The Half Traveller...

By Naman R Munshi

What is the significance of this The Half Traveller?

I want to invite readers to look into past. "The Half Traveller"

headlines and appreciate the struggles of real people lived their lives

and dies before the age 50. Using this as a basis for discussion, we

have an opportunity to examine how we as a society regard talent

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Jan 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9789360491390

Book preview

The

Half Traveller...

Naman R Munshi

Ukiyoto Publishing

All global publishing rights are held by

Ukiyoto Publishing

Published in 2024

Content Copyright © Naman R Munshi

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

To them, Live fast, die young

.

Contents

The Death

LIFE EXPECTANCY V/S LIFE SPAN

River Phoenix

Michael Joseph Jackson – THE MICHAEL JACKSON

Steve Jobs

Marilyn Monroe

Jimi Hendrix

Janis Joplin

Anna Nicole Smith

Heather Michele O'Rourke

Keith Moon

Diana, Princess of Wales

Bruce Lee

Brandon Bruce Lee

Steve Irwin

Elvis Presley

Brittany Murphy

Yuri Gagarin

Kalpana chawla

Gilles Villeneuve

Daniel Clive Wheldon

Sarah Burke

Sushant Singh Rajput

Ayrton Senna

Swami Vivekananda

Tupac Amaru Shakur

Jim Morrison

The 27 Club

About the Author

जातस्यहिध्रुवोमृत्युर्ध्रुवंजन्ममृतस्यच | jatasya hi dhruvomrityurdhruvamjanmamritasya cha. Death is certain for one who has been born.

It is a first line of 27th verse, 2nd chapter, the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita (around 5000 thousand year back); often referred to as the Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata, dated to the second half of the first millennium BCE and is typical of the Hindu synthesis. It is considered to be one of the Holy Scriptures for Hinduism. It states that who has born, has to die on the planet of earth.

In English language, there is a popular idiom, as sure as death. Benjamin Franklin said: The only things certain in life are death and taxes. The most certain thing in life is that we will meet with death one day. Psychologists categorize the fear of death as the biggest fear in life.

Every person born on the planet Earth must have set a destination goal. A person keeps buying different tickets to reach that target. He keeps putting many tickets in his pocket like education, skill, hard work, defeat, victory, success failu re etc etc...Target means reaching the destination; But...

But sometimes an unexpected event happens in one's life that from the very journey the person, the man, the traveller has to drop his journey...left incomplete...the traveller's destination dream disappears like a melting fog...ah Thetraveller himself becomes invisible. Humans have named this event 'death'.

The Mahabharata relates an incident regarding this. During the period of their exile in the forest, one day while wandering the five Pandavas were thirsty and came across a well. Yudhishthir asked Bheem to go and fetch water for all of them. When Bheem reached the well, a yakṣha (semi-celestial being) began speaking from inside the well, I will only let you take the water if you first answer my questions. Bheem paid no heed and proceeded to draw water. The yakṣha pulled him in. After some time when Bheem did not return, a concerned Yudhishthir sent Arjun to see what was happening and fetch water. When Arjun reached the well, the yakṣha asked him too, I have already seized your brother. Do not attempt to draw the water unless you can answer all my questions correctly. Arjun also paid no heed, and the yakṣha pulled him into the well. The other brothers, Nakul and Sahadev, followed him, but met with the same fate. Finally, Yudhishthir himself came to the well. Once again, the yakṣha said, Answer my questions if you want to drink water from the well, or I will pull you in, just as I have done to your four brothers. Yudhishthir agreed to answer the questions. The yakṣha was actually the celestial God of death, Yamraj, in disguise. He asked sixty questions, each of which was answered perfectly by Yudhishthir. One of these questions was: Kim āśhcharyaṁ? What is the most surprising thing in this world? Yudhishthir replied:

ahanyahanibhūtānigachchhantīhayamālayam

śheṣhāḥsthiratvamichchhantikimāśhcharyamataḥ param (Mahabharata) [v30]

At every moment people are dying. Those who are alive are witnessing this phenomenon, and yet they do not think that one day they will also have to die. What can be more astonishing than this?

