‘THERE is a bone in the human body,’ the priest told my brother at the cremation ground as they sifted my father’s ashes, ‘in which the human soul resides. It’s called the atma ram – the home of the soul. It’s a rare thing to find this bone intact after cremation. When we do, we believe the person was a very elevated soul. Like your father … Look,’ he said, and held a piece of bone out to my brother.
Rahul looked at the blackened object now in his hands. It could have been a vertebra – or perhaps two, fused together.
‘You see,’ the priest said, ‘how it is shaped like a seated human being. Here, here are the legs, the arms, here’s the face …’
Rahul looked more closely and there was a near-perfect model of a person, legs apart, arms akimbo, hands on knees, a face complete with eyes, nose, mouth, ears, a head with a sort of crown on it – ‘It’s rare to find the crown,’ the priest said – and a small, flat chest with what looked like a slit housing a tiny heart.
‘May I keep this?’ Rahul asked the priest. ‘I’d like to take it home and show it to my family.’
‘Well, my son,’ said the priest, ‘you do know that once a person has left his home, it is considered inauspicious to take him back there again. Your father’s soul is now with God. What will you achieve taking this empty casing home?’
‘We’re not particularly religious,’ said Rahul. ‘I don’t think anyone will worry about it being inauspicious.’
‘Do what you think is right, but why don’t you simply photograph it and show the pictures to your family?’
In the end, Rahul did not bring the bone home. Instead, he put it together with other fragments of my father in two small bags, filling another, larger one with the ashes, and left them in a locker at the cremation ground. He would take them later to the Ganges at Haridwar.
* * *
My father died on a bright, hot August day in 2001. He’d been ill for only a short time – unconscious for the final five days. ‘Tonight is critical,’ the doctors told us. ‘If he makes it through he will be fine.’ He did make it through, but machines were keeping him alive. At first I prayed that he would live, and then I prayed that he would die. A cold fear settled around my heart and, amid the shared anxiety and concern, I began to see things. A sort of white light appeared – or rather made its presence felt – in my room at night as I tried to sleep. It was to this light that I prayed for my father’s release. In the harsh light of day, we – my mother, my brothers, sister and I – begged the doctors to turn off the machines, to let him go. We cannot, they told us. It is illegal.
The thing my father had feared the most, and he had often said this, was that he would die alone in a hospital, unattended and unloved. It was an irrational fear, but not easily dismissed. He did not believe we would not abandon him. ‘It’s going to come true,’ I thought. ‘He’ll go on and on. He’ll remain unconscious. He’ll lie there with machines breathing for him. And we will go back to our lives.’ He politely died on the fifth day. For all his shortcomings, he was a courteous man.
* * *
My earliest memory of my father is quite a late one. I was nine, I think, and I remember waking up one night to find him and a friend of his arguing with my mother. She was angry – they had been gambling, had run out of money, and had come home to try to persuade her to let them have a little more. I remember his nearly toothless smile – he was still a young man, but had lost nearly all of his teeth to chewing paan, and I remember his bald, shiny head, the butt of many jokes with us. Later, my mother told us that our father was a gambler, often going straight to the gambling den with his pay packet, often forgetting even the most important family events. My mother gave birth to at least one of their four children alone in hospital, and anniversaries were celebrated, illnesses endured, routinely without him. She told us gambling was like an illness he could not shake and that we, as his children, his family, needed to help him when it took hold, not reject him. I think it was then that he ceased to be patriarch and became in my mind just a vulnerable, sometimes funny, often weak, man. No longer ‘father’, but still ‘Dad’. Years later, when we had moved to Delhi, one of his gambling companions arrived to collect our Vespa scooter, our only transport. It had been lost in a wager.
We tried to ‘cure’ him. My two brothers, young boys at the time, would often be despatched to haul him home. Travelling on buses and rickety rickshaws – and later in an old, slow-moving black car – they’d go to smoky gambling dens to find Dad, an educated, literate man, jostling with crooks and pimps. Pankaj and Rahul would wait while Dad finished a game or a hand of cards. Men walked past them, staring at them, eyeing them. Finally, he joined them, wiping his shiny pate, sheepish and shamefaced, and the three of them went home in the early hours of the morning.
We tried curfews; if he was late he would be fined. If he stayed out after work but was home by 9p.m., he would have to pay each of us, and any visiting cousins, Rs1.25. The fine went up by the hour, and by midnight was Rs2.50. We did not have a penalty for staying out all night, which he often did. We were trying to establish that certain rules had to be observed. Refusing to acknowledge that our father regularly broke those rules was our way of preserving the facade.
