Me & God: October 2006 Archives

I know that my updates on Kashi Yatra are getting dragged like Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan. But then too many things to write, and also too many pending orders to be taken care of. Hence the delay…here goes the update…

Sitting on the footsteps of Kedar Ghat my mom and me were introduced to a South Indian purohit – a Brahmin - to perform my father’s death ritual. He was a young guy, and I am sure he was well versed in all the South Indian languages like – Tamil. Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam along with North Indian languages like Bhojpuri, Hindi & Sanskrit. He could not talk in one single language properly & continuously. He had a Telugu accent, and used many Kannada and Malayalam words while speaking Tamil to us. End of the day we understood what he implied.

The auto squeezed into the narrow roads of Varanasi. The roads were wet, dirty, and people could hardly walk confidently – there was always a fear of slipping. They aren’t tar roads - just rectangular stones etched on the paths, and you get a funny feeling traveling by auto on these roads. There are buffaloes and cows all over the place, and obviously the dung everywhere your eyes can reach.

September 23rd, 2006 - it was my dad’s first death anniversary. A year back it was a day when an important living entity moved from his physical form to a mere thought form. That holds true to all of us. It is just a matter of time and we won’t exist any more - we are ashes in no time. Hinduism demands many rituals to be completed after a person’s death, and we thought for my dad we could carry out them in Kashi – which is considered to be one of the most important pilgrimages according to the Hindus.