Ashes

We stood there, wearing black and white, colors reminiscent of ashes in our eyes and lungs, watching the scene unfold. This was my second time attending an Indian (Hindu) funeral; the first was my father's. Hindu funeral rituals are a relentless tide, exhausting the body and the soul. They leave no room to breathe, no pause to process what has passed, with one custom following another, stretching across endless days.

From my experience, the body is first transported to a place the deceased cherished the most. In most cases, this is their home. For my dad, it was my nanna’s house. The body lies there for some time as people wail and lament, some in genuine sorrow, others perhaps in a rehearsed lament. Family, extended family, neighbors, and even random strangers gather, making the funeral far from intimate, giving more importance to entertaining the people gathered rather than grieving the dead.

From there, the body is borne to the cremation ground, where a prayer is held before placing the deceased on the pyre for the last rites. All rites and rituals need to be performed by the son, and he must set aside his grief, focusing solely on ensuring the deceased’s safe passage to the afterlife. Women can only watch from a distance, their mourning quiet and unseen. The rituals force you to confront the body repeatedly, etching the reality of death into your mind—a memory, an image only a therapist might help erase years later.

When the body is on the pyre, covered with wood, only its head visible, the son must light the head on fire. I was reluctant when I had to do it. “You want me to light his head on fire?” I asked the priest, tears streaming down my face. I turned back to my mother, far away, my eyes pleading, “I can’t do this” My uncle, sitting beside me, took my hand and guided me. After that, all there is to do is walk around the pyre several times and watch it burn.

Seven years later, at someone else’s funeral, I noticed things I had missed before. Apartments surrounded the cremation ground—who would choose to live beside such a place, witnessing the dead being set alight, inhaling their smoke, and watching shattered families try to bid farewell? It’s a strange existence, living amid so much pain and death in the air. As I looked around, I saw another family standing by their loved one’s pyre. Only three people stood there—two males and one female—compared to the seventy people gathered for the funeral I was attending. I felt sad for the other family, wondering how it must have seemed to them, witnessing such a large gathering while they mourned alone. Perhaps that's how it should be, with only those who truly knew and loved the deceased present.

Once the body begins to burn, the family and the random aunties wait for it to turn to ash, leaving only fragments of bone. Many families leave and return later to collect the remains. While watching the deceased turn to ash, a random aunty approached me.

“Hi! It’s been so long since I last saw you. You were so little. So good to see you!” she said.

I flashed a half-hearted smile and replied, “Yeah, if only we met under better circumstances.” Hoping she would go away, but she didn’t. She continued talking, even though I wasn’t looking at her, keeping my gaze on the fire.

“How is Toronto? What are you doing there?”

“I’m a broker.”

“Oh, how wonderful. Are you still singing? You sing so beautifully.”

I forced another smile, hinting she needed to shut up and respect where we were and the solemnity of the moment. After I stopped responding, she turned to my uncle, chatting about his son’s college applications. She left soon after. I looked at my uncle and asked, “Who was she?”

“Your mom’s second cousin’s wife,” he responded. She had no connection to the deceased; I’m not sure why she was there—just another random aunty with nothing to do on a Sunday morning, deciding to attend a funeral.

After the ashes and bones are collected, they need to be taken to the banks of the Ganges River within the next few days and scattered over it, preceded and followed by more prayers and rituals. Every year around the time of their death, cows need to be fed for the deceased’s safe journey to heaven. But what of the journeys of those left behind? Which cow is to be fed for their sorrow? They are left with grief, sadness, and a sense of abandonment while trying to continue living with the weight of death on their backs.

Once the fire turns to ember, the close family of the deceased lines up, and one by one, the gathered population pays their respects and leaves with ashes clinging to their clothes, carrying a little bit of the dead with them.