The Final Journey

The Gathering Storm in any way related to him, and there being no further cohesive or unifying force to hold it together, it was not long before his hard-won empire had disintegrated. When death comes, it impresses upon the immediate beholders of its ravages just how helpless man is before his Maker. Death strikes all around him, sparing, neither the high nor the low, yet people who are not directly affected fail, sadly, to understand its significance. It has a lesson to teach, but man ignores it. And if he has paid no heed to the most urgent realities of life, death will certainly leave him no respite to cogitate upon them at that time, and there will be no breathing space for him to learn lessons which he should have learned long before. Death is the greatest teacher, but man lives out his life as if there were no such thing awaiting him at the end of life’s journey. The Gathering Storm O n 11th August 1979, a flash flood struck Maurvi in Gujarat, leaving total devastation in its wake. Due to heavy rain, the water level rose so high in a huge dam on the bank of the settlement that the dam broke. In the words of one who witnessed it, “About 20 feet high walls of water entered the settlement with such high velocity that no one could escape from their onslaught. In a few hours’ time, this flood water having destroyed all animate and inanimate objects receded