who am I ?

Who am I? Where is my home? What does INDIA mean to me ? What does the world mean to me? As my tenure at Manchester draws to a close, these questions have been plaguing me. They don’t go away when I close my eyes or close my mind ~ they sit around with that look of eternal calm and a desire for completion~ when I think of the future , I look past the idealistic possibilities of existence and often focus on the “seeds” of destiny that I have in my genes. I am talking about the legacy I carry in my blood: by the strength of which, everyday I question the very roots of my existence, the deepest core of my attitude towards, learning, towards people towards life. Like Siddhartha, I have no peace within me. the answer doesn’t lie in letting go of all that has desire in it, the answer isn’t in embracing the honest realization that without a system of “want” I will come to the place where my insides will over whelm with a sense of calm~ The more time I spend with myself, the more I realize the gift and the curse I was born with. This ties in very concordantly to what I constitute to be home. In its purest element when characterized I am a traveler ,A seeker , a wanderer ~ my roots stretch from sweltering plains of a south east asia to the cold desolation of a Midwestern farm land . The truth is, home for me is a dynamically evolving idea of “now”. Where I belong changes with seasons, changes with time , and grows with me to embrace the facets of existence which I wasn’t born with , but chose to be a part of. In retrospective, I have no concrete ideology that defines a home, however what I have is dreams, desire and the need to know – a feeling that at times almost burns out of my flesh , to draw out the design for my future.

Last summer , backpacking across India at times I felt like a visitor and a ghost, like a child and a lover , like a person without and a story within, there were thousands of miles of darkness ahead of me and there was the promise of so much light. Every step I took, every smile that warmed me, every touch of skin against mine: reminded me how much a part of me would never fail to answer the call of this mystic land of wonder and heritage, it was a sense of cultural duty and an almost magnetic pull that emanated from the 18 summers I had spent locked in its brown womb. Yet, there was another voice in my head ~ like the breath of a silent inevitability, it spoke to me: I wasn’t meant to dissolve into the nameless crowds and the smell of fried onions and sandalwood, this was a journey that has started many light years ago, with the birth of a single consciousness in the enigmatic vistas of space: a consciousness that I shared with every living thing on this planet. My birth was just a matter of chance, the formative forces for my fragile nucleus to use and understand. The limits of my cultural and social maturity cannot end and should not end within the confines of a single microcosm of our society. Even though, I draw a lot of my value system from the traditional premise that is India, it leaves a hollow sense of ignorance in my heart. The difference I saw in my last summer was evident in the moral clashes I had with almost every segment of Indian society and my definition of how it should be. Not meant in a condescending manner, or from a more learned perspective but a very humble and rational appeal to the potholes within a system and this further formulated my need to understand the existence of life in the world. Maybe this is a search for the universal sense of “us”. What holds us together in social communion? What restrains the dynasty of violence from shredding apart the very fabric of our national brotherhood and international identity? The more I read, the more I watch, the more I see , I can barely keep still ~ my insides are torn apart with the storms of indecision and helplessness , and a very important question keeps coming to mind : what is my battle ?

When Alexander marshaled his army of 35,000 men against the quarter million Persians that Darius commanded on the fields of Gaugamela, he knew no fear, he knew no god , he knew no death , because that was his war ; He had made it , while Darius was just fighting it. Alexander’s military genius and the story of his victory are a part of legend now and so is his conquest into the lands east of the great desert, but what remains vital in it all is that ~ Alexander knew which battle to fight. He was rash, yet calculated, passionate yet rational, the way he used his potential to rule his empire and to lead his conquest and army of men over thousands of miles is a testimony to the harnessing of resources that made him from inside out. And what a life it was , at 32 , while the known world looked up to him in fear and awe , he had written poetry, listed hundreds of new species, fashioned cities whose glory would stay for centuries and above all had ushered in a system of respect for other cultures and the very origin of inter racial brotherhood. Yet , none of this would have worked had he not known which battle to fight : in the fading light of each day all of us want to be like the great Macedon: courageous, wise , enterprising , passionate and revolutionary ~ yet , few of us ever find him within us because we never try and find the battle that fits us .

I know the paths I have walked are just the beginnings of the journey that started with touch of desire in that initial consciousness and neither with the ebbing of time nor with the decay of old age and mental and physical atrophy will it ever die ~ However, I feel it in the deepest, most sacred memories of this force within me, the need to explore and scatter my roots all over my “home”, the world. I am not on a journey of power like Alexander was, and neither is my battle with the “flesh” that covers my being : It is essentially the need , and quite often the searing pain I feel within me to know , to understand , to belong ~ And yet, everyday, the more I walk, the farther away , the horizon goes ….in my dreams, in my rational designs , I realize that like Frodo, I must carry this ring alone to Mordor : this is my task, my gift , my curse.

There is so much peace in the vision of a future where, the geographical self of the world will run parallel with the social self of it, for me. A journey of immense proportions with more friends than time, more love than ignorance and above all an eternal sense of humility at the incredible system of beauty that makes up this world, my world….my home.

what a life ?

