Death in Tiruvannamalai Nadhia Sutara

Nadhia Sutara

First, let me say that this is a very personal account. Although others of my vintage have had similar experiences and impressions, this account reflects only my own.

Nadhia Sutara

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The first thing I noticed when arriving in Tiruvannamalai in the early 80s was a startling difference in people’s attitude toward death. It was not something to be hidden away as though it didn’t exist – or as if we all wished it didn’t exist. It is as much a part of life as is birth, and I found Indians taking both parts in their stride in a much healthier way than ever I saw in the West.

In order to give an appropriate backdrop to the major incident I am going to describe, let me set the stage with the first death in India in which I had any part, shortly after my arrival in Tiruvannamalai. I was living on the Mountain in Guhai Namasivaya^[1]. Everything was very sparse and Spartan in those days: very few tourists, and then only during the winter months; only about 10 Westerners were living in Tiruvannamalai at the time, with 3 of us on the Mountain: Theresa Rigos, Narikutti Swami and me. One day Theresa came to Guhai Namasivaya and told me that the Mango Tree Cave swami, Subramaniam, had died. She explained to me that any and everyone who had anything to do with the deceased was obliged to pay their respects at the funeral ceremony, so I prepared to go. Maniswami, the most literate of all the Mountain sadhus, was usually called in to do the rites, and he was already there arranging things when I showed up.

The first thing I noticed besides the order that Maniswami immediately brought to the situation was the Silence. I had never been near a just-deceased person before in my life, not to mention a sadhu, and the palpably thick spiritual Silence impressed me profoundly. I had the same experience some years later when Sadhu Om died. In fact, it has been my experience ever since that first one, that some mysterious blessing lingers around the recently deceased, especially if they have lived a spiritual life and not died in fear.

“What a difference to your garden variety Western funeral!” I thought. First, nobody was sad or crying, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Subramaniam Swami had managed to antagonize or alienate almost everybody who knew him except Theresa, a saintly lady and retired dentist, who had taken it upon herself to care for him in his last days. He was dying of TB and gasping for breath for many days before he expired.

She told us how she had offered to take him to the hospital where they could make him more comfortable by giving him oxygen, but he refused: he wanted to die on the Holy Mountain. She also told us that with every single gasp of breath, this man whom nobody had respected was repeating, “Arunachala! Arunachala,” once for the inbreath, once for the outbreath, day and night, until the end.

Later, when I read how Ramana Maharshi always found something good to say about a departed soul, I remembered how we all marvelled at Mango Tree Swami’s fortitude and determination in refusing all comfort and dying with his Ishta’s name on every single breath until the last. Truly, we never knew him until the day of his death, when we learned how profound his devotion had been!

After all the singing of Vedantic bhajans was over, the men took Swami’s freshly washed and clothed body to be buried. Theresa, Narikutti and I stayed behind at Theresa’s hut (Mango Tree Cave’s former kitchen room) and, over tea and biscuits, discussed what we wanted done with our bodies if we were lucky enough to die here.

Narikutti Swami, whose name means ‘little jackal’, said that if at all possible, he wanted his body to be left in a field as a banquet for his namesakes, the jackals. He also mentioned that he wanted to die sitting up. (Many years later he did manage to die sitting up, although the jackals were deprived of their feast.) Theresa said that she, a Catholic, wanted to die in meditation and be buried. And I firmly stated that I wanted to die with Arunachala’s name on my lips and be cremated without fuss or delay.

Our conversation was much more than matter-of-fact: it was singularly important to all of us, a sacred thing, not a shame or a tragedy or something to be hidden away. We were all going to die one day, and we were describing our ‘best possible death scenario’.

All of this brings me to the story of Satya Bilas Mukherjee’s death in January 1989. I was particularly friends with his son Somu Mukherjee, who was closer to my age than his parents and uncle Satya Prakash Mukherjee, who first brought the family from Calcutta to Sri Bhagavan in 1951. The entire family visited at least once a year. S.P. Mukherjee had built a house called ‘Upasana’ at Ramana Nagar in 1964 and died at Vellore CMCH in April 1974.

So, one day I happened to be walking down Osborne lane when I bumped into Somu Mukherjee, who was speaking animatedly with someone. As I approached, intending to go around them by way of courtesy, Somu called to me: “Nadhia! Please come over! My father died last night!” No, he was NOT crying. He was proud, triumphant and full of joy!

So I joined him and he told me the following story:

Around midnight of the night just passed, his father called out to him, “Somu, come quickly!” Somu got out of bed and ran to his father. Somu’s wife, Aruna, also got up and came. They found his father already sitting in padmasana.

“First,” Somu told me, “my father asked my wife to bring him a glass of water, so she went to the kitchen. Before she could return, he quickly told me that he was dying. He then raised his hands over his head in profound Anjali, and cried, ‘No more I am!’”

Somu’s mother was seated on his right and Somu rushed up to his left and quickly applied Bhagavan’s vibhūti to his forehead. On application of the vibhuti his father gave a big sigh of immense satisfaction, and his head dropped onto Somu’s right shoulder. There was no further intake of breath.

“I’m so proud of him, I have to tell everybody!” Somu concluded and went off without waiting for the traditional laments. He didn’t want any laments. His father had gone to the same One he had been worshipping all his life: what was there to lament?

There have been many other blessed departures since then: quiet leave-takings, private or among friends and family, unremarkable in their simplicity and the serenity of the departed. But extraordinarily remarkable in stark contrast to the denial, fear, even terror that I had grown up with in the West. Although more than 30 years have passed since Somu’s father passed gloriously into his Guru’s Grace, it has remained with me as a living memory, a transformative reminder that this Path of spirituality, sincerely and wholeheartedly pursued, does indeed lead to the profoundly fearless and joyful end so exemplified by our Sri Bhagavan and His devotees.

– 'The Mountain Path', April 2020, pp.65-68