To Live Forever
Special editions of history tell that figurative immortality lies in extravagant acts of courage, service, valor, kindness, piety, and sometimes even pure, unadulterated evil. What does a person have to do in order to be remembered? How must he make sure that the cruel waves of time don’t take him away into the Great Unknown without an iota of guilt? Heroes make history, that we know, that is why they are heroes. But the great villains also made history. ‘Great’ is a great word. You can make anything or anyone great by qualifying it with ‘great’.
Language must be handled with extreme care, though. It is subjective but easily feigns objectivity. And once we receive the message, all that is left with us is that impression of objectivity. We toy with it, examine it, “critically think about it” (as some would like you to believe), do anything but get it inside our heads. Probably because we do not have the capacity to do that. Some might even say that to speak your thoughts is to kill them. So, the idea is that we must be very careful when reading about great kings, great authors, great scholars, great actresses, great people in general…
While making your way through any history book, it may feel as if immortality means getting your name in there somewhere, somehow. The written word has lived long; it has survived and there are good chances that it will continue to survive, even if its forms evolve. It is natural, albeit somewhat ungodly, for a politician to smile a satisfactory smile when he raises the curtain in an inaugural ceremony of a local water pump, for he clearly sees his name written in bold on a marble slab. “Marble lasts for a long time”, may be he thinks to himself. So, it is natural for us to imagine fleeting temporal dimensions as eternal, and it is natural for us to try and name a part of those dimensions after ourselves. But natural doesn’t necessarily mean not mistaken.
Marble is hard and endures a lot, but it is hardly unbreakable. Nameplates outside houses fade away. Books are burnable. Digital data may not always be accessible. The written word rests on shaky grounds, it seems. But even if the ground is solid enough for time periods that are practically relevant to us, it all ends with the Day of Judgement. What, then, becomes of our attempts to find immortality?
The immortality that we yearn for in our theories assumes our world (as such) extending into eternity. That is a big assumption. The world will come to an end, and with it the mortal immortality of people who live after their deaths through the written word. The written word is relevant as long as there are people to read it.
And so, we arrive at a fork in the road. Here, we must choose our way. For anyone who finds the closing of eyes and stopping of heartbeats as the end of life, immortality ceases to exist once all the people have their eyes closed and their heartbeats stopped. There is nothing beyond that, they might say. Immortality is not even meaningful anymore in such a case. Their road seems to go, quite literally, to a dead end. But for those who believe in Beyond, the question of immortality becomes even more relevant after death. The very definitions vary in the two cases, not only of death but also of life.
For the believers in Beyond, I have a story of possible immortality.
I used to catch chingchi rides from outside my university to a bus station. One-way ride from my university to the station cost 15–20 rupees. A maximum of six people shared one chingchi. That one day, as I hailed a ride and sat in one of the front seats of the chingchi, a man came and sat on the front seat at the opposite end. The man was tall, old — probably in his 70s or 80s — and dark-skinned. He was wearing a white dhoti and kurta and some of his front teeth were absent. I think I remember this because he smiled for some reason before taking the seat. I felt weird and looked away. From his overall attire I had gotten the feeling that he was a poor laborer. Despite that feeling of weirdness, I immediately felt some pity as I recklessly extrapolated what his “poor labor life” was like. Life is especially hard for such people. On and on I went thinking about what possible struggles he has to endure in this world every single day. “Poor man”, I thought but my thoughts were interrupted by the halt of the rickshaw at my stop.
I got off and dived into my handbag to get loose change to pay for my ride. As I was just about to take the money out, I saw the old man pay the exact amount to the driver. He gestured at me to keep the money and smiled, showcasing his non-existent teeth once again. I was taken by a shock. How could I accept a monetary favor like that, no matter this small, from a complete stranger in front of other complete strangers without any reason whatsoever? No reason would have sufficed anyway. And it was not just about the issue of accepting favors from a stranger. In my conjured fantasy, he was the one who needed any sort of financial help; he was the poor laborer, after all. With a swish and a flick, he had shaken my fantasy upside down. I hurriedly took out the money from my bag and tried to give it to the driver. He looked at the old man and then at me. I told the old man that there was no need for this at all. May be I thanked him for the offer too. He gestured again and insisted that I keep the money. He had this big smile on his face the entire time. It was not weird this time. I looked in his eyes and understood that I had no choice. They were brimming with kindness and endearment. I decided that I could not stand between him and the kind deed that he intended to do. I “let” him pay for me and with a confused smile, I put my money back in my handbag. The chingchi went away and I was left wondering for a long, long time.
Why did he do that? I still do not know. But now, I don’t care so much. Why did I accept? As I said, no reason would suffice as an explanation. It was not reason that made me put my money back. It was the innocent twinkle in his eyes and his enthusiastic smile. He was so eager to give. It was as if his life depended on it, as if he couldn’t live without being kind to a stranger like that. At one point I felt as if I had reminded him of some grandchild of his. “Poor man”, I had thought before, but for an instant it felt like he was the richest, the most generous, the most blessed man I had ever met.
Now when I think of kindness, it is hard to not have a faint picture of a toothless smile glow in my memory. Now when I think about all the evil in the world, it is hard to conclude the world to be nothing but evil because I know there are people who are ready to share others’ burdens even without the slightest expression of such a need. Not only is he immortalized in my memory, but he also continues to live in minuscule parts of each and every good deed I do. If I ever do any act of kindness, he has a part in it. And if someone builds on my kindness, he also has a part in that. The chain goes on and the chain will go Beyond. This kind of immortality does not need words or dedicated history books. It survives through thoughts and actions, moving from one soul to another to another to another…and then into another realm.
So if you want to live forever, live in someone’s heart — as a fond memory, as an inspiration, as a reason to believe in the goodness of human beings…
