Where my father went when he died

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We used to laugh at priests at south Indian weddings when we were young. They were cartoonish characters, half their attention on the cricket commentary from the transistor nearby, and no attention at all on the mantras they recited like someone on auto-play. Career priests were a hilarious part of being a south Indian child.

But years later, when my father passed away, I met one who knew his Vedas and could explain them in excellent English. I was 36, cynical, sharp-tongued and had all the answers. But from him I learned that what sounds like monotonous mumbo-jumbo had a goal far more compassionate than any divine purpose.

It feels odd to write about my father's death a week before my mother's death anniversary. But the first time in my life that I, as the eldest, performed anyone's last rites was when he died. I am not religious but my parents were and the rites followed Hindu tradition. I remember the 13th day specially, not because that was when I scattered my father's ashes into a river but for the conversation I had with the priest earlier.

My father was cremated within 24 hours of his death, and we had the ashes warm in an urn by midnight. We set up a shrine in the bedroom with incense and an oil lamp, with a decent picture of my father from a younger time.

Ware, the family priest, told my mother gently that her husband's soul was still in the room, merely separated from his body. He was probably confused and maybe even a little hungry. My mother rushed to cook up some of his favorite dishes and place them at the shrine, to let him know we knew he was around.

On the tenth day we took his ashes to the Indian pilgrimage centre of Nashik, where three rivers converge and many cremations and immersions happen. After three days of ceremonies with Ware, I was to disperse the ashes into the river.

Ware recited verses in Sanskrit, and put me through some mysterious rituals. In one, he arranged twigs into something like a tic-tac-toe grid and placed earthen pots with a rice ball in each. After some chanting, he moved a row out and shifted the remaining two up. In the space created below, he added three new pots with rice balls.

This, he explained, was how one generation passed on, making way for another.

On day three, he told my mother that I had done a great job with the prayers. Thanks to that, my father's soul had successfully moved on. It was apparently now parked in pret lok, the spirit world. Think transit lounge for freshly departed souls.

I was apparently expected to return next year and the year after that too, same place, same time, same priest, to do more rituals for the same soul. After the next round, my father's soul would move from pret lok to pitri lok, the world of the ancestors. The final year's rituals would enable the soul to reach dev lok, the place of the gods.

This sounded like one of those scams where you buy something once and then keep paying for upgrades. I asked Ware, with some cynicism, how he knew about all these loks? Wasn't being deceased a requirement?

"You're right, Mr Gopinath," he said with a wry smile. "It is exactly the right question to ask when someone tells you one of these fanciful stories. I am not offended in the slightest. But you should know that these stories were not made for you -  they're for your mother, whose life changed completely, and without warning 13 days ago. In a matter of moments, a man she had lived with and loved her entire adult life, was gone, just like that. This is where religion plays a part, to help ease some of her pain."

I listened as he spoke, suddenly not feeling like such a smart-aleck. Religion had stepped in within hours after my mother's life had been turned upside down by her bereavement and pressed Pause and Rewind, taking her right back to the moment of his death. Your husband has not yet really gone away, she was told, but is still in the room and missing her cooking. Thirteen days later, by the river at Nashik, she learned that he would continue to need her for two more years, first to get to pitri lok and then the long haul from there to dev lok, where the gods would give him a grand welcome.

Religion slowed down death for my mother, making her bereavement unfold in slow motion over years. She'd continue to feel needed by the man she loved years after he had passed on.

It was a fiction, but for my mother, it was a life-saving fiction.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.