Where there is Life, there is Death – one of the many bitter laws of Mother Nature. Every life is plagued with loss, just as it is filled with joy. Death is an inevitable truth, but even so, it is an eventuality that the human race struggles to accept. India’s ancient scriptures contain stories of life, death, and even the concept of “life after death”, a beautiful message that our loved ones live on long after death, watching over us, as they did in life.

 

However, these are not the only stories in our scriptures. Our creative ancestors took it one step further. What if love was so enduring, that even Death never stood a chance against it? Let me tell you the story of Savitri, a short tale recited in the epic “Mahabharata”:

Savitri, the daughter of King Aswapati of Madra, was a beautiful, accomplished woman of great virtue. However, due to reasons unknown, she remained “un-wooed” by worthy princes for a long while into her maidenhood. Her father suggested that she marry a man of her choosing, and that is when she met her husband, Satyavan. Unfortunately, her husband-to-be was fated to die within a year. However, she never wavered from her decision and when the fated day came, she negotiated for his life with the God of Death, Yama Raj himself, and won back her husband’s soul.

 

While the idea of “resurrection” was born in such scriptures, it did not end there. We have constantly toyed around with the fantastic concept of resurrection. Mary Shelley wrote of the famous undead monster in her classic “Frankenstein’s Monster”, Michael Crichton breathed life back into dinosaurs in his bestseller novel “Jurassic Park”. The intrigue surrounding this topic was enough for scientists to start wondering – what if the concept of resurrection could be made into a science? And what if this science could be used to resurrect organisms that died out during the course of evolution?

 

As you might have deduced from this introduction, this topic alone is enough to fill encyclopaedias worth of information. However, we have attempted to provide you with just enough information to formulate your own opinions, perhaps even wish to learn more! We hereby present you the 24th edition of Kaizen, by SABEST, VIT. We hope you enjoy this thought-provoking piece to the fullest!