On Death and Dying

On my next birthday in February, I’ll be 62. That’s in real time. My CNIC has me two years younger however because back in 1967 my father decided that I should not retire at age 60. Well, to begin with, I cheated my father and worked for only six and a half years (army) and another equal term for a multi-national firm. After that, it’s been a long holiday in which I have been very fortunate to make a sort of living as well.

In October 2000 my uncle, the only paternal uncle, died. We siblings called him Chan (our abbreviation for Chacha Jan) and some of my best childhood memories are associated with him. His death, naturally, had a very profound effect on me. That was the first time I actually thought of death and dying and that one day I too shall go into the long night. To be truthful, until then I had looked upon myself as indestructible and immortal.

Less than six weeks after Chan’s death, I was in Fort Munro with my friend Raheal Siddiqui from where we planned to walk down to Choti Zereen along an old mountain track. On the walk, I talked about death and asked Raheal to please write my obituary when I finally went. Such a thought had never occurred to me prior to Chan’s passing away.

Since that time, I have thought so many times of death; it has become sort of an obsession. It will come one day, I know. But I do not wish to die in a bomb blast or by a terrorist’s knife. I would like to live my life to the fullest and pass away not by disease but by simple old age. And I wish, oh I wish, that I can, as Dylan Thomas exhorts, not go ‘Gently into the night’ but, ‘Rave, rave against the dying of the light.’

Ever since Chan’s death, I have also indulged in another practice. Whenever I read of a death, I quickly work out how many years that person lived. And then I say to myself, What, only 89? That’s no age for someone to go. This means I have only so many more years. Today David Frost died. He was 74. What? Only 74? That gives me just twelve more years.

Postscript. My grandparents, aunts, a great-grandfather and the family’s servant and his wife and children died violently in Jalandhar at the time of Partition. I do not claim any prophetic qualities, but sometimes I see a violent end for myself.

The last lines of my unfinished autobiographical novel go like this: Soon the howling mob was at their door. ‘Don’t you think it would have been better to have migrated to Canada in 1993?’ said his wife.

But before he could answer, the pounding on the door was too loud for him to be heard. With a splintering crash the door gave and the crowd surged in. He saw the clubs rise and he did not even attempt to parry them for he knew it was futile. Blinding multi-coloured stars danced in his head as the first bludgeon came down. And then there was darkness.