Sati
This is impromptu. I usually blog when I have something concrete to talk about . Even though it may not be fun for others, its amusing to catalogue points in favor of a personal view point. (Pardon me for the explicit egoism...it sometimes slips you know...)
Don’t know why I suddenly thought about it. The sati thing.
It just struck me, that though the wife was the victim in the sense she was made to lose her life forcibly, there is this element of moral freedom about it. Now before you start hitting at me, just listen to the entire thing.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how it was done. I am not saying anything to demean anything or any person. The scenario I am talking about might be actually fictional (if that’s not how it was)...So I have used “might” and words like that everywhere possible so that you get the picture that I am not claiming anything to be true/right/ethical/etc. And I am not a male chauvinist. (Thought it’s safe to say that...No idea how people construe something...I guess understanding is subjective right?)
Assume...ASSUME...that the societal set up was that way and the husband or the wife or whoever involved couldn’t do anything to stop it. Assume that when a man dies it’s a given that his wife would be killed too.
In that scenario may be amongst all the feelings of injustice and fear and anger, the wives might...MIGHT ...have felt a small miniscule thing of calmness that comes with the surety of moral uprightness. They might have known that they are being murdered for no fault of theirs and even in that state of extreme trauma and frustration at the sacrilege of human life none of the negative emotion would have been directed at themselves.
The husband, say, who might have been lying on his death bed, sick and wasting away, amidst his fear of losing his precious life, also has to go through the guilt of going to be the reason for his soul mate’s death too.
Imagine that.
Dying and knowing that the death is going to kill his loving wife.
Dying and helpless to stop his own death or his precious’.
Dying and frustrated at his own weakness, a weakness that is killing him and will kill another life too, a life that is going to lose its right to live because it chose to love and live with him.
Dying and realizing that everything he has cared for, himself and his family, would in all essence, cease to exist.
Dying and failing to see some scope of feeling resigned to the fate.
Dying and killing himself with thoughts that shift and mix between anger, fear, frustration, helplessness and affection.
Dying.
Just imagining that is scary.