* * *
It was 11 o’clock in the morning when we brought father’s body home from the hospital. Nearly a hundred neighbours and relatives awaited his arrival. As the hospital hearse drew in, my two brothers, various uncles, and a couple of neighbours lifted the bier from the hearse. For Hindus, which I suppose we were – but I think there was more Sikh about us – the body is laid on the ground, on a new, white sheet. Not being religious, we knew little of the rituals of death, but there were others who did and we followed their kindly instruction. My mother wept when she saw his lifeless body. All the time he had been in hospital, unconscious, she couldn’t bear to see him, but now there was no excuse. She wept, even entreated him to stand up and talk to her, but quickly had herself back in control.
People, many of them strangers to us, offered homage, and then we were ready to take him to the cremation ground. I wanted to participate in the death rituals – normally women are banned – and as a number of men surged forward to lift the now sanctified bier, wrapped in cloth and rope, incense and flowers, to return it to the hearse, I stepped forward and asked to be allowed to carry him. ‘No,’ said the priest, but I brushed him aside. Among the pallbearers were three men my father had actively disliked. I pushed one aside and lent my shoulder to the weight. Why is death so heavy, while life is so filled with lightness? I remembered my father as small, fragile. This heavy body was unfamiliar.
* * *
My father did not believe in great causes. He rarely took positions on anything and if he did, his loyalties were easily swayed. All our lives we could never tell which political party he sympathised with – it wasn’t that he was secretive, but he never really seemed to know himself. And it took very little, sometimes as little as an appeal to his better judgment, to sway him. Nor was he particularly religious. He’d make pretence of being so, visiting the gurudwara now and again, but it was mostly to ask for good luck in gambling; his prayers fell on deaf ears. In his younger days he would pray to a grave close to our house, the grave of the ‘nine-foot man’. Later, he switched to Guru Nanak, and after his mother died, he turned to Hinduism. One day, I brought home a rather inartistic wooden Ganesh, a gift I did not want and fully intended to give away. Father insisted on putting it up in the hall of our home, nodding to it every time he went off to play cards.
His vacillation extended into other areas. When we were young, we were impressed to learn that our parents married for love, a rare thing at the time. But the reality was somewhat different. They’d known each other in Lahore before India and Pakistan were divided, and talk of marriage was sometimes in the air. I say sometimes because, though they’d declared themselves in love – my mother says she fell in love with him when, heading off to a job interview, she found a note saying ‘Best of luck, Princess’ – my mother wasn’t ideal bride material for his family. Her father was long dead, her mother ill, she herself had been living more or less alone, away from home. With no real family support, she did not carry that crucial thing, a dowry. Dad, on the other hand, was the eldest son of a reasonably well-established family and there were many dowry prospects. My father took the easy way out – as he often did in his life – and did nothing, hoping things would sort themselves out. Or that something would happen. They did, and it did. India became independent and it was partitioned. Lahore now became part of Pakistan. My mother was teaching in a school in what became Indian Punjab at the time. She spent months trying to get her siblings and her mother to leave Lahore. My father, like millions of others, did not believe Partition would change anything and stayed put. He and a handful of his friends who worked with him at the Tribune, a daily paper, went to work each day until the bloodshed became undeniable. After putting the last edition of the newspaper to bed on August 14, 1947, they piled into a newspaper delivery truck and fled for the relative safety of the Indian border.
The Tribune reopened in Shimla, and it was December of 1947 or January of 1948 when Dad received news from his parents – who had moved to Bombay – of his impending wedding. Everything was settled, the girl was agreeable, all he need do was take time off and come to Bombay for the wedding. In a panic, he wrote to my mother, pleading for her help. What should I do? You’d better come here, she replied from Delhi, or I’ll come to you. So instead of marrying someone he didn’t know, he married someone he did. Acceptance came, albeit grudgingly, but his mother never quite got over the shame.
* * *
By the time we reached the cremation ground, the sun was directly overhead. We laid father down on the stone slab and began piling on the wood, log by log, from the ready piles. The fetching and stacking of the wood by family and friends is considered a loving act, a last embrace, if you will. I talked to him with each log I placed on his corpse, tying off loose ends in our complicated relationship.
