A Day in the Graveyard

The Indian Christian Cemetery in Pune is "alive” these days, especially the left side of the cemetery that is Catholic. Pune has two big cemeteries on the Solapur Road. The one of the left side is the European Cemetery. That is where the European Christians who lived in Pune during the colonial times are buried. After Independence, Indians who go to some of the mainline churches of European heritage are buried there. As the number of these churches are dwindling, the cemetery is also less frequented. A visit to these churches on Sundays and may make you think that there are more members in the cemetery than in the pews now. The growing younger churches manage the cemetery on the right side of the Solapur highway. That was designated for the Indian Christian population in colonial times and thus got its name as "Indian Christian Cemetery." That is divided as the Catholic and the non-Catholic cemeteries by the unpaved pathway in the middle. If you are Catholic turn left and if you are Protestant turn right!

As you enter workers are waiting for you. "Are you here for cleaning up?” They inquire! They have shovels, and knives. Some boys are ready with paint-buckets and brushes. They will help you clean up the tombs of your dear ones, weed around it and also give it a coat of paint. These workers and those who are visiting the grave of their dear-ones are all over the place. The family members are giving the graves of their dear ones a face-lift well ahead of the All Saints Day that is approaching.

On the left side of the pathway a few steps after the chapel I noticed a little grave. By the size of it I guessed that a very young life is buried there. Judging by the age of the flower plant at the head of the grave, it is not new. It is not built up, no marble, no tombstone--just a heap of mud. It has a metal cross at the head and a few bricks around it. A lady in her late forties has cleaned it up and is giving it a coat of cow-dung. Cow dung is sacred and it is used for polishing the mud-floors in villages. A ten-year-old boy is very keenly watching the skillful movements of his mother’s hand on the smooth cow-dung paste. Another lady, is applying white lime-paste on the bricks around the small grave.

I approached her to find out who is sleeping under that small heap of mud, so passionately attended to. The lady applying the cow-dung was so absorbed in her work and did not bother to answer my question. But the lady with the brush and the lime bucket raised her head to look at me. She said, "It is her sister”, pointing towards the lady with the cow-dung polish. "How did she die?” I wanted to know. She said he doesn’t know the cause of her death. She was also not sure of her exact age at death as well. But only one thing she knows that it was forty years ago that she lost her little sister "Yesther” (Mararthi for Esther). She has kept that grave, protected it all these forty-some years. Now her ten year old son accompanies her to his aunt’s grave. She is celebrating her loss, her brother’s wife who came to her life much later has joined in her grief and in her labor of love! I could sense there a bond that is not broken even after forty years and a bond of love that is being passed on and shared by all those who entered her life.

A few steps away, an man in his later sixties, sitting on a large tomb, is retouching the engravings on the marble tomb stone with white paint. He is completely absorbed in his work.  He raised his head as my camera flashed and smiled at me. I took him for a hired hand. "You do this for a living?” I asked. "No”, he said. "This is my mother and son and that one is my uncle,” pointing to another tomb behind him. He has buried in one grave his mother and 31 years after that his own son who died at 28. That was almost twenty years back. His son was engaged to be married. But just five days before the marriage, he died of massive heart attack. So, he opened the grave of his mother and buried her grandson with her. That is beside the grave of his uncle. "This was brought from Bangalore,” he told me showing the green marble slabs on the graves. His eyes were gleaming with pride. "You can’t get this type of marble in Pune,” he said. He has done something special for his departed dear ones so that their graves will stand out on All Saints Day. He has suffered great loss, mother, uncle and a dear son. His dreams of being a father-in-law and a grand father were dashed. However, he seems to have over come all the sorrows, but the bond of love remains beyond the grave though there may be practically no remains beneath those marble slabs. Twenty years is enough for all that is buried to degrade in to soil. However, love and affection are not biodegradable and memories can never be erased.

I was waiting for the body of my colleague’s husband to arrive! He was a army personnel, served the Lord during his days in the army and after his retirement as a full-time pastor. He pastored a congregation of about 300 people. It was an unusual funeral, some of those who were waiting were growing impatient. The church has decided to have a funeral procession something unheard these days in a city like Pune. Usually there are undertakers who do the job. They bring the body to the cemetery in an ambulance, the family members and friends come in their own cars or public transport. No one takes walks to the cemetery with the body these days.

