Dim Sum Funeral, Grandma and Gandhi

I was watching a movie 'Dim Sum Funeral' on HBO couple months ago. The movie is about a Chinese-American family that meets for the funeral of the mother. The kids have nothing but bad memories of her. But it turns out that the old woman had a better side. The grand daughter who has been watching the drama unfold says this to her mom 'In just few hours there were hundred people who came to see Grandma. May be she is not that bad'. That was the touching moment of the movie.

Around the same time in May, my wife HAD to attend the funeral service of a lady who died very young of cancer. That young lady was the daughter of a very influential guy at her work. Needless to say the funeral service was very grand and attended by many. My wife was truly amazed at the grandiosity of the funeral service, there were six priests offering prayer service in the church, lots of flowers lined up and many more people in black suits, grand enough to evoke the following statement from my wife 'if you have money and power you can celebrate death like a marriage'.

Once in while I think what kind of funeral service would I have. How would I be remembered? There is no way to know. But then, I cant stop thinking about it. I want to people to think nice about me. May be I should be nice and friendly to everybody. But naively I been that guy about 10-15 years ago. The fact about life and people is, you can be nice to everyone, but there will be a guy, actually more than one, who just hate you for no reason and you can see right through them. What are you going to do about it? Nothing, so I stopped worrying about being nice to everybody. Do I want a lot of people attending my service? I have to be very popular and hold lots of money and power. But I don't want people to hate me on my death like I am sure of people who HAD to go to the funeral service of the lady I mentioned above. Do I want to be known by my colleagues for my work? Who am I kidding? I cant remember more than half the people I worked with at my first job. It is reasonable to expect the same from them. Gone are the days when men took a job for a lifetime. I have changed jobs equivalent to four lifetimes of my Dad. I don't think any of my colleagues care about me and I should not expect them to. The current work culture is as such. There will be an email circulated about your funeral service. If you are lucky, you would be talked about for a minute at a staff meeting.

The only funeral I attended in my lifetime was that of my grandma. I cried like a baby. There were almost everyone from the village at the funeral service. But the events that happened after the cremation of my grandmas remains left an indelible impression on me. My grand mom had a lot of gold ornaments on her which was normal for her age and times. There was "family" claiming that she said on some date and some occasion that some part of her gold ornament will be theirs. It is very strange that people can remember every detail of the event when claiming something, who otherwise would have very spotty memory in regular lives. It was all about the material remains of the old lady. There were witnesses for the claims too and the witness also had a similar story claiming some other ornament belonging to my grandma. Guess who was the witnesses witness this time. Yes the first claimant. You get the point. And then there were the complainers at the eleventh day luncheon for 'family', 'friends' and Brahmans. It was as if they did not come for a condolence ceremony, but to a grand restaurant opening and they were the critics from a food magazine. Of course there were fond remembrances from a lot of other folks in the village who are mostly unrelated. The surprising fact is that she was a very nice lady, took care of many in need, especially the 'family'.

Every year when the Indian Independence Day arrives, I can only think of a distant family friend visiting our home to deliver the news. The news was that my grandma died. The other person that I can think of on Indian Independence Day is Mahatma Gandhi. I greatly admire him. However there were and are a lot of people who criticize him. If an educated historian criticizes Gandhi, he provides an analytical, fact based reasoning, which is acceptable. Most people who criticized Gandhi and called him names, provided no proper explanation other than their biased opinion that Gandhi split India and catered to whims of Muslims. Most of these guys have no idea of the events in Indian Independence History.

The reason for my above rant is to convince myself of the following. The two persons that I most admire, were not spared after their death. I sure would have even slimmer chance of being treated any different when I am dead. So with that in mind, I can move on with my current existence on earth without any worry or regrets.