My Niece is 12 years old and during my last visit to India, I found a hand written letter from her to my Dad.
*********************************
On the outside opening fold, she wrote
--------------------------------
I want reply.
Come well soon.
:-)
Open with smile.
-------------------------------
The contents of the letter were
-------------------------------
To,
Grand Pa,
Hi Grand Pa, How are you? I hope you will be alright soon. Grandpa can I know how are you feeling now? You are the best Grandpa I had ever noticed.
For me, for us, for all your beloved, please come well soon!
From
A.XXXXXX
Note: I want reply.
*****************************
I was very surprised at the expressiveness of such a young kid.
However, the letter went unanswered.
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Sunday, July 18, 2010
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.
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.
Labels:
After Life,
Death
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Walking Among The Dead
It was a Saturday morning and I was having breakfast, muffin and cold coffee, at a franchised coffee shop. I sat there reading a newspaper and saw out through the glass wall, a local cemetery. I always felt strange about cemeteries. They are spooky at once, all the dead people buried there for ages among other dead people. But somehow they had an allure for me with the all the grand tombstones, located in the serenity of the woods. They always felt out of the world, and out of the world the buried people are, but the area itself is kind of isolated from the hustle and bustle of the urban world, kind of serene.
I decided to take a drive through, may be take a stroll as I had some time to kill. At the entrance read "All seasonal decorations need to be removed by March 31st". They might as well make it July 4th. I will tell you why later. The speed limit was set to 10mph which is understandable. There were few cars here and there and handful of people walking or jogging there while I was driving slowly. It was a nice day and calm. I bought down the windows of my car and could hear the birds chirping and cool breeze. It’s been a while since I took some time off with nature though I live in a region very close to several beautiful valleys and parks.
After a few minutes of driving I decided to take a walk. I parked my car to the side of the driveway and started walking in the woods. Since it was a cemetery, the ground was lined with tombstones with the name, date/year of Birth and Death of the person buried underneath. It felt kind of strange and creepy, but as time passed I felt some strange peace take over me. It was calm, cool breezy day. My thoughts quickly wandered to the people I had personally lost during my lifetime. I remembered my maternal grandfather who was grace personified. He was a farmer and strongly believed in hard work. Then there was my paternal grand mother who had a personal presence like no one I have known. I can still remember the look in her eye that had shades of strength and sorrow from her life experiences. She had lost her one eye when she was young in an accident while painting her house in the village when my dad was in school. My grand mom died on Indian Independence Day(Aug 15th) when I was a kid, whereas my grand father died about 5 years ago from old age. They both had a huge impact in my life. There were other relatives and friends that passed away, whose memories were both good and sad at the same time. Some of them struggled in their last days like my father-in-law who died of complications from CKD. I regret not being able to spend more time with him.
I continued my walk and tried to lose my thoughts by observing the various kinds of burial descriptions and decorations. I began to observe what people had placed on the burial grounds of their loved ones. It was clear that there was a social hierarchy among the dead as well. The richer among the dead, I think, had bigger almost cathedral like structures. While most were regular folks with regular stones. There was one shaped like a pyramid, probably representing free masonry. May be the dead guy was a mason. There were some gothic roman styled structures. Some even had gates in the front with dome shaped roof like a pagan temple. I am sure the dead cared less about social structure and hierarchy. It is the alive, loved ones of the dead that wanted to show their social status by throwing in money. It could even be an innocent gesture of love by constructing a unique structure and uniqueness can sometimes be shown by making the home bigger. Either way, every burial had a story to tell about the dead person and about the people related to the dead person.
The other observation I had was the decorations on the ground. If the dead person was really young, they had toys like Angels and Easter bunnies on the ground, while some older person's had weird stuff like golf balls. Some had flowers mostly plastic, but some had natural flowers and flower pots placed on the ground. The most popular adornment was surprisingly the American flag. Nationalism and patriotism did not escape the dead. The sign at the entrance could as well be read July4th or removed entirely as there can be no end to a season for patriotism. Some stones had the picture of the dead person's face on the stone. The oldest person I saw was born in 1811.
While I was making these silly observations, I got a call from my wife and I decided to head back to my car to go home. While I was going back, I saw an old white woman adjust some flags and decorations on the burial grounds of someone she probably was related to. The dead could have been a soldier. She gave me a distrustful stare. I smiled and said an audible “Hello"! She continued staring at me without a reply. I did not want to bother her anymore and continued walking towards my car.