While were waiting two other funerals were also going on. On the catholic side a body was brought and an altar was quickly put up, candles were lighted. I had nothing else to do and I wanted to find out who is in the coffin. It was a man in his fifties. A small crowd of about fifty people has gathered as they waited for the priest to come. The dead man has a "sindhur” on his forehead and was wearing a red-sports cap! The cap was new, I am sure he did not die in that cap! There was an old lady kissing the dead man and crying in Marathi. But the expression on the face of the dead man was quite sportive. If they held the coffin vertical he would look like a soccer umpire who froze to death! Jolly good guy he probably was in life!

On the other side of the cemetery was another coffin, a very small group of around twenty people are gathered there by the grave. They all came in cars. Nobody is crying, they are waiting for the priest to come! All are well-dressed and spoke English. It was not about the dead man or his family or about the funeral arrangements. Most of them are looking towards the irons gates of the cemetery probably for the priest’s car to come; one or two people are passing occasional glances at the coffin. They seem to be eager to get this over and get back to their life. Death means many things to many people.

Our wait was over. A red car with loud-speaker on its top, a keyboardist and a tabla player inside entered through the rusted iron gates. Three or four men in white shirts and black pants with cloth-bags on their shoulders were walking behind the car leading a procession of about 1000 people. They had microphones in their hands and were singing in Hindi. The huge crowd walking behind them joined in the singing. Whenever the young men stopped singing between two songs the crowd shouted "Yesu Masih ki Jay!” a usual phrase praising Jesus. There was another car behind it inching its way forward through the crowd. They stopped it and pulled the coffin of their dear pastor out and carried it on their shoulders to the grave-side. The young men had stopped singing through the microphone but the crowd continued to sing as they walked towards the grave. The young men had grabbed their keyboard and tabla and ran ahead of everyone to the grave-side. They fixed the loudspeaker on a tripod. Assembled the system and put all things together and began singing before the procession reached the grave. They continued singing in Hindi again through the microphone: "I have a land, I have home in Heaven.” Someone prayed through the loudspeaker in English and it was translated in to Hindi. I noticed that they did not pray for the comfort of the family, the wife who is left behind or the children. But their prayer was that those among gathering who haven’t found the hope in Jesus Christ may find it now! That is the purpose of this public funeral. Then there were few more testimonies; they talked about the their pastors life and faith! The first preacher spoke about eternity and how to follow the deceased pastor to the heavenly bliss. I know there will be another speaker may be one more saying the same thing. They are so excited that they got another chance to explain "the hope that is in us.”

I was exhausted, dehydrated from the long wait in the hot-sun. The pollen from the weeds thriving in the graveyard was irritating my eyes. I had to leave. I walked away leaving the crowd who was turning the funeral of their dear pastor to a evangelistic campaign. I walked past the father adorning the marble grave of his son, passing one more glance at the little grave of Yesther shining with the fresh coat of cow-dung. The English speaking funeral party is still waiting for their pastor to come growing impatient. While the friends of the dead man in red cap and sindhur was proceeding to the grave following the priest.

The poor and the rich meet here. Their poverty and wealth is still reflected in appearance of their graves. Some express their love with cow-dung and lime; some with imported marble. Some are passionate and some detach themselves from the dead. They love life and hate death. But there are still a few bury their dead brimming with the joy of life eternal. They will not visit the grave again, never will they clean it up. Their hope is not in the grave but life beyond the grave!

iDeath and eLife: What Steve Jobs Discovered and Missed

Steve Jobs, as Rick Warren rightly tweeted was " the Thomas Edison" of his generation. Steve Jobs changed the way we look at the world just as Edison. Steve Wozniak, Jobs’ friend and colleague from the very beginning of his career remarked in his "tearful” interview with Associated Press that, "We lost something that we will never get back!" Steve Jobs was so unique! Everyone shared that sense of loss but will still remember Steve Jobs for the way he changed the world.


