[Reader-list] 3rd posting

[tasneem dhinojwala]

DEALING WITH DEATH-THE ANCHOR OF FAITH

“Mouth matlab is duniya se doosri duniya me jaana”, says Mujaab bhai. He is 
a short statured man whose age it won’t be easy to guess. There is a grey 
unkempt air about him which could either be due to age or due to hardships. 
He works as a helper in G.P.Girls Hostel of Jamia Millia University.

His wife died 7 years back. It was a kitchen mishap and she was burnt alive. 
He had gone out to get the kids from school when it happened. She was in 
hospital for 3 days and eventually she died. After 2 years he stopped doing 
post death rituals for her. “Hum to ab chahte he ki usko hamesha ke liye 
bhool jaaye to acha he.bahut satata he”. After her demise he feels all the 
responsibilities are on him; everything from washing the clothes of the kids 
to cooking”.

But he does believe in an after life where one can be free of the hassles of 
this world.”acha kaam karte he to jannath milega,nahi to jahannam.” So he 
too tries to gain heaven by doing good deeds.
             ……..
There is something about the mystery and invincibility of death which leads 
one to belief. Some way to explain the unexplainable.
              ……..

“Nadira baaji”. That is what people around her calls her. She is 33 years 
old and is doing her MA in Urdu. For her this world is a “musafir khana”. 
After death you enter another phase of life. She lost her mom 10 years back. 
She was with her mom at that time. She still remembers that her neighbours 
and relatives continuously made her and her sister recite kalmia. She says,” 
at that time I wondered why every one was asking me to say kalmia,the 
fundamental  article of faith in Islam. They were saying bas kalmia pado aur 
zyada mat socho”

May be religion has a cathartic effect. Or may be it is the hope that faith 
brings. The hope that you are not losing your loved one forever; that you 
would actually be meeting her /him in the “hereafter” where the injustices 
of this world will be undone. Mujeeb bhai is a firm believer in this utopia. 
He believes that since his wife had a  painful death like an accident, she 
will be in heaven.

In Nadira baaji’s mother’s case, all the post death rituals were done. The 
poor were fed, The Holy Quran was read. She believes that the benefit of all 
these deeds will go to her late mother.

Death is inevitable. You can’t escape it; your only choice is to deal with 
it. So Nadira baaji recites the Quran verse which says “Every soul has to 
taste death”. She then speaks of the rites done to the body of the departed 
soul. As the person dies s/he is positioned facing the Ka’aba,the holy place 
of Muslims. The next important step is to bathe the body. She is not sure of 
the religious significance of the ritual death anniversaries, but her family 
follows them. Nadira baaji believes that one shouldn’t cry  over one’s dead 
one more than 3 days. You need to take death stoically and  take on with the 
duties of life . For her faith is a tool which helps to move ahead even 
after something as devastating as death.
…………..


While I  listen to the tapes of these interviews on death, my Kashmiri room 
mate interferes. She says, “If you go to Kashmir and ask people about death, 
they will laugh at you. It is an every day occurrence there.  Nothing 
unusual about it”

……


Sister Celine is a catholic nun from Kerala. Once she was a high school 
teacher;but now she works as a missionary in Manipur. She is on a short stay 
in Delhi.

She believes in the healing power of faith and helps people to overcome 
their grief. “I lost my father at the age of 29 and was over come with 
grief”,she says. She was a nun at that time. However faith helped her in 
what she calls “inner healing”. Through prayers she was able to come to 
terms with her grief and now helps a lot of others to do the same.


According to her,the concept of heaven and hell in Christianity shouldn’t be 
taken in its literal sense. Hell means those who are unable to attain the 
love of God. The very fact that they couldn’t partake God’s grace itself is 
the hell for them. For her,heaven is not a beautiful place in the material 
sense of the term,but the experience of attaining the love of God.

She speaks of catholic rituals were death is seen as not a tragedy but an 
experience of reaching God. After death,the body is sponged and is clad in 
white. For women,their wedding dress is used. A crown is placed over the 
head of the body and  a bouquet is held on hands. The funeral processions 
are grand  and the body is placed on the tomb. The priest blesses the tomb 
and says the bible lines “oh, human,you came from dust and goes back to 
dust.”

For Sister Celine death is  only a stage which leads to resurrection as in 
Jesus Christ’s case.

The lines seems to have an unknown power which helps people to deal with the 
ultimate unknown –Death;whether it is the bible line Sister Celine quotes or 
the line from Quran which Nadira baaji recited, “Every soul has to taste 
death.”As for Mujeeb bhai ,he firmly believes in the “hereafter” which 
Maulana speaks of in Friday prayers. May be without this belief or “inner 
healing”,it might not be every easy to move on in life after a near one’s 
demise.

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