(3 Apr ’11)
After the death of the
four year old girl at the Caculo Mall some days back, a few acquaintances and I
were talking about the accident. “What happened?” we all wondered. “Was there a
post mortem?” we asked each other. That’s the only way one could be sure, we
agreed, unless there was a known history of a dreaded illness, why a child
would suddenly die.
The discussion led to why people
fear or avoid post mortems. “Why make the patient/person suffer even more” is
one of the reasons. Now, post mortems are carried out when the cause of death
is unknown or unnatural. Either ways, the dead body can’t suffer or feel pain.
It’s going to be stuffed into a coffin and smothered with mud six feet under or
burnt to cinders or flung for the vultures to pick to the bones. “Will it get
the person back?” is another question. Not at all. But that’s not why post
mortems are done.
The procedure is meant to find out the cause of death so that the ‘what
happened’ doesn’t linger: most times one can get a definite answer. Post
mortems definitely add to the knowledge of the medical fraternity. And their
reports can save many a legal battle, too. They can differentiate between
murders and suicides, they can tell whether a burnt-to-death person was killed
before being burned or died of the burns or gases. They can tell whether a
person died of injuries inflicted by another before hanging the corpse to
appear like a suicide or whether the hanging was truly not a murder. They can
detect poisoning, the kind of poison. They can tell you whether the death was
due to a bleed, due to medicines taken over a period of time, and much more.
Why, I used to wonder, are railway accident cases subjected to post
mortems. I discovered, once, when I was working in a hospital, that a person
had suffered a heart attack whilst standing by the door. It was that attack
which had killed him. His body had subsequently slid onto the tracks. It wasn’t
the fall that caused the damage.
Some people say that if a post mortem is done, then in the next life,
the person is born deformed: one has to have a funeral with an ‘intact’ body.
So, tell me, how is it we remove our teeth, appendixes, uteri, … in fact we
even cut our teeth and hair… does the rule not apply then?
A major lot of population will say that they don’t want the hassles of
dealing with the cops and that the staff in mortuaries are corrupt and don’t
lift the body until they are paid money. Well, if people got together and
friends and family could manage to lift it themselves, that might sort the
problem out, but perhaps I’m that’s an unusual suggestion from me. I don’t know
how practical that is. This bribing business is beyond the scope of this
column.
My take on the topic is
that we Indians avoid any open conversations about death and dying. It’s a
hush-hush, secretive, never to be mentioned thing. That’s the reason why we
don’t make wills and we don’t discuss organ transplants (I’m talking about
cadaver donors, not live ones). Like sex, we believe that if we don’t talk
about it, it won’t or doesn’t happen.
Like there are talks on
diabetes, heart related ailments, osteoporosis, teeth care, etc, we need to
have open debates with psychiatrists, swamis, patients with limited life spans
as well as with the lay public. A mature society wouldn’t shirk that.
One person told me this
was too morbid a topic to write on: ‘readers won’t like it,’ she said. So
readers, I’m prepared for your feedback on this one.
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