Skip to main content

 

Living With Death


The tragic rows of wooden coffins in Italy, waiting for a lonely burial are images difficult to erase. Live data of deaths reduces lives to statistics. We are not unused to statistics from wars, plagues, pandemics. However, information unfolding before our eyes is a new phenomenon in a digitally connected society.

One cannot claim ordinary people have never had to face the real possibility of dying, faced daily in Syria, Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine. What has stunned many is that this pandemic, like T.S.Eliot’s yellow fog of ‘insidious intent’, has wrapped itself silently across all nations of the world, rich and poor, peaceful or war torn.  

The fear we experience is not of illness, but of possible death. Death was once seen as a spiritual or theological inevitability. Plato believed the true attainment of pure knowledge, the wisdom we desire, is only possible once we quit our bodies. Belief in life after death, denied the finality of death. Ancient Egyptians made elaborate preparations for the afterlife of the deceased. Simpler burials across the ancient world placed objects in graves for use in the next life. 

The Venerable Bede wrote in the 7th Century, “the present life  of men on earth is like the flight of a single sparrow through the hall”  The Quran says once we have died , this life will seem as if we had only stayed for an evening or at most till the next morning.

As Europe secularized, death and illness was explained scientifically. Death became an abstract concept, romanticized in art and literature. Images of the terrifying hell of Hieronymous Bosch, were replaced by Elysium and Eden. Graves were adorned with beautiful sculptures of winged angels   The  20th Century developed medical interventions and vaccines  to stave off death, which was seen as an unwelcome intrusion to the pleasures life had to offer.  John Donne rebukes Death: ‘Death be not proud’  ‘One short sleep past, we wake eternally/And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die’.  Dylan Thomas writes ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ ‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light’. With elixers and cryogenics, modern society wanted to conquer death.

In 20C western societies, death was hidden from public view, taking place in hospitals and hospices, attended not by family or priests, but by medical practitioners. Death is euphemistically called ‘passing away’.   Bodies are prepared by professional undertakers. The only place where death is watched with eager horror is in the removed-from-life fictional world of cinema, television and video games.  And now we come full circle to the public acknowledgement of death as the covid pandemic sweeps unrelentingly through homes all over the world. 

So how should one deal with death?  All religions have elaborate funeral ceremonies. Some Filipino tribes keep their dead in their homes for years dressing them up for social events. The spirt of ancestors are invoked through magical ceremonies or séances . The New Orleans jazz funerals and Irish wakes, celebrate the passing of the dead. Ghanians make colourful coffins. Tibetans have open air sky burials. Mausoleums, named after the Anatolian King Mausolus, keep memories alive, the Taj Mahal being the most famous. Shrine s of Sufi saints are venerated everywhere. All Souls Day, Día de los Muertos, and Shab-e-Barat are reminders of death.  Music is composed to encapsulate personal loss – Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Ave Maria, Mahalia Jackson’s songs at Martin Luther Jr’s funeral, Elton John’s Candle in the Wind.  

Sufis welcome death to achieve reunion with the Beloved ,“fearless in the face of finitude”. Sufis ask us to ‘die before we die’  to erase our love for the world. Ghazzali said ‘The first sign of love of God is not to be afraid of death, and to be always waiting for it’

Durriya Kazi

April 4, 2020

durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

  

 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Decorated Trucks of Pakistan

International Institute for Asian Studies / Association for Asian Studies / Asia Committee, European Science Foundation First International Convention of Asia Scholars Leeuenhorst Conference Centre, Noordwijkerhout , Netherlands , 25-28 June, 1998 Panel: “ Shaking the Tree: New Approaches to Asian Art” / Session: Decorated Transport Decorated Trucks of Pakistan Durriya Kazi June 1998. Karachi Meaning is always in process, what has been called “a momentary stop in a continuing flow of interpretations of interpretations”. This paper pauses at some facts and some observations about decorated trucks of Pakistan , a subject that has elicited tantalisingly few studies. Pakistan is often presented geographically and thus historically as the corridor of land between the mountain passes that separated the near East from the plains of India . Less mentioned and more significant is its identity as the valley of the River Indus which has historically ...
What have we done to our youth? At this year’s Art and Design degree show at the University of Karachi I was taken aback by the darkness that lies within the sweet looking cheerful young men and women graduating this year. There is always a degree of emotional turmoil that is expressed through art. However, this year’s work shook me to the core and I asked myself, what have we done to our youth?       Despair, depression, suicidal thoughts, a childhood of abuse, night terrors, stray dogs, gender labels were transformed into beautiful artworks, but reflected a deep anxiety. Art is a natural vehicle for personal expression. How many of those hundred million or so young Pakistanis have similar anxieties that are never heard? Have we disempowered our youth? Youth the world over are struggling to be heard. Malala Yusufzai for education, Greta Thunberg and the Friday school strikes for climate, March for Our Lives for gun control.  At the ages of 17 and ...
  Patterns of Infinity If we probe deeper into any phenomena – astronomy, the cycle of life, mathematics, we arrive at the concept of infinity. It is the most abstract of abstractions, although mathematicians have tried to devise ways to measure and rationalize infinity. Trying to make sense of the infinite is a bit like trying to contain the uncontainable. Contemplating infinity inevitably led all civilizations and all religions to the concept of God.   The art of most religions express God as an image or a symbol, perhaps to make it more accessible to devotees, leaving it to the philosophers to come to terms with the nature of infinity. The exception is Islamic Art, which from its earliest expressions of Quranic calligraphy, to the architectural design   of mosques,   made infinity the cornerstone of its expression. While most art continued on a human centric pathway, culminating in the cult of the individual, Islamic art remained rooted to an interconnecte...