Death

         When we hear about death, whether it is someone we knew or something we read in the newspaper, it is almost instinct to think of it as a tragedy.  It almost seems insensitive to lose someone you know or hear about someone’s death and not think of it as a tragedy.  But it can also be looked on as being good and as an opportunity for those who have passed away.  All the religions of the world look at death as being released into the spiritual world in one way or another, and while it brings us pain to lose them, they have gone to a better place.

            In the book Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, the journey of Jane is told to us from when she was a little girl in India to living on a farm in Iowa.  The story jumps around as she reminisces a lot about past events in her life.  In chapter 9, Jane is remembering and telling the story about when her father was killed by a bull.

            This of course is a terrible tragedy, but she explains that in the Indian culture, death is looked at in a different way.  A friend of Jane’s mother tells her that, “Family life and family emotions are all illusions.  The Lord lends us a body, gives us an assignment, and sends us down.  When we get the job done, the Lord calls us home again for the next assignment (59)”.  It doesn’t help Jane’s mother from feeling much better, but it gives the reader a little insight into the way the death is viewed by the Hindu religion.

            Jane is reminiscing and telling this story to her friend Taylor while she is living in New York.  As someone who doesn’t have the same cultural background as Jane, Taylor thinks this view on death is crazy.  And while a lot of people try to be open-minded, the beliefs of other cultures still seem a little strange to someone with another way of thinking.

            I’m not saying I am exempt from my previous statement, because that way of thinking about life seems a little strange to me, but I think it’s very interesting to hear other people’s beliefs.  I don’t think it is ridiculous to think that way, it’s just not something I have grown up being taught, so it’s new to me.