Ichchha Mrityu (icchā-mṛtyu)

Ichchha mrityu is death at will, the boon that a person cannot die until they choose to. Shantanu grants it to Devavrata in gratitude for the vow that cost his son a throne, and it becomes the strangest gift in the epic: Bhishma lies pierced through on a bed of arrows for fifty eight days, unable to die and unwilling to stop teaching, waiting for the sun to turn north. The boon converts what should have been a warrior's quick end into the longest deathbed in Indian literature.