In 2022 March end, I read the news Tom Parker died at the age of just 33, Tom Parker, a member of British-Irish boy band The Wanted, has died after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. Though I never have heard him, a pang, a twinge arose, mind just hanged up in different thoughts. Some questions rushed out like; is this age to die? Should a person die in the age of just beginning of the real life? Certainly not then why he or she died at this age?

Tom is not alone, neither he will be, there were thousands of people who have shocked, there are thousands of people who are shocking and there will be thousands of people who will shock the world with countering with death prior to expiry date.

Naman Munshi

The Death

W

hen thinking about or discussing death, it is useful to have a sense of what we mean by death, and that is not always a uniformly agreed-upon concept.

Is death loss of life or loss of existence? Is death annihilation or a transformation of one’s life or existence?

Death of humans is seen as a natural and essential part of life, comparable to the natural history of other life forms in nature, yet it is also seen by many religions as uniquely different in profound ways.

Death is often defined as the cessation of all the biological functions that sustain a living organism. One of the challenges in defining death is in distinguishing it from life. As a point in time, death would seem to refer to the moment at which life ends. Determining when death has occurred requires drawing precise conceptual boundaries between life and death. This is difficult due to there being little consensus on how to define life itself. This general problem applies to the particular challenge of defining death in the context of medicine. For example, brain death, as practiced in medical science, defines death as the point in time at which brain activity ceases. It is possible to define life in terms of consciousness. When consciousness ceases, a living organism can be said to have died. Another problem is in defining consciousness. Many religious traditions hold that death does not (or may not) entail the end of consciousness.

Death is the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all according to Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962). This can be interpreted as annihilation of existence (of mind, spirit, and body). Death as the annihilation of existence, disconnection from all life experience and loved ones, and the cessation of consciousness is at the essence of death terror. With advances in medicine and technology—particularly in the areas of precision genomic medicine, immune-therapy, cell therapy, transplantation, artificial organs, and cryonics—medicine has moved implicitly away from delaying death to the preclusion of death. In time, the inevitability of death will be a very real question. Death may in fact not be inevitable at all in the future. Interestingly, marketers and advertisers have moved their attention from selling to millennial to focusing on perennials—that’s us, the generations that may live longer and possibly indefinitely. As opposed to generations whose lives were dominated by religious faith and concepts of an afterlife as a means of death denial, the postmodern world presents two choices to postmodern people. One is the promotion of a death-denying culture, where mortal beings neglect or deny death with a veil of ignorance and a focus on youth and material goods and all that entails. The second choice is quite interesting to me and very relevant to the cultural and legal shifts that are now affecting palliative care globally. The second method of coping or minimizing the terror of death is to control death through legalization of practices aimed at self-determination and autonomy and control of the process and timing death through legalizing physician aid in dying and euthanasia. Control over the timing and circumstances and processes of death seem to sufficiently allay our terror of dying. But does it solve the problem of nonexistence? Either death is of separation from consciousness or cessation of consciousness? Perhaps the acceptance of death necessary to choose physician aid in dying or euthanasia presumes that these issues have somehow been resolved.

What are the definitions of the death is; death itself is a tragedy for few people related to dyeing person. The death comes in different ways and with different consequences and dimensions; it may meet a person naturally, accidentally or any other unnatural and unlikely, miserable form like murder and suicide. Way are different but ultimate outcome is death, i.e. end of carrying life.

As per Hindu mythology there are seven Chiranjeevis means immortals still exist on the earth in 21st century also. These are Ashwathama, King Mahabali, Vyas, Hanuman, Vibhishan, Kripacharya, Markandey and Parashuram. This list excludes lord Krishna; even lord Krishna who was in Human Avatar had to die. One of the greatest example of who has born has to die principle was Bhishm Pitamah.

