ARUN SHOURIE ******************************** image.png Preparing For Death by Arun Shourie ; Published by Penguin Viking ; Pages 516; Price ₹799. ************************************************************* Arun Shourie is a prolific writer but quite comprehensible. His learning is as eclectic and wide like that of Bertrand Russell and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Lord Tennyson wrote " In the Spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love". In old age our thoughts turn to "Intimations of Mortality”--on “Death”. Shourie , 78, has worn several hats — editor, economist, politician and author — with consummate ease for his thorough grasp of many subjects and is respected for his grasp of an impressive gamut of issues. He was hospitalised on December 1, last year after he suffered a head injury while out on a walk near his home in Lavasa, Maharashtra.This book could be a result of that fall. The book under review is chockful of insights, novel interpretations, practical suggestions and methods to achieve “peaceful dissolution of our minds” when we are about to depart. According to Shourie, “Every chapter contains practical lessons. I have also summarised some of the teachings on meditation which I have found useful, which, in fact, helped me when I was in ICU a few months ago,” Shourie’s book is at once a meditation on death and a handbook on dying both theoretical and practical. The first part is basically narrative. It has fascinating photographs of the five persons from history whose deaths Shourie analyses with deep perspectives and unknown cameos — Gautama Buddha, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Ramana Maharshi, Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave. The second half of the book is reflective where the reader is treated to a discipline of logic and absolute speculation. He lays bare the secret enveloping death and displays utter stoicism . We are introduced to 14th Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso. The Dalai Lama has lots of things to declare that is both wise and witty . Vali, the king of Kishkindha, on being pierced through his heart by an arrow sent by Rama from behind a tree, asks the Prince of Ayodhya: ‘Why have you done this to me? What was my crime? I did you no harm...’ Vali’s question in one form or another haunts every ‘ordinary’ mortal, with the ‘you’ in it being Death itself, the entity that comes sans notice, mostly ill-timed, quite ruthless and therefore absolutely unjustly. Resistance may exist but at the very end of that end, there is a kind of courage. The kind that may be seen in any person being executed. Stoicism becomes the norm. The memorable deaths of history are basically deaths of human beings with organs that feel pain, limbs that turn helpless, minds that confess to experiencing of agony. There is, in other words, a Vali in every Valiant and the ‘arrow’ is in comprehension of the whys and wherefores of life. Be the end ever so gracefully, even willingly, accepted, an understanding of death is not part of the hero’s heroic moment. Arun Shourie relates a conversation with a friend of his own ‘seniority’ at a memorial service. “Yaar, Arun,” the friend says to him, “Have you noticed one thing? We now know more people on that side of the LoC than on this?” Who controls and why, that Line which we must all cross, is the question that makes this book an instruction for the mind and a balm for the heart. Shourie has offered impressive stories from ancient Hindu and Buddhist scriptures as well as from current times.He commences with the Buddhist maxim that death is a certain thing but the time and place thereof are uncertain.Then he focuses on death and dying and speculates as to how to make it easier to endure. Except when it is sudden and accidental, death follows the failure of the body and the weakening of the mind, leading to helplessness, which helps to prepare you for the inevitable. Shourie’s real interest is in Buddhism and Advaita as the book is replete with anecdotes of the Buddha and those connected with Advaita. The book is made lively by haikus from Basho and other Japanese masters or little passages from the Upanishads or poems from Urdu and Punjabi sources. Shourie talks of the last days of the great men and points out how even they persons suffered at the very end. He analyses the techniques used by them and how their deaths were eased by mind over matter.From their lives, he infers that “even the noblest have to suffer the afflictions that strike us ordinary folk, the broken arm of Sri Ramakrishna, the broken collarbone of Sri Ramana, the duodenal ulcer that plagued Vinoba, the cancers that ultimately consumed both Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Ramana. The difference is that they didn’t wallow in self-pity. They strove on and reached unimaginable heights in spite of the afflictions”. Shourie comments impassively about his own family and his own illness to demonstrate the fragility and uncertainty of life and also emphasises on the need to provide security to your family after your death by making a will or by setting up a personal trust. Arun Shourie takes cue from major religions, philosophy, and spiritual train of thought to help people face their end with equanimity. The training of the mind is regarded as a prerequisite to get over the frailty and the suffering of the body. The question this mesmerising account raises — actually explicitly though it shies away from an answer — is did Arun’s father, Hari Dev Shourie, the founder of Common Cause, commit euthanasia? By making convincing forensic use of the letter his father left, Arun presents a compelling case that drives one to the conclusion that his father committed euthanasia. Shourie adds that Buddha maintained that attachments are not just for survival — we tend to think that those are the things which determine a person's happiness. Shourie threw some light , at a Lit-Fest---on how most of the primary figures in his book endorsed and practised euthanasia in different forms. The only person who hesitated at the time of death is Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He was childlike and had a certain kind of innocence to him. That is quite the description of a true mystic — they behave like children on occasion.But they would certainly think that when the time comes, you should lose. And in a sense, Vinoba did that — fasted to death. Gandhiji took that decision in Kasturba's case. In that sense they were all practitioners of euthanasia by going through with the act of 'dissolving' oneself." This is a book that makes one think and be prepared for the Final Journey. P.P.Ramachandran. 27/12/2020. 16