Death and Obituary

I was small and had just learnt how to read headlines in the  newspaper. One morning I read in the daily of 'शोचनीय' निधन (meaning  'sad death' - I learnt much later) of an old man, who I knew lived across the road. Not knowing the meaning of the word I connected it with शौच (defecation). My little mind thought that the old man died while on the toilet seat. For a number of days thereafter I would be ' dead' scared of going to visit the toilet. Which made me constipated, the remedy for which  in those days was a dose of Castor oil floated on milk (ugh..), and fasting while the rest of the family was free to gorge on the goodies. This remedy cured me of my constipation and eventually the fear of death.
Later on, when I could read English bold type in the 'Times of India' I would curiously glance at the obituary column on page 2. I would find most of the names were of Christians - foreigners and Indian - and I got an impression that it is only the Christians and occasionally a Parsi who died.. I thought that we Hindus and Muslims were immortal. I was looking forward to live happily for ever and ever there after.
My own brush with death was when I was in the Matriculation Class. I had an attack of diphtheria and I was admitted to the ID Hospital in Pune (lately achieved fame during early days of H1N1 epidemic). My classmates had a premature condolence meeting. On the 2nd day of my admission a boy little younger than me was admitted for meningitis on the bed next to me. He died a day later. I returned home after 5 days to convalesce.
When my grandson was small I thought I should teach him how to read Marathi. He would sit on my lap and I would teach him the alphabet in bold type in the local newspaper. Very soon he started picking up the newspaper and proudly read loudly the headlines. Alas, most of the headlines talked about 'so and so' or 'so many' deaths on the previous day. Thus very early in life he became quite aware that everyone has to depart one day. He had devised a game where he would ask me how old I was and subtract his age from mine. Then he would start his mental arithmetic in the form of 'when I am so many years old you will be so many years old'. He would go on to my age up to 100 and beyond that he gave me permission to call it a day !!
Eventually I came closer to human death while training for and treating sickness.

A few years ago a friend of mine stated that he rarely gets invitations to attend birthdays or anniversaries and he said going for funerals was godsend as he does not have to carry any presents.

Nowadays every couple of days one learns about someone or the other departing for his or her 'heavenly abode'
May all the departed souls RIP

(Last 2 months have been  emotionally traumatic for me. number of my very dear friends  have either died or suffered from serious medical problems. In all these instances I had to visit them at home or in ICUs or the ultimate ceremonies. In desperation I wrote this blog on a poignant though morbid subject)