My mother kept a piece of freshly cleaned green banana leaf on a bronze plate. In the middle of it, she kept a bowl of rice, with green chilly and a lemon on the edge. Besides these, she added a bowl of moong dal and a curry—one of my father’s favorites. Everything she served was with the same care and love as always. The only difference was the tears streaming down her cheek instead of the usual smile she always had.
I then took the dish with a candle and two sticks of agarbatti and placed them in front of the sapling we had recently planted at one corner of our house. The meal was not for the sapling but for whom it represented—my father, who had passed away days before.
It has now been slightly more than a year since I have lost my father. He had been suffering from an illness related to diabetes for years. But his death was sudden and a shock to my family, leaving my mother and sister stranded. I was abroad for my studies and could not be by his side during his final moments – a regret that will always haunt me. Being the only son, I had to hurry back home on a 16-hour flight to perform the final rites.
Hindus believe death is not the end of life but rather a mere transition of the soul from one life to the next. After death, the soul is reluctant to depart its body and lingers around its old home for a while. Then, it starts a journey toward the abode of Lord Yoma, the Lord of Death. There, the soul awaits a verdict based on the deeds of its previous life, recorded in a giant notebook by Chitragupta, Lord Yoma’s accountant.
The journey is not a smooth and comfortable one., The messengers of Lord Yoma guide the soul through vast barren terrains, dangerous rivers, and steep mountains. During this long and grueling journey, the soul gets nothing to eat and drink except the serving offered by his family from his old life. This is why we performed rituals like this one, where the family shares all meals with the deceased for a fortnight. The traditions and rituals vary across regions, but the essence remains the same: to aid the soul in its transition.
My mother believed in all this and performed them with utmost care and sincerity. My father’s departure was sudden and shocking, yet, for my mom, it was not a total departure—in some way, he was still around.
On the other hand, I felt a different kind of loss—a deeper emptiness, with only the sweet memories of my father to cling to. As the eldest son, I had to perform most of the rituals. I was at the center of it all—leading the ceremonies, making the offerings, and following the traditions passed down through generations. Yet, unlike my mother, I did not have the faith to resort to.
Since childhood, I have wrestled with metaphysical questions and sought answers in books. I could never quite understand why a powerful and kind god would not make a nicer world with less suffering and better justice. Slowly, as I grew up, my faith eroded, and rituals appeared hollow, mere remnants of cultural traditions.
But until this, I had never encountered them so directly in such a profound way! Facing death so closely, I found myself torn—between my disbelief and a desperate wish for these rituals to be true, to keep my father close just a little longer.
Were these rituals pointless? Or were they carefully designed by ancient wisdom, offering some relief to the poor human in the face of life’s brutal realities? Perhaps they were the only defense against the unbearable truth that sudden death can extinguish everything without giving a notice- a mechanism our ancestors devised to protect the human heart from shattering. Maybe the rituals were not just for the departed’s soul but for those left behind, struggling to make sense of a world that suddenly felt emptier.
I wished I could believe, as my mother did, that I shared a few more meals with my father through these rituals. Even if just in spirit.
