had crossed his 70s and one who had just crossed his 40s. My sympathies to the family of the second one because he has two school going kids.

Why no sympathies for the first one?? Because he lived to such a huge age? No….not for that …but because I happened to read his farewell letter to his family. Yes, a very beautiful farewell letter and that too now now but 18 years back.

18 years back, he had organized everything, and was ready for his next great adventure. Though (like he himself wrote in the letter) , not everybody would agree to his way of handling certain things after his death, but was laughing and amazed at such clear thoughts. I am not sure if the letter was written at a time when he might not have been well, but the clarity of thoughts certainly prove otherwise.

Death is inevitable. It can come anytime, anywhere, out of the blue. It is upto us to organize ourselves before our death, so that certain things or people are taken care of. When we have time, when we are clear in mind, organizing at such times will certainly help.

This letter was in no way a Will or distribution of assets….but it was distribution of love and thoughts, and ideologies. My personal interacting with this gentleman has been very minimal, infact might have met him hardly twice or thrice in my life, but my respect for him has certainly grown manifold.

Colours

A girl from her childhood has colourful things around her in form of colourful bangles, lipstick, earrings,necklaces etc. She  grows up with those colours around her. Her bridal dress is of the brightest colours. But when her husband dies...she is deprived of all these and more importantly...colours.Seriously .... I just hate this system...particularly in the hindu community. What are the changes the male has to undergo if his wife dies first? Nothing. Then why this discrimination, and why is this continuing in this day and age?

Corruption

While chatting casually with one person, he was ruing the fact that his wife who works in a government department is unable to get a loan on her pension. He says that when he went personally to meet the concerned officer in-charge, he was asked for some bribe.

What shocks me is that corruption is so deep rooted now, that colleagues are asking for money from each other also to do some work or another. It only gets more disgusting.

Corruption is so deeply etched, that one has to pay money for obtaining a Birth certificate…because its a good news…one has to pay money for obtaining a Death Certificate…not because its good news…but because the person sitting there also has to feed his family!!!!!!!

Forget getting a Death certificate, the crematorium people are so outright rude, you dont give them something extra, they will make you wait for hours to start the last rites.

What “might” have started as a goodwill after having work done has today blown into full fledged corruption. Infact even today, there are people who pay in goodwill after seeing that their work has been done. This goodwill has now become the “right” for doing any work.

The best example in India was MTNL phones. Till they didnt have competition, even a normal diwali gift was a prestige issue for its employees. Any haggling with the customer, and the customer would find that the line has been disconnected all of a sudden!!!! Today with competition and realization dawning on them that they can have problems with their basic salaries also, the service has improved a lot.

So in similarity, should there be competition in Government also. An alternate governing system. Actually not a bad idea. Let there be more than one Governing system. Like subscribers of Reliance Energy, going in for Tata Power, having their services changed, people should have an alternate option for Government also. Then maybe things can improve.