A New Way to Start a New Year

I started the New Year in an interesting way. After a nice brunch with friends at the Metropol, perhaps the nicest hotel in Mysore, I was on my way home to do some work. I like to take a short cut home on a road/trail that leads through the crematorium and cemetery grounds. It is not an official road, and is too bumpy and narrow for a car.

On one side is the public crematorium area, with a covered area with about six fire pits underneath and the cemetery grounds. On the other side of the road is the electric crematorium. I believe the electric one may be government run and is used for decedents who have no family or when the family can not afford to put on a funeral. I do not know who gets buried, but I just learned there are five classes of people who are not cremated: children, pregnant women, holy men, people who die of snake bites, and one more group, so perhaps those people get buried in the cemetery.

I freely admit that I understand very little about how this all works and what people are doing what and why, and I apologize in advance if anything I say is of offense. Please forgive my ignorance. But just like at home, I have found that this is not a subject that people want to discuss.

In the funerals that I have seen, the decedent is sitting up right in padmasana (lotus position) on a litter, and covered with beautiful flowers. The litter is also decorated with flowers and is carried by four men. It would appear the decedent is meditating. A small band leads the procession and the decedent is carried through our neighborhood and down to the cemetery. First comes the band, with brass horns and a big drum. The then the litter, and then the men, and then the women, all dressed in their fine saris, and children. Last year I kept thinking it was a wedding or a party and I would rush out to see. Oh! The band has kind of a Dixieland jazz sound to it, and does not sound sad to my ears.

So, on New Year’s Day, as I near the cemetery, a funeral procession is coming down the road. I pull the bike over and respectfully get out of the way. After the litter has passed one of the men, no doubt noticing my wide-eyed observations of the proceedings, invites me to join them. I hesitate for a moment and then lock my bike and walk along a distance back, in case I am committing some offense against the dead for which I will be chased away.

There is obviously much discussion of my presence, but I am made welcome, and about 40 of us gather around a fire pit under the large covered area. The litter is de-constructed and the cows gather to eat the flowers as they are removed from the litter. Preparation for a fire has been laid with big chunks of fire wood. In fact, some of the biggest pieces of fire wood I have seen in India. Most fires I see are sticks,paper, dried coconut, or cow dung. The logs have been carefully piled with patties of dried cow dung that is mixed with leaves and grass, a type of fuel we often see drying in the sun.

The decedent, who was a young man, was carefully set upon the pyre, and a certain group of men, who I believe are hired for this work, carefully layer the decedent with more fuel. Then a blessing takes place, with what I believe were the members of the family. In one part a man, (perhaps a brother?) takes a clay water jug upon his shoulder, and a hole is punched in the side of the jug and he walks clockwise around the pyre with the water leaking out. Flowers incense, and I believe herbs, were added to the pyre. Other types of puja were also performed.

Then came the hardest part for me, and since it was very close quarters, I kind of stayed behind a pillar. The widow performs some duties and she is seated on the ground by the decedent and the flowers are taken from her hair and added to the pile. She was very young and pretty, perhaps in her 30’s, and understandably extremely distraught. It was incredible sad and painful. I was told that the man had died of a brain tumor. I am not sure how long after death the funeral takes place, but with the heat, I imagine the funeral takes places fairly promptly. I was embarrassed to be there observing her intense grief.

The widow was then helped away. The men orchestrating the funeral had built a number of small fires outside the area, and now brought little torches, and I believe members of the family, lit the corners of the pyre. I am kind of hazy on the timing of the next events, but I believe once the fire started going, someone started handing out nice little bananas and hard candies. The fire continued to grow and the funeral party moved out to a well pump where everyone washed their hands and especially their feet. Someone indicated for me to come to the well and they pumped the water while I washed. I got a big laugh from some older men when a few kids started asking me for money and I gave them the hard candies I had left in my pockets. The boys were not amused.

Rickshaws took the family away, folks visited and then drifted off. I thanked everyone I could and shook hands. It seemed to me that folks purposely did not look back to see how things were going in the shelter. I wandered back to the fire which the men now had actively burning. The man was still sitting upright with thick, fragrant smoke curling up. I watched for a while, and made my way home in sadness for the widow, and amazement of the very real inclusion of death as a part of life in India. Unlike the U.S., where a huge industry exists to sanitize and remove the experience of death, here family, friends and children all gather to pay their respects and witness the temporal impermanence of the body.

Around dusk, on my way to have my new years day straight razor head shave, I could not resist going back down to see how the pyre was going. One man was still there tending the fire. When I arrive at the cemetery, I disturbed a huge flock of crows that boiled out of the big trees. The crows added a supremely unreal and spooky atmosphere to my morbid fascination with the pyre. The fire had burned down and the big coals were burning hot. The larger bones were still clearly visible, such as the hips, skull and ribcage. A herd of goats were wandering around feeding on the grass. The man and I had a conversation in gestures about how the decedent had gone beyond, up. I gave him and the decedent my best “Namaste” palms pressed together at my forehead, for sharing such an amazing experience.

Those of you who know me, know that as requested, when my father died a few years ago, my brother and I, (with the help and protection of my friends Dennis and Mark), built his coffin. Taking my father’s measurement at the morgue, and the day spent building the coffin was very powerful and important for me. I did not want to be separated from my father, or his body. I wanted to be with him, I needed more time with that familiar shape before I said a last goodbye. And I wonder if that is a part of our fear of death, for it has taken on such a hidden and mysterious nature. The care for the body after death is now completely out of our hands and control, and we have lost that connection with the end of our body’s cycle.

I feel very privileged to have been invited to share in these kind people’s grief and the funeral experience. To me a powerful and auspicious beginning to a New Year.

frank