How a Yogi can live FOREVER (yoga philosophy from Bollywood Music 🎵)

Heads up. The following is heavy (for a Wednesday morning). Or deep. Depends on you, I guess 🫣🥺. In this email I’m going to circle through life and death and the meaning of both in eastern philosophy.

Don't skim through this.

Continuing on the Bollywood music theme.....🎶

There’s another song I’ve carried in my head my whole life. I was actually listening to it up in my gym while trying to have a workout. But my brain kept drifting into philosophical mode. It does that a lot 🤯

The song translates, loosely, to Conqueror of Destiny (or Master of Destiny, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar). And there’s one part of it I’ve replayed more than any piece of music I’ve ever heard.

It says, more or less, that life will betray you, and that it is death who is your real companion. And one day she will take you away with her (maut mehbooba hain apne saath lekar jaayegi). And that the person who understands this, the impermanence of life and the permanence of death, becomes the conqueror of their own destiny.

Image of my dad in the early 80's. Propa bollywood fam :)

I’ve pondered this song for most of my life. And lately it makes me think of my dad 🧐.

For a smidge of context, his was not an easy life. My dad's family was torn apart during Partition. His father saw his motherland ripped apart by politics and religion, which meant my dad’s parents were largely absent. He was forced to leave everything and come to England in the early 70s to send money "back home". He arrived with nothing.

My mum tells me (I was too young to remember) that we shared a small flat bedroom with my dad’s closest friend. One small room with a curtain down the middle. My mum, my sister and I slept on a single mattress, and my dad slept on the floor beside us. No bed. Just the floor.

And I remember him working long days in a factory, smoking too much, doing whatever he could to hold things together. Everything felt uncertain back then. “Paki bashing” was rife for a while. But my dad just got on with it. He carried more trauma than I think I’ll ever fully understand, and he carried it without ever understanding it. There were no Gabor Maté videos on youtube back then.

The ol’ boy had a tough, tough life. And yet, when he passed away last year (he was 71), he went with a smile. He left trying to pass on some of the lessons he’d learnt, from the mistakes he’d made and the life he’d lived. And once he’d passed on what he could, or at least tried to, he told me he was ready. Ready to embrace whatever, and whoever, was coming to take him next. After a life that hard, he met the end like it was the beloved mehbooba from the song finally arriving to take him away. Just as the song says.

A client of mine, Mohan, said something to me recently. That the whole of life is really just two things. Learning, and then sharing what you learned with others. Even if it’s just one person. You spend your years gathering life, and then, towards the end of that life, your job is to share it. To pass on your meaning of it all (to anyone who wants to listen).

Because as the song goes on:

“He who teaches the world the art of living, even after death, shall be called the conqueror of destiny.”

So all the challenges, all the struggles, are just part of our story. And even now, when I think of my dad, all I think about is what I learnt from him. Not from what he said to me (he didn't actually teach me anything), but from understanding who he was and from reflecting on his life. He is teaching me the art of living, and what life is, after his death.

Every one of us has a story to tell. We just have to be brave enough to keep writing it, knowing that everything we do will leave an impression on someone. Life is about living for sure, but the philosophy of the Indian subcontinent says life is more about what you leave behind. Even if you leave one lesson for one person, something that helps them do better, be better, or think a little more clearly, then you have conquered your destiny because your lessons have lived on. And that's what the yogis mean when they say you will live forever.

Namaskar

Zahir

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