"Tu bhi chal mere saath"

"You come with me too."

Here is an incident / a lesson / a story that has imprinted very strongly on my mind. Whatever I have inferred from it, I think about it a lot. So much so that it's kind of shaping my life trajectory.

I didn't want to write this piece. I gave a lot of thought to not writing it at all. But in the end my intuition won, and here it is.

This is related to the last moments of my grandfather. It's just one small sentence he said in his last moments. It was not some preaching or him giving some life lessons. It was a very natural thing that happened. And given all the life long context related to him in my mind, it just got deeply engraved on my mind.

I only heard about this thing almost a year after he passed, in an ordinary conversation between us siblings.

One day, after almost 1 year my grandfather passed, I was at home, and me and my cousins were having some fun discussions. As we talked, the subject drifted to my grandfather, and then to his final moments, and soon I wanted to know, in great detail, what had happened at the end: who was there, how he was, everything.

When it happened, i was not present there. My younger brother was there who narrated all this to me.

When and where this incident happened?

April 2022, an hour or so before sunset, at my family's house in my village in western Uttar Pradesh.

This is what happened (as narrated by my brother)

My grandfather had been losing his grip a little in those last moments. He grew uneasy and restless. One moment he was sitting up on the charpai (cot), the next he was lying down. He did this a few times.

My brother, mother, aunt, uncle, grandma, a few neighbours were there by his side. He was brought home from clinic that evening. No one was expecting that he will pass.

He kept growing restless, again and again. His speech was beginning to slur slightly.

And now, the moment imprinted on my mind:

My grandma and grandpa had not been on speaking terms for the last ten years or so. My grandpa was a very stubborn man; so is my grandma. One day a fight broke out between them, and they simply stopped talking. It wasn't that they separated, no. They went on living in the same house. We are a joint family with a big house, and in a house that big, the two of them could go on living without ever talking to each other. Occasionally the two of them would communicate indirectly, in metaphors (and honestly, those are some of the funniest memories all of us siblings share: the two of them taking digs at each other without ever speaking directly).

On the last day, my grandpa had returned from the clinic, and his condition didn't look good. It wasn't that he was bedridden or anything; he was fully alert, just weak, worn down by old age.

My brother told me that on that day, after years, my grandma asked him directly: 'Ab kaise haal hai?' (How's your health?). Grandpa replied: 'Haal behaal hai' (Not good at all). His speech was slurred, his eyes rolling back slightly and then steadying again. One moment he was sitting, the next he was lying down. At one point he asked, 'Chappal kahaan hai meri?' (Where are my slippers?), then drifted into confusion. And then, at one moment (this is that moment), he took my grandma's hand gently, held it firmly, and said, 'Tu bhi chal mere saath' (You come with me too) with a slightly hurried and pleading voice. And he went on like that. It was like he was able to see that he is going now, and will never return. My grandma was holding his hand, I don't know after how many years. And maybe the regret was starting to build at that point.

I sometimes think about her side of it too. Ten years of not speaking, in the same house, and then holding his hand at the very end. I don't know what those years were like for her, or what it cost her to hold that hand. I have never asked her. And probably will never.

And then he laid down on the charpai one last time. Spoke some more sentences, and then just went in silence. The people around him were calling out to him, trying to move him, shaking him. But he was already gone. Only a piece of earth was lying there on the charpai.

As I type this, its mid-night. I haven't slept in 32 hours. Not a single minute. (I love my work.) And I can't describe what I'm feeling right now. My heart is heavy. I have a feeling of a void in my abdomen. For a few moments my breathing turned uneasy. My fingers went so numb that I couldn't feel the tips as I typed this. For a moment it felt as though I was reliving a moment I was never even present for.

I don't know what his actual last words were, and I would never want to know. But the words he said to my grandma while holding her hand, 'Tu bhi chal mere saath,' are going to stay with me forever. Forever. I almost wish I hadn't asked my brother that day. It is the single most imprinted thing in my mind. It has become like you cannot forget your mother's or father's face.

