Death ! the Real Joke!

Death can be a total fulfillment, but that is possible only if life has been lived.

It was one of my pastimes in my childhood to follow every funeral procession. My parents were continually worried: "You don't know the man who has died, you have no relationship, no friendship with him. Why should you bother and waste your time?"—because the Indian funeral takes three, four or five hours.

First, going out of the city, the procession walking, taking the dead body, and then burning the body on the funeral pyre…. And you know Indians, they can't do anything efficiently: the funeral pyre won't catch fire; it will just live half-heartedly and the man will not burn. And everybody is making all kinds of effort because they want to get away from there as quickly as possible. But the dead people are also tricky. They will try their hardest to keep you there as long as possible.

I told my parents, "It is not a question of being related to somebody. I am certainly related with death, that you cannot deny. It does not matter who dies—it is symbolic to me. One day I will be dying. I have to know how people behave with the dead, how the dead behave with the living people; otherwise, how am I going to learn?"

They said, "You bring strange arguments."

"But," I said, "you have to convince me that death is not related to me, that I am not going to die. If you can convince me of that, I will stop going; otherwise let me explore." They could not say to me that I would not be dying, so I said, "then just keep quiet. I am not telling you to go. And I enjoy everything that happens there."

The first thing I have observed is that nobody talks about death, even there. The funeral pyre is burning somebody's father, somebody's brother, somebody's uncle, somebody's friend, somebody's enemy: he was related to many people in many ways. He is dead—and they are all engaged in trivia.

They would be talking about the movies, they would be talking about the politics, they would be talking about the market; they would be talking about all kinds of things, except death. They would make small cliques and sit all around the funeral pyre. I would go from one clique to another: nobody was talking about death. And I know for certain that they were talking about other things to keep them occupied so that they didn't see the burning body—because it was their body too.

They could see, if they had a little insight into things, that they are burning there on the funeral pyre—nobody else. It is only a question of time. Tomorrow somebody else from these people will be there on the funeral pyre; the day after tomorrow somebody else will be—every day people are being brought to the funeral pyre. One day I am going to be brought to the funeral pyre, and this is the treatment that these people will be giving to me. This is their last farewell: they are talking about prices going up, the rupee devaluating—in front of death. And they are all sitting with their backs toward the funeral pyre.

They had to come, so they have come, but they never wanted to come. So they want to be there almost absently present, just to fulfill a social conformity, just to show that they were present. And that too is to make sure that when they die they will not be taken by the municipal corporation truck. Because they have participated in so many people's death, naturally it becomes obligatory for other people to give them a send-off. They know why they are there—they are there because they want people to be there when they are on the funeral pyre.

But what are these people doing? I asked people whom I knew. Sometimes one of my teachers was there, talking about stupid things—that somebody is flirting with somebody's wife…. I said, "Is this the time to talk about somebody's wife and what she is doing? Think about the wife of this man who has died. Nobody is worried about that, nobody is talking about that.

"Think of your wife when you will be dead. With whom will she be flirting? What will she do? Have you made any arrangements for that? And can't you see the stupidity? Death is present and you are trying to avoid it in every possible way." But all the religions have done that. And these people are simply representing certain traditions of certain religions. person12

One of my teachers died. He was a funny man, very fat, and he used to have a very ancient type of turban—very big, maybe thirty-six feet long or more. Thirty-six feet is normal for the old, ancient turban. His face was also such that you could not remain looking at him without smiling. And he was my Sanskrit teacher.

He was a simple man—in fact a simpleton. We had been playing all kinds of tricks on him, and he was never able to find out who had done it; he never punished anybody. We had been really hard on him. He would fall from the chair, because we had managed to cut the legs of the chair before he came. He would fall from the chair, his turban would fall all over the class, and there would be great laughter. But he would start putting his turban back on and writing on the board again, not getting disturbed. He was really a nice fellow.

He died. We used to call him Bhole Baba. That was not his name. Baba is simply used for grandfather, a respectful word. Bhole means a simpleton, so innocent that anybody can deceive him. I have completely forgotten his name, because we never used his name; we always used Bhole Baba. I have been trying to figure out what was his real name, but I cannot find it anywhere in my mind.

When I went to his house with my father, his wife came running from inside the house, fell on the chest of that poor fellow, and said, "Oh, my Bhole Baba!" I could not contain my laughter. My father tried telling me, "Keep quiet!"

I said, "The more I try to keep quiet, the more it is becoming difficult. I cannot contain it; let me laugh!" But everybody was shocked: somebody is dead, and you are laughing so loudly. I said, "Please, don't be shocked. If you knew the whole thing as I do, you would all be laughing."

And I told the whole thing, that he was always getting irritated by being called Bhole Baba. And we used to write on the blackboard every day, "Welcome, Bhole Baba". And the first thing he would do was, he would erase it. And now the poor man was dead and his own wife…

When I told them this, everybody started laughing. And the wife also became silent and said, "It is really strange for me to call him Bhole Baba, because I used to tell that boy not to call him Bhole Baba, that it is not his name."

And who was the boy? Mostly I was the boy who always going past his house, would knock on the door and say, "Is Bhole Baba inside?" And the wife knew me. With the door closed she would say, "No, he is not inside"—he was always inside—"But remember, don't call him Bhole Baba! If you stop calling him Bhole Baba, I can open the door and you can find him inside."

Perhaps continually hammering, "Bhole Baba, Bhole Baba," then at the moment of death…. Of course, a Hindu wife is not supposed to say her husband's name. She cannot, that is thought to be disrespectful—just the male chauvinistic mind. The man can call her by her name, but the woman cannot call her husband by his name. So perhaps…there was no time to figure out what to say; Bhole Baba came in handy.

But even the wife started laughing, thinking that this was really hilarious. "My whole life I have been telling you and other boys who are your friends…who you have been telling that whenever they pass the door, they should knock and enquire, `Is Bhole Baba inside?'"

The death became a laughter. But back home, my father said, "I am not going to take you to another death, another cremation—not with me, at least. What you have done is not right."

I said, "Everybody laughed—even the wife who was crying, started laughing. You should all be grateful to me that I made even death nonserious, fun, a joke."