Pearls of Wisdom: The Two Greatest Teachers: Time and Death

By Upendra Mishra

BOSTON — Someone once said that experience is like a comb: we receive it only after we become bald. The older we grow, the more painfully true this becomes.

Somewhere after fifty, a strange awareness quietly begins to settle inside us. Time no longer feels endless. The future no longer stretches infinitely ahead like an open highway. Instead, we begin to hear the ticking — soft at first, then louder.

We suddenly realize that every passing second is not merely passing. It is carrying us somewhere. Closer and closer to our final destination. And perhaps that is why many ancient traditions — Indian, Buddhist, Japanese, Stoic — considered death not an enemy, but one of our greatest teachers.

Death strips away illusion. It forces us to ask uncomfortable questions:

Who truly mattered?
What was worth fighting for?
Why did we postpone joy?
Why did we waste so much time proving ourselves?
Why did we allow ego, ambition, resentment, and endless distractions to consume the little time we were given?

As long as death feels distant, life feels cheap. We spend it carelessly. But once mortality becomes real — not as philosophy, but as lived experience — time suddenly becomes sacred. No wealth can buy one extra hour. No fame can negotiate one more sunrise. No power can persuade death to wait outside the door for one more season.

And so death, strangely enough, teaches us how to live.

This week, one of my old JNU friends, Salam Khan, passed away after remaining in a coma for more than fourteen months following a stroke.

His death touched me deeply. We both belonged to the Free Thinkers group at Jawaharlal Nehru University. In fact, Salam was the convenor of Free Thinkers before me. When he left, I replaced him. Ever since hearing the news of his passing, one strange thought has lingered in my mind: the man whose place I once took in student politics has now disappeared into eternity.

A human being dies, and an entire universe disappears with him.

His laughter.
His voice.
His anger.
His silences.
His unfinished thoughts.
His private fears.
His dreams no one else fully knew.

All dissolved into silence.

I still remember the countless evenings we spent inside his cramped hostel room, overflowing with friends, cigarette smoke, tea glasses, arguments, poetry, political theories, revolutionary fantasies, heartbreaks, and youthful certainty. We thought history itself depended on our conversations.

None of us imagined then that one day we would begin counting the dead.

After leaving JNU, I met Salam only once during a brief visit to India. I was surprised to find him living in Godavari Hostel — the women’s hostel. A friend joked that Salam had finally achieved every JNU boy’s impossible dream.

Life, however, had simply unfolded beautifully. Salam had married his JNU sweetheart, who later became warden of Godavari. Staff housing came with the position, and Salam moved in. Later he joined journalism and became a cartoonist at The Economic Times.

I also remember that Salam was present when I had my second drink in life, along with our fellow Free Thinker R.V. Singh.

People often remember their first drink. For some reason, I remember my second also. Perhaps because youth itself intoxicates us more deeply than alcohol ever can.

After hearing of Salam’s death, faces from JNU began appearing before me one after another like fading lanterns in the fog of memory.

Pramod Sinha.

Arun Bal.

Krishna Reddy.

Ajay N. Jha.

Durga Madhaw Mitra — our John.

Guruprasad Mohapatra.

Rizwan Qaiser.

Savita Pande.

One by one.

Gone.

And with each name came the same frightening realization: Oh my God… people of my own age are disappearing. How much time do I have left?

That question arrives quietly in middle age and never completely leaves.

A few years ago, Pramod Sinha passed away in Pennsylvania after multiple organ failure. Once we reconnected nearly twenty-five years ago, we remained close ever since. We camped together every year. He taught me camping, taught me songs, and even gave me his guitar, which I still treasure.

Sometimes objects outlive people and become containers of grief.

Then there was Arun Bal, my hostel mate and classmate, who died suddenly of a heart attack while serving as Joint Secretary in India’s Ministry of Defense. One morning he went for a walk and never returned.

Life can end between one heartbeat and the next. I still remember breakfasts in the hostel mess, endless chai in the library canteen, classroom debates, jokes, frustrations, ambitions — all those ordinary moments that later become priceless because they can never happen again.

Then came memories of Krishna Reddy. One summer afternoon during Delhi’s unbearable heat, he knocked on my hostel door and said seriously, “Upendra, let’s go buy a razai.”

“A razai?” I asked in disbelief. “In this heat?”

“Yes,” he replied earnestly. “I want to keep water cold.”

I stared at him before bursting into laughter.

“You mean a surahi, not a razai!”

And then both of us laughed uncontrollably.

Years later, after his sudden passing, that tiny absurd moment became immortal inside me. That is how memory works. We think life is made of grand achievements.