He was an elegant, dapper man. He loved to look good and we, his family, tried our best to dress him well. We bought him clothes, matched his sweaters and shoes, ensured he had the latest fashion in trousers and jackets. Our efforts were appreciated. He cared for his clothes and was particular when he assembled each day’s outfit, recalling who had given him what and imparting as much to anyone who admired his smartness. When he came home, he would recount stories of how envious his friends were of all his clothes. My brother Rahul added to the pyre a beautiful, new pair of blue corduroy trousers from Marks and Spencer and a Benetton shirt Dad had never worn. ‘Let him take these along,’ he said, ‘perhaps he can wear them up there.’ Alert to the priests who might make off with the clothes, he stayed close to the incongruous offerings.
Prayers were said, mantras chanted, the soul sent on its journey with incense and rose water and words of comfort and release. The pyre readied with ghee and blessings, a priest held up a long torch and set it to the wood, then handed the torch to my two brothers for them to do the same. I moved forward and put my hand to it. ‘No, no, daughter,’ said the priest, ‘this is not meant for women.’ But my brothers responded that, in our family, there was no such distinction, and as my hand joined theirs on the torch, my sister and sisters-in-law joined us. Together, we four women and two men circled our father’s body and lit his way to his next journey, what I would call the most important journey of his life.
* * *
A year before he died, my father gave up an all-expenses-paid holiday to Europe to make ‘the most important journey’ of his life, a visit to Pakistan. We had pitched in to give our parents a grand holiday. My younger brother and his family were going, and it seemed an ideal way for our ageing parents to take a vacation. As we waited for their new passports, we tracked the passage of this important parcel on the Internet until the police ‘verifiers’ arrived to confirm that the name on the address lived at the address so named. Everything was in place. Then my father declared he would not go. Why, we asked him, what’s the problem? Was he worried about the money? We are paying. Was it the duration? The trip can be shortened.
At eighty, he continued to work a good half-day at a news agency run by an old friend and a visit to Pakistan had been arranged for a group of journalists. He wanted to go. After fifty-three years, he was ready to return. ‘I have never forgotten Lahore,’ he said, ‘and this will probably be my only chance to see it again before I die.’ There was something else. When he and his colleagues had left in the newspaper lorry, he’d handed over the keys of his apartment to Shamsher, a friend who had chosen to stay behind because he was in love with a Muslim woman and did not want to leave her. He wanted to find Shamsher, or at least his family, because he’d heard rumours that Shamsher had died, but he didn’t really know, and he wanted to find out.
We voiced our concerns: his diabetes, his angina, his tendency to overdo it, how he always lost things and how complicated it would be should he lose his passport or something equally important. He was adamant. ‘I just have to go,’ he said.
My father knew that Shamsher had worked for a while with the BBC, and with Pakistan radio, but after that he’d lost track of the trajectory his career had taken, so he asked anyone he could think of who might know, searching out his old haunts … and then it was the last day. At a large farewell reception, father found himself talking to someone about old times. He mentioned Shamsher, his fruitless search, and how disappointed he was not to have found his old friend. ‘Come with me,’ said the man, taking him by the hand and leading him through the crowded room, to a young man. ‘Salman,’ Dad’s companion said. ‘Meet an old friend of your father.’ Shamsher had died long ago, it was true, but here was his son, who was overjoyed to meet someone about whom he had heard so much. My father’s journey to Pakistan was complete.
* * *
Thirteen days after my father died, my brother and I went to the cremation ground to pick up his ashes and bones. Hindu custom dictates that the ashes must be submerged within thirteen days of the death, and we had left this task to the very last. I waited outside while my brother collected what was left – three parcels: a large one with the ashes, a smaller one with the bones, and a third holding the ‘soul’ bone. I held this particular parcel for the three hours it took us to drive to Haridwar, but I did not dare open it. Yes, I was afraid, but also very sad; I couldn’t reconcile the parcel I held in my hand with the person I had known.
Haridwar is where commerce meets ritual: holy men making a quick rupee trading on grief, or offering salvation for a price. Here, the Ganges flows swift, its waters brown with the mud it carries down from the mountains; still, the water sold on its banks is clean, clear and colourless as tap water, though with a tinge of blue.
An atmosphere of religiosity takes you the moment you choose to enter it. We left our precious packets in the car and wandered along the river. Three women emerged from the river and proceeded to change into fresh and dry clothes, their nakedness unseen amid the roiling mass of humanity. We crossed a bridge, growing oblivious to the beggars and priests and pilgrims. Small stalls offered a variety of notes and coins laid out on cloth sheets, many ‘antiques’. Near a crowded rickshaw stand, I asked my brother if he’d be willing to explore another aspect of Haridwar that I had heard about and that had been one of my reasons for coming along.