My car was parked about half a mile away from where I was and the road I was walking was narrow with tall trees on the side with grass lawn. A few yards from where I was on the road, I had to take a right to go to my car and I saw the old lady, I saw earlier, driving a white van taking a left towards me. She was still staring at me and I came out of my philosophical self to being myself - regular pragmatic cynic. I can see why she had a distrustful look. There she was the lightest white old woman taking care of the ground under which her loved one was laid and here I was the darkest brown guy who could not have anyone buried there related to me to the sixth degree. I quickly took two steps to the right onto the grass and slipped behind a tree to let her pass by me. I did not want to be buried there from an accident caused by an angry old woman. I wanted to live another day. I saw her pass by me, with her continued mistrustful stare that truly caused me discomfort. I continued my walk to my car and I was greeted by another old lady who was jogging there. I regained my composure, went to my car and drove home slowly to have lunch with my wife.
I decided to take a drive through, may be take a stroll as I had some time to kill. At the entrance read "All seasonal decorations need to be removed by March 31st". They might as well make it July 4th. I will tell you why later. The speed limit was set to 10mph which is understandable. There were few cars here and there and handful of people walking or jogging there while I was driving slowly. It was a nice day and calm. I bought down the windows of my car and could hear the birds chirping and cool breeze. It’s been a while since I took some time off with nature though I live in a region very close to several beautiful valleys and parks.
After a few minutes of driving I decided to take a walk. I parked my car to the side of the driveway and started walking in the woods. Since it was a cemetery, the ground was lined with tombstones with the name, date/year of Birth and Death of the person buried underneath. It felt kind of strange and creepy, but as time passed I felt some strange peace take over me. It was calm, cool breezy day. My thoughts quickly wandered to the people I had personally lost during my lifetime. I remembered my maternal grandfather who was grace personified. He was a farmer and strongly believed in hard work. Then there was my paternal grand mother who had a personal presence like no one I have known. I can still remember the look in her eye that had shades of strength and sorrow from her life experiences. She had lost her one eye when she was young in an accident while painting her house in the village when my dad was in school. My grand mom died on Indian Independence Day(Aug 15th) when I was a kid, whereas my grand father died about 5 years ago from old age. They both had a huge impact in my life. There were other relatives and friends that passed away, whose memories were both good and sad at the same time. Some of them struggled in their last days like my father-in-law who died of complications from CKD. I regret not being able to spend more time with him.
I continued my walk and tried to lose my thoughts by observing the various kinds of burial descriptions and decorations. I began to observe what people had placed on the burial grounds of their loved ones. It was clear that there was a social hierarchy among the dead as well. The richer among the dead, I think, had bigger almost cathedral like structures. While most were regular folks with regular stones. There was one shaped like a pyramid, probably representing free masonry. May be the dead guy was a mason. There were some gothic roman styled structures. Some even had gates in the front with dome shaped roof like a pagan temple. I am sure the dead cared less about social structure and hierarchy. It is the alive, loved ones of the dead that wanted to show their social status by throwing in money. It could even be an innocent gesture of love by constructing a unique structure and uniqueness can sometimes be shown by making the home bigger. Either way, every burial had a story to tell about the dead person and about the people related to the dead person.
The other observation I had was the decorations on the ground. If the dead person was really young, they had toys like Angels and Easter bunnies on the ground, while some older person's had weird stuff like golf balls. Some had flowers mostly plastic, but some had natural flowers and flower pots placed on the ground. The most popular adornment was surprisingly the American flag. Nationalism and patriotism did not escape the dead. The sign at the entrance could as well be read July4th or removed entirely as there can be no end to a season for patriotism. Some stones had the picture of the dead person's face on the stone. The oldest person I saw was born in 1811.
While I was making these silly observations, I got a call from my wife and I decided to head back to my car to go home. While I was going back, I saw an old white woman adjust some flags and decorations on the burial grounds of someone she probably was related to. The dead could have been a soldier. She gave me a distrustful stare. I smiled and said an audible “Hello"! She continued staring at me without a reply. I did not want to bother her anymore and continued walking towards my car.
My car was parked about half a mile away from where I was and the road I was walking was narrow with tall trees on the side with grass lawn. A few yards from where I was on the road, I had to take a right to go to my car and I saw the old lady, I saw earlier, driving a white van taking a left towards me. She was still staring at me and I came out of my philosophical self to being myself - regular pragmatic cynic. I can see why she had a distrustful look. There she was the lightest white old woman taking care of the ground under which her loved one was laid and here I was the darkest brown guy who could not have anyone buried there related to me to the sixth degree. I quickly took two steps to the right onto the grass and slipped behind a tree to let her pass by me. I did not want to be buried there from an accident caused by an angry old woman. I wanted to live another day. I saw her pass by me, with her continued mistrustful stare that truly caused me discomfort. I continued my walk to my car and I was greeted by another old lady who was jogging there. I regained my composure, went to my car and drove home slowly to have lunch with my wife.
Labels:
Death,
Modern Life
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