The Ides of March: Of Warnings and Betrayals

-- By Arulnambi K.

---

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
      I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, 
      Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Caesar: What man is that?

Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Caesar: Set him before me; let me see his face.

​Cassius: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

Caesar: What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

​    -- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2

​In 44 BC, on the Ides of March, a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to March 15, Julius Caesar was betrayed and assassinated by his friend Brutus and other conspirators. Caesar chose to ignore the warnings of a seer who had foretold that harm would come to Caesar by that day.

---

My father always drew lessons from everything that happened in and around his life. He firmly believed that experience is the best teacher. After my mother's passing on February 9, 2015, he decided to organize a memorial meeting and invited friends, family, relatives and students to attend. His primary purpose for this meeting was to draw lessons from all the good things in my mother's life and the way she had lived it, and share it with people close to him. Before the meeting, he wrote to his students and former colleagues, "As psychologists, what can we learn and convey through this meeting?"

On March 15, 2015, just over a month after my mother's passing, it was my father's turn. His end came unbidden, unexpectedly, abruptly, and all too soon for someone who had been extremely active and busy even until the previous day, and had seemed at least outwardly healthy and strong. Like his life, with its many experiences and lessons, both lived and taught, my father's death holds lessons too.

Since childhood, I don't remember my father being ill or even mildly sick more than a handful of times. He ate healthy, and managed stress well with all the techniques he knew as a psychologist. As he grew older, he developed high cholesterol (a family trait) and high blood pressure, both well-known risk factors for heart disease. He used to take medication for them about 10 years ago, and even used to consult with a cardiologist. Over the intervening years, he stopped taking regular medication for the conditions, and only got himself checked by a doctor a few times. He had gotten busier over the last five years or so of his life, and my mother's illness also occurred during that period. Call it the implacable advance of fate, but seemingly in the blink of an eye, events occurred which culminated on the Ides of March, 2015.

That day, my father woke up with a feeling of unease. I could only gather these details from the people he had interacted with during that day. He spoke to a relative, wanting to see an acupuncturist as he felt that his blood pressure was a bit too high. Later that morning, he spoke to a student and a friend, complaining of heartburn and back pain. They were concerned, and offered to accompany him to a doctor. He brushed aside their concerns, saying he would be fine and "live to be 150 years". He even walked to a nearby pharmacy and got some Gelusil, the commonly used heartburn relief medication. More people visited, and suggested that he should go with them to see a doctor. He turned down their offers, saying that he was feeling better. Sometime between 4 and 6 PM that evening, my father passed away, alone in his home.

My father was quite aware of the beginning signs of a heart attack. I remember exchanging emails forwarded to us about such symptoms. But, like Julius Caesar on that same day thousands of years ago, he chose to ignore the warnings. And these were warnings from his own body, the best judge of such things, as well as the warnings projected in the concern shown by his friends and students that day. He had also chosen not to get conventional and proven treatment for the extremely high blood pressure readings he had been observing over the previous months.

To carry Caesar's Ides of March analogy forward once more, Caesar had been betrayed by his friend. My father was betrayed by his own thinking. Some of that thinking was due to almost lifelong opinions held by him, and some of it could be attributed to the overwhelming grief he was experiencing but not acknowledging to the extent he could have. My father liked to quote his mentor and guide, Professor T. E. Shanmugam: "Your personality is your fate." How true. Not just for him, but for all of us.

The overconfidence in matters concerning his own health, an extreme prejudice against modern (allopathic) medicine, perhaps heightened by seeing my mother suffer due to her illness and its treatment, and a strong bias toward more naturalistic, even if unproven, systems of medicine, all conspired to lead him to an end that nobody expected at that point in his life. He had felt that he had much more to contribute to society and his family, but it was not to be. Instead, what we are left with is that all too common lament: "If only he had…"

One could say that we cannot change fate, and it was my father's time. While that may be true, there are still things to learn from even the most tragic and unstoppable events. Life is worth fighting for, always, and that is something a number of older people in a country like India forget once they reach a certain point in their lives.

So, what are those lessons? Listen to your body, especially as you grow older. Prevention is better than cure. Make an effort to understand the science behind health issues and their medical treatments. Do your own research about health matters. There is a wealth of information available, but watch out for misinformation. And as my father would say, everything should be in moderation, even your biases.

​In the end, we did not get an opportunity to even say, "Goodbye, Appa." But, no matter, he did not fall ill and suffer for a prolonged period, and that in itself is a blessing denied to many. And for those of us who knew him well, his ever positive outlook was infectious, making it impossible to keep mourning the past and instead forcing us to look toward the future. So, on this first anniversary of my father's passing, his spirit of ceaseless learning and desire for changing lives for the better still roams this earth, searching for kindred spirits to carry on his work and uphold the ideals and values dear to him and his wife. Stay tuned for our plans.