Visit to the Samadhi

The following week which becomes just a month since Mum died, Mary, Pakkiyam, Velan who helped look after Mum all these years and Veni (our landlord’s wife) with the kids, Sneha and Raj and I, went on a trek to see Mum’s grave, or samādhi. Like I say she told me when I was a kid to plant an apple tree over her. I realised when we took the send-off pictures, there was no scene of the of the mountains and I wanted to rectify that this time. From where we park our green Ambassador by the giant fig tree at the Maharaja’s bungalow the walk to the farm is about two kilometres. The altitude here in what is called the middle hills is around 3000 ft above sea level. Having her heart in mind I built our house here so Mum could live at a lower altitude than the 6000 ft of Kodaikanal. Due to reasons beyond anyone’s control this was not meant to be, but in any case, like I say, she now has a spectacular view here on our farmland facing west to the mountains. John, our farm manager did a fine job building up the site with Rajendran, our mason. We do have elephants, bison (gaur), deer, wild boar, porcupines and perhaps a yeti or two, so it was important to make her samādhi a sturdy one; John plans to lay down native lawn grass this week in the rains. Ultimately we will be planting some fruit trees around, as per her wish, and these terraces will become a lovely garden I hope in her memory.

The ladies laid flowers, lit candles and incense and prayed and afterwards we sat (as per custom) on the grave having the papaya juice brought from home and eating vadai (falafel). Then we walked down to the house and had a serious picnic on the front porch with our cocker spaniel Tikku who lives on the farm. The kids had fun playing starkers under the hose and you can see them inside the farm house with Grace’s roll top desk and outside having fun with the poor old branches of the kadakkai (myrobalans) tree.

On the way back we got drenched in a downpour. Listening to the laughing and joking amongst the ladies as they got soaked along the path I thanked heaven that I am living here with people I love so. Halfway back we took shelter in a neighbour’s porch front amongst the fire wood and buckets waiting for the rains to abate and spoke about Mum amongst ourselves with great affectionate memories. A good time was had by all. Thanks again Mum.

Grace’s Twenty First Day

Since we did a puja on the eighth day after Grace’s death on the New Moon of Friday June 11th, it was ordained by local customs not to perform a sixteenth day observance as is usual. Instead, we were told to skip a week and have the annadānam or feeding of friends and well wishers and anyone who wants to come on the twenty first day. I decided to go through a fire ceremony and head shaving. I am not sure what the head shaving signifies, analytically speaking, except that the youngest son does it for the father’s death and the eldest son for the mother’s. Head shaving, or the tonsorial vow is big in Tamilnadu and we regularly see tourists who have visited the temple in Palani (where I used to live in the mid sixties) going around with their heads shaved and smeared with sandal wood paste. It blends right in of course with the skin head fashion in western males so it probably looks to a foreign visitor as if these folks are cool guys. But going bald is more a cultural style going back thousands of years to the time of the renunciate sramana and bhikshu.

In modern Hinduism sadhus elect whether to shave their heads completely once a month or let hair and beard go, even so, the latter always begins with a full shave, a sign of renunciation of ego, I guess, whatever this means. In a death in the family one of the sons or nephews (who are considered sons) shaves his head on the day of the funeral. Since I did not go through this I made up for it on this day of the annadānam. Needless to say I did not have much part in organising the local traditions except to express a wish to visit Velappan Muruga temple in picturesque Poomparai in the upper hills.

This temple dates back quite a few centuries when the Tamil Poet Arunagiri sang a song in praise of the local deity. He must have walked up from Palani through the jungles back then in the sixteenth century for there were no roads here in those ancient days. Kodaikanal town itself is a new settlement from the nineteenth century built on a former swamp but the several large villages surrounding it are thousands of years older since these hills have been clocked by archaeology at a human habitation of at least 1000 BC, and yes we have dolmens all around. There is a way to date by rock varnish, by the way, apparently exposed rock accumulates a patina in the atmosphere and so you can tell roughly when inscriptions were chipped into the face of a stone. They’ve traced aboriginal culture back tens of thousands of years, and the Tamil language likewise connecting Africa and Australia genetically and linguistically.

Before visiting Velappan temple I would have my head shaved by Sneha and Raj’s father, Jayraj: (you can see Murugesh holding my head steady) and afterwards take a bath in the woods. This is what pilgrims in Palani did, wrapped in a thin towel they’d take a dip in the nearby river. As usual the performance artist in me is psyched by ceremony and I was ready to take a freezing dip, leeches and all (you can see the pujari inspecting the dark water hole) but instead of a bath down below I bomb out. It was decided by friends I would do better with a bucket of some of the hot water the lady from the government herb nursery nearby had heating under firewood in a giant urn. It was about eight in the morning and refreshingly brisk outside with gusts of wind and splashes of last night’s rain descending from the huge pine forest overhead. While I got my shave and bathed from a bucket our pujari descended the mud ledge through the bracken to the little embankment and prepared a sacred fire or yagñam with all sorts of special twigs and spices to place in the fire. Chanting in Sanskrit he adorned my pate with sandalwood paste and I donned a turmeric yellow sacred thread which afterwards also went into the fire. It was good, my first fire ceremony just for me and Grace, of course. I made sure no plastic or paper items were left behind in this lovely bucolic setting of pines and cows grazing nearby in the meadow.

