An ordinary life, an honourable death: a good option?

 

From Dr Venugopal Balchand

I have been a practising medical doctor for thirty-eight years now. Empathy and compassion are integral to my DNA.

Thus, the sight of a very frail, obviously unwell 85-year-old once mighty individual, now slumped in an ordinary wheelchair, seeing the world with only his right eye and speaking in barely a whisper, being pushed into the courthouse as an alleged criminal, really broke my heart.

Of course, he is innocent until proven guilty.

However the first thought that came across my mind was: “Is it worth living a life of dishonesty, swindling, and crime with moments of spectacular material comforts only to die a sad, pale shadow of your former glorious self with the disrespect and ridicule of the entire country?

Or is it actually more advantageous to live a decent, hardworking and compassionate but ordinary life with sound moral values and money far above the poverty line and then die happy with the love and support of all those who knew you?”

The few friends to whom I posed this question all unhesitatingly opted for the latter.

What is the difference between earning fifty thousand ringgit a month and five hundred thousand ringgit a month? Philosophically, an additional very insignificant and unnecessary zero in my opinion!

In both instances, you are not poor but what does obscene wealth bring you? Many houses or properties that you do not stay in, many cars that are most often just left in the garage, many travels in Business Class or private jet to destinations that still are reachable by economy class, expensive food and beverages that fill your tummy only as much as a good Roti Canai or Nasi Lemak, the false friendships of hangers-on who will drop you like a hot potato the moment you cannot satisfy their expectations and endless stress and headaches as you try to compute the math needed to maintain your lavish lifestyle.

And when the math does not add up, you devise more ingenious and innovative ways to stay rich, often doing things that are against the laws of the land.

Whenever I am intoxicated with abstract thinking, either through wine or worship, I have often wondered” “Is the way you die as important as the way you live?”

As a mender of broken hearts, I am privy to the most intensely personal family dynamics of all my patients. The love, admiration, and adulation showered on an ordinary “good” man is vastly different from the infighting amongst children or siblings of an extraordinarily “rich” man.

To me, it is so uplifting to see that at the very end, your character far overshadows your wealth.

Medical school never taught doctors about the dignity of death. It is all about saving lives. And far too often I have seen well-meaning requests from family to keep extending life support to terminally ill patients. But all we do is extend everyone’s agony. Nature always wins in the end. Often unceremoniously and condescendingly.

As a man of science, I must say that there is no scientific evidence of a heaven or hell. There is also no scientific evidence of an interview with your maker who then decides where you end up.

If God is all merciful and kind, will He stoop so low as to punish us? The onus is upon each one of us to live according to what society and humanity has deemed a good life.

This country has a lot on its plate but its two biggest detractors are not race or religion but, in my mind, blatant hypocrisy and double standards. The same person who steals, deceives or murders then prays five times a day, spends an hour in church on a Sunday, or breaks a hundred coconuts in a Hindu temple. God cannot be that naïve.

The average person on the street is far more intelligent than our leaders have made them out to be especially in this age of the internet and social media where information is available at one’s fingertips. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time! But you can never fool all the people all the time!”

It’s a popular phrase that “Karma is a bitch”. My only reservation is that in these economically difficult times, this bitch is using a lot of the taxpayers’ money. The funds that have been stolen and the money that is being spent on trying to prosecute these former leaders would have made Malaysia a proud first-world nation. Think about that.

This short article is dedicated to the memory of my dear father, Mannazhi Balchand. He was an ordinary man who lived an honourable life. He was straighter than a straight line.

We lost him in 2006 and at his funeral there was a busload of his conservative Muslim friends chanting Islamic hymns alternating with our Hindu bhajans. It was not a staged inter or multi-faith prayer but a spontaneous recognition of an enlightened, evolved soul.

He did not leave us any wealth but just the firm conviction that being honest, hardworking, kind and compassionate has its own immeasurable rewards.

In life and in death. - FMT

PS: Acha, Viju and Uma join me in humbly acknowledging the immense sacrifices you and Amma made to raise us. Today, we truly value and cherish our upbringing. 

Dr Venugopal Balchand is an FMT reader

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.