Like thousands of others, Apple computers made my life different. The first work I ever did on a computer was on an old IBM PC way back in 1986-1988 during my student days in Bangalore. It had no hard disk, it used two 5" floppy disk drives. One of the floppy disks had the OS and the word processing program. The other was for saving the documents to. The computer had no memory of any sort, we had to enter the time and date at start up. We did not know what we were going to get. I mean, the screen and the printout did not match exactly. If you forgot to close the code for bold font (which was invisible on the screen) then the entire document from that point will be in bold!


However, two years later, I was introduced to an Apple Macintosh Classic computer with a black and white screen. It had a mouse, what I saw on the screen was I what I got in the printout (WYSWYG). It could type Hebrew and Greek, the two languages that I had to use besides English. It was a great leap for me! Then a few months later, I had my own Apple-- A Macintosh LC with color monitor! Nineteen years now, I still keep it; it is still functional though I don't use it! I  had to part my ways with Apple. I could not travel with Apple any further as my iBook crashed a few years back. I changed my loyalties to Linux run on PCs. Apples turned out to be expensive. Moreover it was difficult to keep pace with the speed at which they updated the hardware and the software-- every six months something new rolled out of Steve Jobs mind to the market. However, I still am an Apple fan and hold no hatred for iPhones or iPads!


The world of technology and business hail him for his inventions; iPhone, iPad, iCloud and all that preceded these. However, I think his greatest achievement was not an invention but a discovery that he made. I would like to call it iDeath!


He disclosed that discovery when he went public after being diagnosed for pancreatic cancer in 2005. That is his discovery of the significance of death for him. He said, "Remembering that I' ll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." 


However, even before that, from the very beginning of his career he had death in view. Steve Wozniak who knew him from the very beginning of his life as a computer genius and business man made another revelation about Jobs in his interview with the Associated Press. He said that Jobs told him around the time he left Apple in 1985 that he had a feeling he would die before the age of 40. Because of that, "a lot of his life was focused on trying to get things done quickly," Wozniak said.


This discovery of the significance of death for a human being defined Jobs’ life-style and his impatience for achievements. Former colleagues remember him being rude and impatient. He fired people if their answer did not satisfy him. He had no time to waste, he was on a rush. The secret seems to be that he always saw death before him, he had the end in view; he had to achieve all that he could before he reached that point.


I would like to use the metaphor of a ship on collision course to understand Steve Jobs view of life and death. He seems to have imagined that his ship will not survive the collision and will sink deep down never to raise again. Seeing the immanent death (though he lived longer than he thought he will) he was on a hurry. He was bent on achieving as much as he can before the collision happens. That is what made him brash and impatient. That sense of urgency is the secret of his achievements as well.


However, that is not the only perspective on life and death that is possible. Saint Paul saw death every day in his life. He lived a very dangerous life which he described as "we die every day" (1 Cor 15:31). Death was an every day possibility for him. He had survived shipwrecks, snake bites, robbery attempts, had fought with animals in the arena. He knew that he may drop dead any time! Though death was a daily reality for him, his view on death was very different from that of Steve Jobs.


If he saw his life as a ship, he would have seen death as a thick fog through which his ship has to pass through and not as an ice-berg that it would crash on to.While Steve Jobs could not see the other side of death, Saint Paul could see through the fog the other side of life beyond the grave.


The other side of the grave (the fog) as the Bible presents it is beautiful and radically different from one the one that we have now. The Bible describes it as a life where the perishable is turned into imperishable, and the mortal turned in to immortal. It is a life without limit: no limit on its time and no cap on its quality. That limitless length and quality is what qualifies it to be described as "Eternal Life" or eLife borrowing Steve Job’s language! (One of his flops was the eMac!).


This eLife is not a life of passivity; spent waiting for the other life. It has the same urgency that Steve Jobs maintained but for two different reasons. The first reason is that the passing through the fog is to a place from where there is no return. Whatever to be achieved in this world has to be achieved before the ship enters the fog. The second reason is that we can only predict the possibility of the fog but can’t predict how far we are from it. One day our ships will meet the fog, but none knows when. That demands that every moment has to be redeemed. There is urgency that fuels our life to achieve.