I have seen many disturbing things in my life. When i was a kid, a guy X put the country-made gun to another guy Y's head. X didnt shoot, but he literally ended up slashing the lower lip and chin of Y with a machete. I was at half-arm distance from all these guys.

But nothing is imprinted on my mind like the words of my grandpa.

I dont know why it is so.

Was I too attached to my grandpa?

In the usual sense, no. But I have plenty of good memories.

He always cared for me, and I cared for him in the way a grandson can/should. But i think i should have done a little better.

Caring a lot, but attaching slightly less than usual - in me, I think it comes from growing up in a household with an armed-forces and agriculture background, and some usual brahmin family stuff. Or maybe from reading a lot of scriptures and literature from a very young age.

Maybe its the life long context in my mind that has done the job of imprinting. In your mind, you carry the whole persona of a person - what he is, what he wants, how he treats, what he got, etc. And i believe that's the thing that has made those lines strong on my mind.

It sits there like the moral of a story. It will never fade. The strange part is that I don't miss him, and yet not a single day passes when I don't think about death in general. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. It's always because of that line.

Is it negative or creepy, thinking about death every day?

Definitely not. Not for me. When Steve Jobs spoke about death, asking what you would do if today were your last day, it didn't make sense to me earlier. I thought it was creepy and also I feared the death a lot. But now it makes more and more sense, and its magnitude keeps growing, slowly, every day.

Also, I have read a lot of sanatan texts. They give a very different view of death. As the time is passing, whatever was written in those texts is making more and more sense to me. I have not read them as religious enforcements. It was all just out of curiosity, and now for me they are the most matured philosophical texts of human civilisation.

I understand many of you after reading this will think 'These are just words, memorised strongly. Not a big deal in themselves.' You've probably heard those sermon-like line countless times - no one and nothing will come with you when you will pass. So had I. But it never made sense to me. I never thought about what it actually implied. And then I saw the live demonstration of it, with loved ones in the frame. And now the line, and its meaning, are stuck forever.

Has it changed me?

I don't know.

But one thing I have noticed in myself: my fear keeps reducing, day by day. When I feel undecided on something, these words run through my head. And suddenly the clarity comes.

It feels like: shouldn't we all be getting ready for that day? Why fear? Why not do what you actually want to do? Maybe this is one reason I'm firmer than ever in my passion for science and technology.

Here is a thing where these lines impacted me the most.

A lot of time i am asked: why put yourself through the agony of building a company at all when you have a stable career ahead? (More and so if you are going to die someday). Yes. True. But first, I love this 'agony'. We humans always love the things that bring us agony. And second, I simply do not want to feel restless, full of regret, and afraid when my day comes. I don't want to be the one saying those kind of lines at the end. In other words if i say, i don't want to keep doing the things that will make me say 'i wish' on my last days.

I could also have a so-called good, stable career if I did an MS or MD. Even if i decide not to, still everything is smooth for me. My family has a good amount of land in the village. By conventional logic, there is no reason for me to put myself through all this hard work and pain of building a company. But I am doing it. Because it is my passion and my ambition, and the words are imprinted so hard that my mind refuses to think about anything else. It simply refuses to comply.

No one is going with you. They will want to do a lot, but will not be able to. Then why, can I consider this early in my life? When i am alive, at this moment, if i strongly believe that no one's going with me in the end, then why shouldn't i follow my gut to be on my own path of ambitions and passion, even if it means it can make me very alone in my life.

But I don't forget the other meaning sitting inside those words. My grandpa spent his last strength reaching for a hand he had not held in ten years. So the line cuts both ways for me. Walk your own path, yes. But don't let stubbornness take your people away from you. Being alone for your ambition is one thing. Being alone out of pride is another.

I think it's for these words that I am not even considering a plan B. I am walking away from one of the coziest, most stable, safest career paths there is. I could enjoy the air-conditioned office, the good car, the good house, all of it, simply by being a doctor. But the words, they make me question everything. Almost everyday.

I am, above all, a Shaiva. And now everything Shiva reveals about death makes more and more sense to me.