Pangs of love

Pangs of love

Kerala is flush with news of the Koodathai serial murders where a lady is accused of murdering six of her own family members and that of her extended family. Amidst boos and catcalls the lady is taken out to gather evidence. Reporters have dug deep into the sequence of events and one aspect that stands out is the reluctance of immediate family members to allow a post mortem on the dead.

I can understand creating obstacles where one fears the truth will come out but what do we say to the mother of the child who had died and even upon insistence by authorities she was reluctant to let go of the dead body and wanted the whole body without a post mortem to moan. Later events teach us that had she allowed a post mortem she herself and others would have lived as the truth would have been out earlier.

Why did the mother act the way she did? Because she could not bear to see her child being torn up and stitched together. But would she have witnessed this act of post mortem- Possibly not. Then why was she worried about the baby being incised during post mortem - pangs of love?

Now let us cut across from the story and the mother in the above incident and reflect on our own lives. How many of us are willing to sign up for organ donation? I can see a few hands creeping up but even they are forcibly pulled down by well meaning loved ones. This is the predicament we face today. Most of us are not willing to be donors after death. Remember our organs can be successfully harvested within a time frame after death.

We all die and have ourselves planted six feet underground or burned in crematoriums with all our organs intact. The miserly attitude shows even as we destroy the body along with the organs that could have been easily transplanted to people who are waiting to die for want of organs. Imagine the number of blind people we meet and come across in our daily lives. We will most honorably escort a blind person to cross the road or walk them clear of obstacles but we would not be willing to sign to donate our cornea to this very same person after death.

To be able to donate organs you must be able to get rid of the love pangs that keep throbbing inside you and think of a wonderful tomorrow when one’s own organs or that of your relatives will be instilling life in other people’s lives and homes. It is not only the beneficiary who benefits but a large number of relatives and friends who surge around this person.

You may not be able to see it yourself but your organs will experience it during this life time. You are living a second life even after you are gone. It is the same with any person who dies with healthy body organs. But more often than not we religiously follow the rituals and dispose of the dead without thinking of the living people that you dispose of along with the dead.

Some people may not be able to see a body without  eyes but in death the eyes are shut and no one will know if the cornea is removed or not. The same goes for other organs in the body. Every dead is fully clothed or draped from neck to toe as prescribed by religion or rituals and what one gets to see is only the face. Why then are we reluctant to extract life out of the dead?

Once we all pledge to donate our organs, hands that had crept up will never be pulled down, post mortem on future bodies will be done willfully and lives can be saved, people will experience the joy of living long after they are gone and this world will be more beautiful with the addition of former handicapped people turning whole through your act of charity. Let’s move in that direction and dispel the pangs of love to create a joyful existence to the otherwise doomed.