Euthanasia :: Death the Dearest.
The Supreme Court has recently called for a nationwide debate on euthanasia. Having seen more deaths from close quarters than most, and having been witness to such existential dilemmas in the past, i too am throwing my hat in the debating ring.
More than a decade ago i was faced with the terrifying moral dilemma of taking such a decision on behalf of a loved one whose life had reached terminal stage. In spite of best available medical care by doctors, my loved one was deeply unconscious & life sustained purely on artificial support. Earlier, with full faculties intact and in a healthy state, the loved one had made it unequivocally clear to me & friends that since body is but a tool for conciousness to manifest itself, (like electricity & transmission wires) life would be meaningless without a synergy between the two. My loved one wanted a covenant from us that God forbid such a situation arose, we should take a call to liberate his consciousness from such a useless body.
Death, although terrifying to most of us, is in reality is our dearest friend as only death alleviates us from the immense pain that we suffer from which the best of science or even our dearest ones cannot free us. The one thing that separates we humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our "free will". Freewill translates into decision-making on our part. And by extension to mean that a person is perfectly eligible to take any decision as long as his actions do not infringe upon the fundamental rights of others. From time immemorial Indians have voluntarily embraced death. Mythology suggests Lord Ram embraced it. Jain texts speak of Santhara and i have seen a few common men & women embrace it. An Exalted freedom fighter like Chandrashekhar Azad consciously martyred himself with with his own hands.
The more i reminiscence it, the more i am convinced that death indeed is our dearest friend, and we have every right to meet it at our mutual convenience.
