The Death of Ivan Ilyich, is an unassuming short story by Leo Tolstoy (the famous author of "War and Peace") published in 1886.

Many top medical schools in the United States have it up as required reading for all its graduates, because the little book really exposes the invisible and unfathomable underbelly of how people with so-called Westernized values tend to relate to death, how they are taught to regard it through a lens of terror and the incumbent numbness, the unfeeling denial that naturally follows.

If you can't go to India, find the little book, read it. Your eyes may water a little, but they will be opened like never before.