But after people die, what remain are tiny things:

a joke,
a cup of tea,
a shared walk,
someone knocking on your door.

Krishna later became one of India’s best-known mentors for UPSC aspirants through KRISP and Hyderabad Study Circle, shaping countless careers. But when I remember him, I remember the razai.

Ajay N. Jha’s poetry still appears unexpectedly on my Facebook memories like messages arriving from another dimension. One day his posts simply stopped. Only later did I learn he had passed away.

Death is often exactly like that:
one day someone is speaking,
the next day only echoes remain.

I remember Savita Pande’s vibrant laughter and large bindi. Guruprasad Mohapatra’s humor and brilliance. John’s quiet conversations about politics and life.

One by one, the circle grows smaller. At this age, funerals no longer feel exceptional. They begin to feel like milestones.

And naturally fear comes. Death frightens us because it is the ultimate surrender. We fear losing our body, our memories, our relationships, our unfinished dreams. We fear disappearing.

But perhaps our fear comes less from death itself and more from attachment to the story we have built around “me.” Ancient Indian wisdom understood this deeply.

In the Katha Upanishad, the young seeker Nachiketa stands before Yama, the God of Death, and asks the question every human being secretly carries inside:

“What happens after death?”

Yama tries to distract him with wealth, power, music, beautiful companions, long life, kingdoms — everything human beings spend their lives chasing. But Nachiketa refuses.

“These pleasures last only until tomorrow,” he says.

What astonishing wisdom for a child. Because eventually all of us discover the same truth: death humbles kings and beggars alike. It dissolves ego.

It reminds us that our possessions were never really ours. That our titles vanish. That our arguments become meaningless. That our anger wastes precious life.

Perhaps that is why awareness of death, if understood properly, can become transformative rather than paralyzing.

Death teaches tenderness.

It teaches forgiveness.

It teaches urgency.

It teaches us to call old friends while they are still alive.

To say “I love you” before it becomes impossible.

To sit quietly beside our parents while we still can.

To laugh more freely.

To hate less.

To become less arrogant.

To become more human.

Rabindranath Tagore perhaps understood this acceptance of death more beautifully than anyone else. In one of his poems, he speaks to death not with terror, but almost with intimacy:

“O thou the last fulfilment of life,
Death, my death, come and whisper to me!

Day after day I have kept watch for thee;
for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.

All that I am, that I have, that I hope and all my love
have ever flowed towards thee in depth of secrecy.”

What extraordinary words.

Tagore does not see death merely as destruction. He sees it as fulfillment — the final meeting after a lifetime of preparation. Like a bride leaving home after marriage, stepping alone into the unknown night.

“The flowers have been woven
and the garland is ready for the bridegroom.

After the wedding the bride shall leave her home
and meet her lord alone in the solitude of night.”

Perhaps that is why every death shakes us so deeply: because every death reminds us of our own unfinished journey toward that same mysterious night.

And yet, strangely, there is beauty hidden inside this realization. Because once we truly understand that everything is temporary, we begin to love more deeply.

A cup of tea with a friend becomes sacred.
An ordinary evening becomes unforgettable.
A random conversation becomes a treasure.
Even laughter becomes holy because we know it cannot last forever.

Maybe the opposite of death is not life. Maybe the opposite of death is forgetting.

And in that sense, Salam Khan, Pramod Sinha, Arun Bal, Krishna Reddy, Ajay N. Jha, John, Guruprasad Mohapatra, Rizwan Qaiser, and Savita Pande are still alive somewhere — in memory, in laughter, in poetry, in old hostel corridors, in Facebook posts, in unfinished conversations, and in the quiet chambers of the heart where time itself cannot fully enter.

Perhaps that is all immortality ever was.

(Upendra Mishra is the founder of Precise Marketing & Media and a leading advocate for rethinking how marketing drives business growth. Through his “Marketing Upside Down” perspective, he challenges the traditional focus on marketing activity and instead emphasizes revenue as the only metric that matters.With more than 30 years of experience, Upendra has developed the Precise Marketing System, a proven framework that helps companies uncover revenue leaks, focus on high-value opportunities, and build scalable growth engines. His approach has delivered measurable results, including helping a company grow from $14 million to $55 million in just three years. He is the author of Precise Marketing: The Proven System for Growing Revenue in a Noisy World, where he outlines his philosophy for succeeding in today’s crowded and uncertain marketplace. He is also the author of After the Fall: How Owen Lost Everything and Found What Truly Matters. For more, vivit: www.UpendraMishra.com)