The last time I was in God's own country, a close pal's Dad expired and our group
of friends went to pay our last respects to the departed soul. I usually avoid both
funerals and weddings, ofcourse due to different reasons.
With funerals, it is the overall gloom, the crying of relatives which saddens me and
thus I avoid them. With weddings, I hate waiting for food and then the jostling to
get to the dining area etc. More importantly, I hate people watching me when I am
eating. So imagine my discomfort when not only am I sitting to lunch/dinner with
hundred others, but also being videographed !!! So, unless it is unavoidable, I attend
just the wedding ceremony and skip the food part.
But there was no way I could avoid attending the funeral as the guy involved was a
childhood friend. Also, his Dad was a nice, reasonable guy with whom I always had
small chats whenever our paths crossed. So, we went to his home and as is expected
are greeted by the normal crying and breast-beating. His daughter was the one most
distraught by her Dad's demise and was recounting various instances involving her
Dad. It was heart numbing to say the least.
After an hour or so, the elders decided that it was time to move on. Some of them
looked around the parambu (yard) and identified a mango tree which will be cut
down to provide wood for the funeral pyre. Hmmm. That was a new one for me.
Never knew the significance of mango trees in this context.
Anyway, some guys got onto the task of bringing the tree down and then chopping
it into logs. A pyre was made with the logs in the yard itself and after some rituals,
the body was placed on top of it. The son lit fire to the pyre, all the while crying and
everyone moved away due to the heat and dense smoke.
Having been mainly brought up in cities, which either have their cremation grounds
or electric crematoriums, this ritual of cremating dead in their own yard was new to
me. Infact this was the first time I even saw a cremation. Have attended some
Christian funerals where the body is buried.
Another city-slicker friend (and a X'ian) standing near me whispers, "Man, ain't it
strange that people burn their loved ones ? It looks so odd when compared to
burying them."
I gave it a thought. Yes, it does seem odd to burn your loved ones. But then how much
better is it to bury them 6 feet under the earth with tons of soil weighing upon them ?
Given the fact that I am claustrophobic, I feel suffocated just thinking about it.
My thoughts turned to the Zoroastrian way of saying goodbye to their dead - leaving
the body in an open elevated place (the Tower of silence) for vultures and the elements
to feed on. They consider Fire and Earth too sacred for the dead to be placed in them.
Different religions, different practices. To each his own. What remains in common is
the void left by the departed person, the memories associated with them and the
absolute fact that they are gone for ever.
P.S.: One practice followed in Chennai (or is it all of Tamilnadu?) that outsiders find
very odd is the ritual that happens when the dead body is taken to the cremation
ground in a procession with young men dancing, bursting crackers etc. Almost as if it
were a happy occasion. Inspite of spending half my life here, I still find it odd.
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