There are priests who specialise in genealogy: if you have the right information, you can find your family, locate its many branches, fill in the blanks of lost or unknown relationships. When Hindu and Sikh families come to Haridwar, they visit the priest in charge of their family tree and record the latest death, the names of those left behind, of those who have gone before. Once begun, this tree can go on for as long as the family chooses to continue it, and the record remains with the same priest, or with his son, or his son’s son. I wanted to see from where I had come and I knew from my grandmother that our tree was here.
Our rickshaw-puller delivered us to a small, narrow-laned marketplace, where we were surrounded by priests of all ages and colours. ‘What name? Which area? Grandfather’s name? Caste? Sub-caste? Place of residence? …’ We had some answers, but caste wasn’t something we took seriously. In the dark alleyways of the family-tree bazaar in Haridwar, our answers were clearly inadequate. ‘Never mind,’ said one, ‘do you know the name of the area your family comes from?’ And we were sent to a young and slightly tubby man, who offered to try. He cranked open a tall metal cupboard behind him and pulled out a large jam-roll of paper that opened out into a huge notebook. He consulted his index, trying to match headings and sub-headings with what we could tell him. ‘The information you have is not enough,’ he said after much turning of pages. ‘Get more details and then you can return.’
By the time we emerged, disappointed, into the harsh light of the marketplace, it was as if everyone knew our business and everyone was party to our search. ‘Is there someone at home?’ ‘An elder who can help you with more information?’ ‘Why not try to call and find out?’ ‘Try to find out a bit more.’ We found a telephone and called our mother, but, not being unduly concerned with either religion or caste, she had never thought about this herself. We called an aunt, and she did have something, and we returned to our priest, but still it wasn’t enough. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Here’s my card with my number. Once you have all the information, call me and I can direct you to the proper place. But surely you did not come all the way from Delhi for this. Why have you come? What are you doing here?’
The time had come, and he offered his services. ‘I’ll need another priest to help me,’ he said, describing a hierarchy we did not understand. ‘Go to your car and collect the ashes and bones, and meet me at the ghat. I’ll have the priest with me by then.’ We said we didn’t want the fuss and bother of a religious ceremony, and he seemed unperturbed: ‘Yes, don’t worry. I know what you want. Just go and bring your father’s ashes.’
He and the other priest were at the ghat when we arrived with Dad’s remains. They had with them a small brass dish full of flowers, some incense, turmeric powder and some holy ash, known as vibhuti. With a brief prayer, and a discreet signal for the required fee, our priest began the formalities. He chanted, recited a mantra, mentioned our father’s name, recited from memory the names of the family we had given him earlier, and called on my brother to immerse the ashes in the river. I could sense the priest’s surprise when Rahul joined my hands with his around the ashes and we both upended the bag over the water, watching as the current carried them away. At a second signal, we did the same with the bones. As the priest began the closing chant, he noticed the small bag still in my hand. ‘What is that you are holding, my daughter?’ He’s younger than I am; how can he call me daughter? He looked at the piece of bone. ‘Yes, this is the bone we call the atma ram. A person in whose body this bone is left intact after the cremation must have been an elevated soul. Your father was such a man. But, why do you wish to keep it? You must send it along.’
I had not looked at the bone until now. It smelled faintly of the damp flowers from the cremation ground, and felt moist from the milk used to douse the flames after they had done their work. I saw the head, with a sort of crown, the arms, hands on knees, legs wide apart, the chest with a slit, and the heart inside. I told the priest I wanted to take it home, to show it to my family. ‘But, why? It is inauspicious to take someone back after they have left for their permanent abode.’
Why indeed. Our father was such a modest man, he never thought of himself as important, but …
The priests were at a loss; there were no rituals for this. They needed to get back to work. They could have left us; they had done their part. But they waited, concerned, trying to help us find a solution. ‘My daughter,’ said the older priest, ‘why do you wish to hold on to that piece of bone? What you have in your hand is the property of Mother Ganga. It is her wealth, it belongs to her. Do not hold on to it, daughter, return what is hers to her.’
I looked at the fragment of bone I held in my hand, and at the dusty, darkening sky. I turned and bent to the water, immersed my hand, and let its flow take away the bone.
