Death, my dear friend.

Karma in Hindu mythology can be defined as an action or deed or the cause and effect relationship of the summation of all your actions in your life. It is a word that is used often in daily middle-class Indian diatribes against those who one feels deserves whatever dark fate they received; referrred to as "Karma bhalam" (the result of ones actions). I was once told, to my chagrin, it must be the good karma in some previous life of mine that blessed me with a marriage to a Brahmin. It took my husband, a hand at my back and the silent pleading in his eyes to stop me from blurting out a caustic retort. Though we laughed about it later, I still remember thinking, if there is Karma, there must have been something I did right to deserve him by my side. 

It is intriguing how death brings you perilously close to darkness. A vigorous, contagious darkness that draws out the worst from your veins of existence and gives way for thoughts that you wish were never born. It starts meandering through your psyche, assaulting every nook and cranny, foraging for an ever-evasive, nameless entity. It runs and runs through every cell of your being and in the process exhausts you, depletes the little life left in you and renders you desolate and thoroughly destroyed. It is at this unexpected juncture that we find light, we find hope and strength, wisdom and faith, and the need to fight, to survive. And this, this is the true karma of darkness; to find light where there is none. Darkness once born has only one karma and that is to find the light,  Death to find Life, and Sorrow to find Joy. There is a pattern to life and all its dynamic elements. Does not that make absolute sense? It is time and the uninvited affability of death that brought along this realisation. Death that unveils the helpless nature of life, the insignificance of ones resolves and the meaninglessness of promises, is in fact the true protagonist. We  often portray darkness as something that has to be vanquished by light, but what if, in fact, darkness was here to find lost light. What if light doesn't dispel darkness, but darkness discovers light. Then, death lives to reveal the value of life and not to rob it. It can seem to be the stereotypical case of the villain being the reason for the existence of a superhero, but then again, here we are looking at a villain who is in pursuit of the hero in order to bring back some meaning into the plot, to keep the story line moving. When we look at it this way, isn't darkness the one who is doing all the work. Isn't it death that is keeping us alive?

Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||


O Lord Keep me not in the Unreality (of the bondage of the Phenomenal World), but lead me towards the Reality (of the Eternal Self),
O Lord Keep me not in the Darkness (of Ignorance), but lead me towards the Light (of Spiritual Knowledge)
(O Lord) Keep me not in the (Fear of) Death (due to the bondage of the Mortal World), but lead me towards the Immortality (gained by the Knowledge of the Immortal Self beyond Death),
May there be Peace, Peace, Peace