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Sunday, 22 September 2013

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The macabre mix of the dead and living

It is not everyday that one gets invited to commemoration functions. My cousin,a physician now dead, then in his capacity as the ex president of a prestigious association in Colombo once invited me to one. Giving up my usual lethargy about dressing up I overdressed in honour of my cousin and attended it. As I entered the hall my cousin signalled me to sit in the front row. The ceremony had not yet begun. Trying to shrink myself into oblivion as I was not connected to the association, I sat in the very corner.

A male invitee then came in and sat by me. Fidgeting for some time he stood up and searched his pockets. Then he assured himself that he had not been robbed on the way. Then he sat again and smirked at me.

"You, the lady being commemorated?"

My ground shook! I became uncertain as to whether the living too get commemorated, so shakily stated that I am not yet dead to be commemorated. Actually the society was commemorating a long dead professor, a female.

Never could I reach her heights and be commemorated in that style, living or dead.

Media mechanisms

Living or dead! Living and dead! There is such a macabre mix of the two at present if you care to follow media mechanisms as the newspapers and society journals and also if haunting cemeteries is your hobby. Speech after speech is made in the graveyard eulogising the dead till those polite enough to attend, especially the frail and the elderly could accompany the deceased by falling dead themselves.

There was a person of my circle
who loved his mother dearly.
As all mortals do, she passed
away one day. Cremated, the
officers of cemetery dutifully
delivered the pot containing
her ashes. It was a sacred object
to the son who deposited it on
a table in a separate room and
paid pooja to it come morning
or evening. Incense was
burnt regularly and gaathas
chanted for the travel of the
dead to paradise and beyond.
All arrangements were made
to entomb it when an officer
from cemetery. arrived with
the message that the wrong pot
had been delivered. They had
brought the correct one!

Can the dead hear all that praise heaped on them? Never. Yet the speeches go on powered with many an oriental rhetoric. Similar are newspaper appreciations. According to them, never have such savants existed. Can the dead read?

I once read a news item in which Indira Gandhi in all earnestness had requested not to make funeral orations at her final departure for the simple reason that she could not hear them. Though she was subject to a ghastly end her request had been heeded though Indian crowds like our people do not mind having a bit of gossipy round with pals on the cemetery.

Not all the crosses nor the tombstones will dissuade them from transacting even huge business deals, some of them fraudulent, while females, find it a fertile ground for gossiping, overlooking the indecency of the act as the fire flames engulfing the corpse swirl. In fact, I once overheard a gossip session around the very woman being subject to the fires!

Funeral orations

"Don't tell anyone" was the request in advance but by the time the funeral orations were over half the crowd knew the secret life of the deceased, true or invented or misinterpreted. Another feature of these Guna Gayana or the Choornika is that a good part of it is fabricated stuff.

Another fact is that the worst sinners when dead suddenly transform themselves into the most virtuous. One cannot call the transformation not only macabre but just hypocritical.

In the Pitakotte area one Cyril once drew terror into the populace.

Any burglary, murder, kidnapping, highway robbery Mineemaru Cyril happened to be connected. In fact he revelled in them.

And in the aftermath of death by a police bullet, he turns into the most virtuous Upasaka in the area.

Sathgunawath Cyrilta Nivan sapa labewa (May the most virtuous Cyril attain Nirvana)

So, the white banners displayed carry another message. On every object and tree in the area flaunt the greeting.

That is a macabre feat in itself. The law has hounded him and branded him as the most notorious criminal, but the banners say something contrary. The very act of death has orchestrated the purification, as though by a miracle. The role of the Bhikkhus invited for religious functions in such situations in itself becomes tricky. Usually religious emissaries, on such occasions, be they of any faith are expected to speak well of the deceased,but in such cases they have to lie or cunningly present it all by preaching that no good comes out of ill-living and so all those there must lead virtuous lives. So it is the audience who finally get pulled up for foul lives.

Ashes

There was a person of my circle who loved his mother dearly. As all mortals do, she passed away one day. Cremated, the officers of cemetery dutifully delivered the pot containing her ashes. It was a sacred object to the son who deposited it on a table in a separate room and paid pooja to it come morning or evening.

Incense was burnt regularly and gaathas chanted for the travel of the dead to paradise and beyond. All arrangements were made to entomb it when an officer from cemetery arrived with the message that the wrong pot had been delivered.

They had brought the correct one!

I happened to relate this tale to a friend who has the bravery to live in an apartment rising up on the fringe of a cemetery. She is one who is not afraid of the living or dead for that matter.

A pastime of hers is to watch how the mountain of skulls rises daily. It is a ghastly spectacle. Does it happen automatically? No. Many of the dear relatives after all the funeral fanfare staged mostly for social prestige now getting tired of it all just leave them to dry in the cemetery. There is no room to bury them in their own land and nobody to fuss about it in the whirl of life.

One night bulls on the rampage had toppled the whole mountain of skulls and played balls with them. Spare me the ignominy of bulls frolicking with my poor brains. So I have requested my sons to strew my ashes on to the waters of the Maha Oya, a river generating fond memories of my Lama Nirmana project.

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