Steve Jobs has been a great achiever. His achievement was prompted by the certainty of an immanent death from which he cannot escape. That great discovery of death made him rush and gained a place with the greatest minds of our times. But he could have had the same urgency and achievements that follow from that sense of urgency with another view of life and death as well. He could have held a view which would have given him hope not only in this world but also in the world to come. It seems that he missed that perspective. His greatest achievement is the discovery of iDeath on which he could not put any controls. He missed eLife-- eternal life that Jesus offers to all who put their trust in him. If Steve Jobs had read that Book which talks about it, he would have discovered eLife.

Planning and Goal-setting Redefined

Death speaks volumes and we tend to listen more carefully to our dear ones at the death than when they were alive. In the recent past, four deaths spoke to me powerfully. One is of my friend who died suddenly before reaching the fiftieth birthday. A man of full of plans, things lined up to do for God was suddenly called to glory. The other was the death of a two little children of my Sunday school aged eleven and nine years in a road accident. Their dad, a cousin and the cousin's granddad also died in the same accident. It was very painful to watch two kids and their dad aged just 38 lowered to the same grave in three coffins to be laid side by side. They had dreams, plans and aspirations for life, but God had different plans and none of us could question his plans nor should stop him doing what he willed for them.
I had to take a serious look at my life. I have plans, most of them are certainly things that I want to do for God. However, every planning requires some assurance of the span of time available. That is where the issue is. I but can't really have any definite plans until I know how much time I have. That is where the hitch is: I am not in charge of my lifespan. That is decided not by me but my creator, God.
Does that mean that I should not make any plans? Certainly not. Without plans my life will be disorganized, I will be without goals in life and eventually no achievements in life. I will be just floating aimlessly and then rust away. I need a plan for the day when I get up, that is what gives me reason to roll out of my bed every morning. I should achieve something before I go to bed, that is what gives me fulfilment in life. Many such days make up my months and many such months of planned, ordered and goal-oriented life should make up my life.
Actually, every one of us should have long-term plans. Goals to reach on a longer span of time: for a year, may be five-year plans, etc. Then these are broken up into smaller achievable goals for the months and days. However, when we make a five-year plan or even set goals for the current month, we should know that the month does not belong to us; even the given day!
We read in the Epistle of James (James 4:13), "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city, and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.' Whereas you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away."
When Apostle James penned these lines, he was not against planning and goal setting. He was not a pessimist at all. He then goes on to the next verse to tell us an important truth that our planning should also take account of the fact that all plans ought to be within the will of God. He continues in Verse 15, "For you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”" This type of conditional planning, that is plans surrendered to the supreme will of God is what God expects from those who love him. Such planning and goal setting accepts him as the author and sovereign over our life.

Know where you are going!

But before we take our journey to that side of the grave we need to make sure where we are going. Please make sure where you will end up before that transfer from this life to the other happens.

A few days back, a teenager in Pune killed himself by hanging. He was from a well-to-do family happy family, got a lot of love and care from his elder sisters and brothers. However, he decided to die just to satisfy his curiosity. A lesson in his Marathi textbook about the martyrdom of India's freedom fighters made him curious about death. He used to ask his parents and teachers what happens after death. The answer his parents of this Hindu boy gave seems not to have satisfied him nor of his teacher. Finally, he decided to find out by himself. The police told the press that he committed suicide in order to find out for himself what happens after death. When he killed himself, he was not sure where he was going and what is going to happen to him.

People were always fascinated by what happens after death. Nobody were ever able to return to life and report back to us what is there beyond death. This adds to the curiosity. However the Bible doesn't leave us confused. It is very clear that, "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him" (Hebrews 9:27-28).

Death is inevitable and Bible makes it very clear what happens after death. One thing that is certain about death is a judgment that is waiting for all. Those who put their trust in Christ will pass on to a life of continually enjoying the presence of God and others to eternal condemnation. However, what decides what type of life waits for us there is how we take the life on this side of eternity. This life is our opportunity to grab the great salvation that Christ has offered to us through is death on the cross.

But before we take our journey to that side of the grave we need to make sure where we are going. Please make sure where you will end up before that transfer from this life to the other happens.