Alok Ranjan - Coffee with a Coffin: Permanent Lessons from the Impermanence of Life

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Copyright Alok Ranjan 2022

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author's own and the facts are as reported by him. They have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use other than for 'fair use' as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.

Illustrations used in this book have been sketched and provided by the author.

ISBN 978-93-91067-48-9
ISBN 978-93-91067-78-6 (ebook)

To the river Ganga which gave me
the most insightful experience of life.

Cricket is one of the most popular games on this planet. Around 2.5 billion people either love playing it or enjoy watching it. On a similar note, staying alive is the most popular desire in the world. One of the primary goals of more than 7 billion human beings is to keep living on this earth as long as possible. And there is a strange similarity between one of the most popular games on the planet and the most popular desire in the world.

In cricket, there is a batsman who is surrounded by eleven alert and seasoned players whose sole aim is to get him out of the game. These eleven players pose multiple threats to the batsman. The bowlers in the game will throw the ball at the batsman, and if he fails to hit it with his bat and the ball ends up hitting the wickets, our dear batsman will be called bowled and he will be dismissed. If the batsman hits the ball with his bat or gloves and the ball is caught by any of the opposition players before touching the ground, the batsman will be caught out and his game will end. If the batsman steps out of the crease and the wicket-keeper hits the stumps with the ball, the batsman will be stumped and he will have to leave the ground. The batsman can also be given an LBW (leg before wicket) in the case where the ball, which was supposedly hitting the wickets, gets blocked by the batsmans body or any equipment other than the bat or gloves. Also, if the batsman is running between wickets and any of the fielders hits the stumps with the ball, he will be given a run out. But thats not all; if the batsman hits the stumps with his body or any sports equipment while attempting to play a shot, he will be considered hit-wicket.

In all of these cases, his game will end and he wont be able to stay on the pitch or come back to it again no matter how much he tries, pleads, or threatens. If his game is over, frankly speaking, its over. He has to work really hard to save himself every minute, and yet he can fail.

When it comes to the struggle to stay alive, the condition of human life is not much different from that of the batsman. Every day we come across so many things which can take our lives. We can catch a deadly disease. A tiny mosquito or an invisible virus can stop our bodily functions and end our life. We can meet with an accident both on the street as well as in the air. We can get murdered by some criminal or lunatic. And if you think we are safe in our houses, you cant be further from the truth. We can die by drowning in the bathtub or falling from the bed. Our lives can also end while we are sitting at home, sipping tea, and discussing the latest movie with our family members. In 2020, an aeroplane fell down in a housing society in Karachi, Pakistan, and people living in those houses were killed immediately along with the travellers and the pilots.

Apart from these external causes, there are many internal factors as well, such as depression and anxiety, that can speed up our death. Even if somehow, we are able to save ourselves from all these countless life-threatening scenarios, old age is definitely going to kill us after a while. In short, no doctor, no hospital, and no security guards can protect us from this ultimate cause of death.

In other words, we are like that batsman who needs to be mindful of all the looming threats to life. Every moment carries the potential of annihilation, and yet we have to survive. Thats the great similarity between the game of cricket and the desire to stay alive. And if we use this similarity as a launch pad to inquire deeper into the mindset of the batsman, we can open the doors to a new kind of life.

In the game of cricket, the batsman is always alert about all the threats to his survival in the game. He doesnt ignore them. He doesnt deny them. On the contrary, he faces this bitter truth and prepares himself to handle it. He uses this threat to enhance his performance, to show his best in the game, and to make a mark in the world of sports. He also knows that even if he plays very skilfully, the game will be over after a while and he will have to return to his home. He doesnt fool himself with the notion that the game will keep going on forever. His aim is to perform his best in whatever time is given to him and to leave the pitch with pride in his eyes and satisfaction in his heart when the game ends.

We can have the same approach towards our desire to stay alive. We can stop assuming that we will keep living on the earth forever. We can accept the threat of death and use it to maximise our happiness, love, meaningfulness, and creativity in life. We can be the batsman in the playground of life who impresses himself and others with his performance and gets the maximum satisfaction out of the game.

Many of you might still feel that this logic sounds strange. After all, we are supposed to be afraid of death and should protect ourselves from it. But we will ignore this approach for a while and experiment with a different perspective in the coming days. With this book, we will find out how we can use death to live a better life. We will see how the poison of life can be turned into the alchemy of life. We will explore the possibility of using the ultimate sleep as a motivational factor to wake up now.

But its not going to be an easy and smooth journey. We are going to change our entire approach towards death step by step. We are going to confront our deepest fear and transform it into a great strength. In a world where almost everybody seems to believe that they are not going to die, we are going to focus on the fact that we are not immortals.

As the author of this book and your co-traveller, I will be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and learning with you on this subject. I will be using stories from my own life and popular stories from the public domain to express my perspective. I hope you will enjoy this little journey which has the potential to give a new direction to your life.

As the first step of this journey, we need to understand our unpleasant relationship with this friend who has been misunderstood as an enemy since our birth. So, let me start by sharing a strange experience I had while visiting a place during holidays. It was not a very pleasant place and most of the people would avoid going there at any cost. But I had made my mind to be there to learn something which no other place on the earth could teach.

A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most people live in denial of Deaths patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.