Shikhandi had been born in a previous life as a woman named Amba. Amba was the eldest daughter of the King of Kashi. Along with her sisters Ambika and Ambalika, she was abducted from their Swayamvara by Bhishma, as punishment to the Kingdom of Kashi for not inviting Hastinapur nobility to the event. After defeating several kings, including Salw, the King of Saubala, Bhishma returned to Hastinapur with the princesses and presented as the potential brides to his younger half-brother, Vichitraviry, the crown prince of Hastinapur.

Vichitravirya married only two sisters because Amba told Bhishma that she had fallen in love with the king of Salwa, and was not ready to marry anyone else. Hearing this from her, Bhishma sent Amba with grandeur to Saubala. But Salwa rejected her as well, in shame of losing the combat against Bhishma. Amba then returned to Bhishma and demanded that he marry her according to Kshatriy Dharm, but Bhishma declined due to his vow of celibacy. Enraged at her humiliation, she tried to persuade other kings to wage a war with Bhishma and compel him to wed her. None agreed for they were afraid of incurring the wrath of the great warrior. Amba got Parashuram, Bhishm's guru, to champion her cause. However, Parshuram couldn't defeat Bhishm and their fight resulted in a draw.

She resorted to penance and received a garland of blue lotuses from Lord Kartikey and it was foretold that anyone wearing the garland would become the cause of Bhishm's death. She went to the Panchal, as they were a mighty empire known for its military prowess. However, no one was willing to champion her cause, fearful of antagonizing Bhishma. Amba, in anger, hung the garland on the gates of King Drupad and left in agony.

Amba did severe penance to Lord Shiv for a boon to cause Bhishma's death. Eventually, her prayers were answered (she would become cause of his death only when Bhishm is fighting against the rules of dharm). But, being a woman with no military training, she asked Lord Shiv how she would accomplish her task, and he responded that her future incarnation would be the one to actually bring about Bhishm's demise. Eager to bring this about, Amba killed herself; in some versions of the story to explain the time gap between the abduction at Kashi and the Kurukshetra war, Amba keeps on killing herself until she is incarnated into a satisfactory situation. Amba was reborn as Shikhandini, the daughter of Drupad.

Amba is simply reborn as a male Shikhandi, sometimes whole and sometimes a eunuch. Thus, Shikhandi was instrumental in Bhishm's death who has earned Iccha Mrityu cover, the control over the time of his death.

LIFE EXPECTANCY V/S LIFE SPAN

L

ife expectancy at birth reflects the overall mortality level of a population. It is the average period that a person or a creature may expect to live.

Life expectancy relates to each and every creature of the planet earth whether it is Aquatic, terrestrial or amphibian. As far as animal and birds are concern; Immortal Jellyfish has the longest life span of any animal. The Greenland shark were reported to be anywhere between 272 and 512 years old.

House Mouse is having life expectancy of 1year, so as Fowler’s Toad and Pigeon 5 years, Kangaroo and Squirrel 6 years, Cheetah’s life expectancy is of 10 years, Chicken (if not hunt ) can also expect its life up to 10 if not hunt for human’s food, Tiger 15 ,Polar Bear and Horse 25 years, American Alligator, Lobster, Radiated Tortoise, Japanese Giant Salamander, Bald Eagle and Asian Elephant are having life expectancy of 50 years, whereas Greater Flamingo, Green-Winged Macaw and Tuatara are having life expectancy for 60 years.

What about human, the so called social animal?

For human significant factors in life expectancy include gender, genetics, hygiene, diet and exercise, access to quality healthcare, lifestyle and culture, and crime rates. Studies indicate that longevity is based on two major factors: genetics and lifestyle choices. Countries around the world have varying life expectancies.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global life expectancy in 2016 was 72.0 years, 74.2 years for females and 69.8 years for males. The life expectancies by region ranged from 61.2 years in the WHO African Region to 77.5 years in the WHO European Region. Between 2000 and 2016, the average life expectancy increased by 5.5 years.

Life Expectancy and Life Span is different thing for each and every human (Only human have ability to think and to expect). A human can wish