And within this hatred we lay, brother for brother, earth made, fertile with nascent destruction and just a pregnant sense~ O god what’d I do? And the ebbing of a crimson tide is colored in words of divine irony. Around it all, the time for reckoning doesn’t draw us near; the animal within us finds answers in the fallen fragments of the self. What have I inherited? For the ghosts of our parallel legacy aren’t shadow words of fragile selfless mortals, it flows with bones in your flesh, the islands of forgotten memories aren’t isolations for emotional disease- the right of action comes from not the greatest among me, but the honesty among us. The forgotten shards of now, are painful, they cut war lines, new warranted death lines, which you insure with your life. And what a life that is to be …….

Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide

Euthanasia comes from the Greek words, eu means "good" and thanatos means "death". In essence a definition of it would read as the painless and intentional termination of the life of another person at his/her request. The legalization of this process in certain parts of the world and the usage of it by physicians has created significant amounts of controversy and debate.
In essence when looking at the theoretical aspect I see two forces at play – on one hand is the ability for a person to not undergo massive amounts of pain which often result from various diseases and ailments, specially the ones which are going to result in a fatality; on the other hand is the ability of people to find a proverbial “easier” way out of a situation without trying harder to hang on to life. These situations can be better explained. The first one refers to a situation where the patient is diagnosed with a fatal disease and is in its final throes and is undergoing massive amounts of emotional as well as physical pain. The stress and the emotional hardship that a family watching a person waste away in a rather painful and discomfort filled manner, is rather substantial as well. Added to this is the finality that death is inevitable. These three factors together put the patient in a situation where the choice of life by itself is a battle that can have no ends other than death, however the period before death is the one of most horrible emotional and physical agony. In such a situation when death is certain, but pain can be controlled , if a person could chose to not go through this pain , Euthanasia or PAS are the only routes available.
On the flipside is a comparable viewpoint equally compelling – the whole essence of life has to be born from the desire to hold on. Life is sacred and a gift which no matter what should be respected and worked to prolong. Therefore in situations where pain could seem to be a rather unbearable proponent, the presence of an alternative might discourage the very desire of a person to fight on. As any good physician knows healing is mentally propagated, the body follows the brain – If in a situation a person starts to give up , using the presence of PAS then the body deteriorates since the desire to live is gone. I am not suggesting that, just a mental desire could save a person afflicted with a fatal disease, but a lot of times it does prolong and create a “cause” for the person to live on. Therefore in situations like that Euthanasia can prove to be rather debilitating.
Morally there seems to be a rather ambiguous area that this topic delves into. Free will which is the quintessential human trait allows us the right to choose. However due to our lack of better knowledge, often times these choices aren’t the best ones that we can make. Therefore , in this situation it is very important for the person to understand what the choices available are. The decision that will arise from these choices I believe is something that should be respected. It can be argued though that, even when all the choices are given to a person and they have been analyzed, the decision coming out might not be the most favorable one. This is a situation which abounds in the world, a creation of a “subjective” morality. People define right and wrong differently. Thus in the case of someone who wants to end his/her life - given the other vectors which should include them being in a situation where life will not be possible for too long due to the affect of the disease, they are in an incredible amount of physical and mental pain and there is no chance of a cure being found for the disease that they are afflicted with, within the time period they have available to live - they should be assisted in any and everyway possible to do so.
Looking at the practical aspect of PAS and Euthanasia certain facts are very important – Over 99.9% of all people dying in Oregon do so without physician assistance ,84% of people accessing PAS in Oregon cite fear of loss of autonomy as the number one cause , there have been a significant number of people specially in the Netherlands and Belgium who have “illegally” tried to get PAS, there are more than fifty recorded instances of PAS gone wrong and the lethal drug not working the way it should , due to the current moral and legal restrictions not a lot of research is being done on better ways to “euthanize” people which leaves physicians that do administer it with very few options, there has been no significant improvement in the department of pain relief in Oregon after the legalization of PAS – these are just a fragment out of the Pandora’s box of legal, clinical, moral and social issues that this topic raises. Trying to get a feel of what is the right thing to do is something that essentially changes from situation to situation.
Is euthanasia and PAS a moral way to administer healthcare – yes , can there be situations where people use it immorally to achieve ends that have no justification for their use – yes , should this option be available to people – yes, does research need to be done to better the techniques – yes , is euthanasia and PAS an answer to the state of a patient – yes and no , it just depends on the situation, and finally is there one fundamental idea of a pure and sacred death and how we reach it – No.

Fear

In my singularity there is fear,
Dark fear, white fear, lost fear , warm fear,
Little children mothered by fear in my womb,
Naked in tear soaked reality.

So, I sing,
Songs of me, of them , but never of us ,
Cold hands over the mantle,
My roots go deep, their poison cant reach me ,
So afraid , that death sits and waits while I take time to be afraid.

And forever is only mine,
Their truth is but a cripple,
An idea of shadow and dust ,and mortality,
Mine a honey laced righteous oblivion,
I won, but the fear ….