Comforting the Dead

Have you ever had occasion to listen to the monologue of a relative, typically a senior, about how we  Indians are inheritors of such a glorious culture and how the West, supposedly in an advanced state of moral decadence, must look to us for guidance in spiritual matters. Well, I often seethe with rage when I hear such vacuous statements, especially in light of an experience that I'll remember with disgust for the rest of my life. This is something I have only shared with the closest of my friends, simply because the recollection of it fills me with revulsion. However, after a recent discussion with friends, I realised that a lot of Indians have had to undergo ordeals similar to mine for no good reason. Probably, if we talk about it, and condemn it for what it is, things might start to get a bit better.

I was born into a Hindu Keralite family. Both my mom and I were born and brought up in Chennai so we are really more Tamilian than Keralite as concerns most things (our Tamil is better than our Malayalam, for example), and we celebrate Pongal as well as Onam at home. It was only when my grandfather died, I came to understand that in matters of death, your ancestral roots are sacrosanct and there is simply no other way the last rites could be performed than how your ancestral tradition dictates they be.

I remember the day I got news of my grandfather's passing away vividly. I had to rush back home from college. I was so distraught that my room mate, Rijesh, afraid of letting me out of his sight, took the pains to accompany all the way to the railway station (situated at quite a distance from my college in Calicut) and made sure that his father was waiting to receive me at Chennai, expecting quite correctly that people at my own place would be caught up in the frenetic activity that typically follows a demise in the family. It is a gesture I will never forget.

What happened between the time I got home up until the next day when we cremated the body is all a bit hazy in my memory. There were elaborate rituals. Prior to the cremation, there was a lot of walking around the body and the strange act of putting rice and water into the mouth of the corpse. I am not sure if people in my community acknowledge how disturbing this really is. However, that pales in strangeness and morbidity compared to what was to follow.

After the aforementioned preliminary rituals, the body was subject to the fires of the electric crematorium. There was an ensuing wait for around an hour. After this, all the menfolk of the family, or to be precise, the male descendants of the deceased, which in this case happened to be my uncles, my cousins, my brother and me, were required to sit down, one after the other, in turn, next to the remains, and sort out the bone fragments.

Yes, you read that right, sort out the bone fragments! The priest conducting the service told us that my virtuous grandfather's soul would reach salvation only if his remains were assembled in an earthen pot, in the right order: bones from the lower body at the bottom of the pot, bones from the torso in the middle and the bones from the skull, right at the top. I hate to have to recollect the incident but I vaguely remember mulling over a piece of bone, trying to figure out which pile it ought to be sorted into. My brother was fourteen when he underwent this ordeal. The youngest of my cousins was no more than seven. Yes, I wanted to weep bitterly. I also wanted to throw up. But most vividly, I remember the anger I felt at the insensitivity of this barbaric culture I had inherited, that subjected grieving human beings, still reeling from the shock of having lost a loved one, to such a morbid ritual. What I hate most about it, was that the memory of that incident would taint the loving memories I have of my grandfather, for the rest of my life.

Compare this now, with the "decadent" practices of the West, where typically, when a person dies, there is a service conducted, where all the loved ones assemble to make small speeches recollecting the happy memories they shared with the deceased; where they play the music that the deceased used to enjoy and read poems he was fond of; where they even share a joke or two, lightening the pall of gloom and grief hanging over the mourners, even if it be only for a moment. Even if you be one of those "proud" Indians disdainful of "aping the West" in lifestyle changes, I wonder, if you'd agree that there probably are some instances for which, even we, as proud of our culture as we are, ought to take a leaf out of others' books to conduct ourselves with.

I submit to you that any of you reading this, simply by virtue of the time that you live in, know more about the natural world than your ancestors ever did. Probably, if we stop aping in blind faith, what our ancestors did, and open ourselves to making our lives better in our rituals as we strive to do in our embrace of other modern innovations and creature comforts, we'd probably realise, that rituals surrounding death, ought to comfort the living rather than the dead.