I have been very close to my maternal side of family since childhood as we stayed in the same area and my mom heavily depended on her mother (my grandma) to raise me or help out in my infancy… I was almost raised for first few years at their place by my grandma and till adulthood it was a second home for me…
Yesterday I was speaking to them over a video call and they showed me to my grandma… She is now 90+ years old… Her health has been deteriorating progressively and on an accelerated basis in the last 5 years…
Till 2010 (in her 80’s), she not only was independent for herself but could cook (& lip smacking Gujarati food at that) for 20+ people… then her mind started giving away… She always had diabetes… So her legs were getting heavier and mobility was decreasing since 2000s… But she was still herself till 2017… But when she started losing memory… It was difficult… She could not hold any recent memory… And was constantly talking, repeatedly about the same past events, some real and some fictional… Irrespective of who was there in front of her or what was going on… She had to be given psychiatric medicines that calmed her mind… But that took her in the absolute opposite direction… Now, she spoke nothing and was not even able to recognize people in front of her save my 1 maternal uncle… And recently she started losing basic motor skill functions.. eating, peeing… And when I saw her yesterday, her jaw had dropped… Essentially how a person would look if they had a stroke…
I have seen my father’s mother (my other grandma)… Suffer from debilitating arthritis where an addiction to steriods took away her bones and caused ulcers in her intestine and stomach… She became a mass of skin and fat which was burning from within with acidity… Utterly disabled (no strength in legs or hands)… Yet, the mind still intact… Able to comprehend, recollect and express… She was still her till only the last few weeks before she passed away…
But my maternal grandma… She is no longer herself… Even though her body exists… She has no recollection of herself or of others… Memories have gone away and new ones dont form… Ability to experience exists or not cannot be known as other than cries of anguish or pain, there are no other expressions…
To me, it shows that we are nothing but our mind… Not brain – for that is just a tool… The mind is the property, the functioning conciousness of the brain’s various parts… I… I the consciousness is the mind… The one that experiences is there in the mind… The I uses various tools like the 5 senses or limbs to experience… But the one that experiences is the mind… The heart spreads the fuel to a mechanical body like an engine – it stops and the vehicle that carries the mind stops and hence the mind dies… Till today we have not been able to carry on our mind conciusness outside our organic body – but its no wonder that when you look at sci-fi series like black mirror or actual scientists who attempt at immortality do not attempt the continuation of an organic body but to transpose the mind conciusness along with its memory from an organic brain to an inorganic store… If my legs are gone, I lose a tool which my mind can use to experience something… But the mind exists… Like if I dont have a knife, I cannot cut… But I still am there for other things… But once the mind gives away, the I goes away… My ego, my conciousness… I then die…
The hindu scripture of Gita refers to the body as that to clothes… Which the soul changes but it by itself is a different entity remaining unchanged…
But I am tending towards what Buddhism preaches… That we are like a fire flame… Once we extinguish, we dissolve into nature… We come into being as a combination of elements which have properties nothing like us… For example water extinguishes fire… But the elements it is made up of (2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen) both spread fire and not extinguish it… Where does water then get the properties to extinguish fire… Something can come out of nothing… Just by combination… And so does our consciousness out of an organic process of elements… And when we die we dissolve back into the nature… our consciousness is nothing permanent… Nothing came from before and we go to nothing thereafter…
Disappointing, depressing and negative as it may sound, that probably is the reality and the best we can do is to accept it and live with that understanding to the fullest…
But back to my grandma… I was moved… I thought I should take the first flight from singapore and in a few hours go there and meet her… For going there once she is gone is useless…
And then I realised again… It is too late… The grandma I knew has gone already… She is no longer there… There is a withering body that hosts a dying brain – which has already lost memory of mine and her time together or the things that are or were common to us… A mind of no recollection of herself or me or the present world we have or of the past we shared…
And I grieve today… Realising the loss of a part of my life… Never to be brought back again… And give solace to myself that thank god, I got a chance to show her a different part of the world in Singapore (her only visit outside of India and Nepal) whilst she was herself… That whilst she being a maternal grandma never expected much out of me… At some points in time in my life, I was the cause of laughter and pride in her life… A small contribution compared to hers in my life…
Inside VG... 