Reaching Poomparai we performed a big abhisheka in the temple for Muruga—God in the form of a valiant teenager, no photos of the inside puja which was quite impressive but here is a pic of the colourful gopuram (all the photos by Rajkumar’s nephew, Prakash) and our little group sitting on the steps all holy afterwards.

There is a picture of another temple in the fields of potatoes to give one a sense of the countryside in the upper hills.

Tradition requires local ceremonies to be performed half naked, a sign of humility, nowadays in a more self conscious urbanised age many men keep on their tank top (banyans) undershirts for this which looks even worse, I think, so though I am no longer the trim guy I once was I let it all hang out anyway. Back home I am told I must wear a silken turban as per custom … and Mum has more showing of the light puja performed for her in her bedroom, many people taking a turn at holding up the grail of camphor to her like she is a god; all very rootsy and she seems to be laughing through it. People began arriving and as our friend Padmini said she was thrilled to see people of all social backgrounds in attendance, some of us sitting on the floor with our banana leaf plates and others at the table. Friends came from Bodinayakanur and from Theni where I lived in the seventies. A hired cook made the rice and veg and dhal and such outside under firewood. He prepared for about fifty people and we fed close to a hundred. Ah, a miracle! Thanks Grace!

Quite a few pics were taken by Prakash; here is a close up of Pakkiyam and Velan (the kids’ mum) in the dining room. Assorted shots of myself or Rajkumar with friends; Mary, busy as always but finally having some lunch out of a stainless steel pot while having her picture taken. Here is a photo of Sarasu whose husband Pandisamy used to visit me when I lived in the cave above Bodi. She is with her grandson she raised and her great grandson. Here is a pic of Samikannu at the table from the village Koduvilarpatti I lived in near Theni whose boys we have been helping (first generation) through college. A good jolly time was had by all. Thank you miracle Mum for your good vibrations as always!

I like my shaved head now that the fuzz is appearing. I am thinking of keeping it short and growing back my beard like a wrestler. Raj approves since he was (at one time) into WW mania.

The 100th

The other pictures by contrast are of Mum’s 100th birthday party in 2008 at The Kodai Club, with friends performing and the whole crew dancing.

I enjoy the rich patina of light in a couple of pictures, they work great, giving the feel of the event, which likely the photographer was also feeling!

 

I do not know who took these jolly portraits, perhaps he or she could please step forward.

Anyway, as Gary Zazula used to say,

 

Happy Trails, Mum!

The Eighth Day

On the eighth day Ramalingam did some more work, setting up a feast for Grace on a banana leaf, with a rice meal, chicken, fruits, sweets and a New Yorker on the side; items of which I list elsewhere, and of which of course we all partook of as prasādam. I turned off the flash on the camera because it was giving bad pictures (batteries low) and got visual effects reflecting the real warmth and glow of the scene in her bedroom as members of our household turn the light around Mum’s shrine now lowered on a stool for the camphor and incense.

I also wanted to show how involved the dogs are, in a way, in the whole thing.

After this eighth day ritual (no other name for it) we sat around discussing what was to come on the sixteenth day and the seventeenth day when we make a big meal for everyone, the annā dānam.

I like the fact that Sneha is hanging around and goofing for the camera on Grace’s bed amidst the serious proceedings of the adults discussing samskāra.

What impresses me is that in Indian culture we have not internalized or Freudianized consciousness or persons, outside is in, and, for the most part, in is also outside; that is, you act out the ancient ways and of course you have your personal emotions, or soiriutual orientation, but you do not have to be pious or as Grace would say, po-faced, but all these things we do somehow channel emotion and feeling back into the aesthetic soil of soul, I don’t know, somehow.

Morning Vigil and Send Off

I wish to speak about the photographs that were taken at the aftershock of Grace’s leaving, or the compendium of being that was Grace leaving her shell behind, like any other creature of life’s great ocean.—But I should say the pictures come the morning after the vigil, and after Mathan Lal helped give Grace a bath and after Mathan, Mary and Rajkumar kept the main vigil around Grace as you see in these first photos where she is in her bed surrounded by our landlord Shanmugam’s precious dahlias and roses. Dr Kollie came and checked her. I gave up working on messages around 2 a.m. when I sat up sort of meditating on all the teas, as well, and sleeping somehow I guess a an hour. Balu kipped a bit on the sofa, Wellington and Raj camped out upstairs as did all the girls around Mum, the ones especially who were with her when she died; Mary sitting up on Mum’s bed beside her all night. I have to say, life long atheist, inkling to Buddhism, Grace was like some saint with flowers around her … and so we kept vigil and Rajkumar, hope he doesn’t mind me saying so, got drunk which was indeed a libation-oblation to Mum, and cried copiously, and took a bath at four or five and helped Mary and the others bathe her and set her out in the coffin outdoors in the carport where you can see in the photos people arriving at six. After some time as the arrangements to take her down heated up I took a series of pictures of their blessings through the incense … by Mary and others close to Mum. The atmosphere was loaded with a great deal of loving energy.

We had to find an experienced driver to negotiate the forest road and Murugesh and Rajendran my workshop mechanic and others were really helpful in organizing vehicles and the driver Ganesha who was Grace’s charioteer. Going with Grace in the decorated Ambulance (no hearses yet in India that I have seen) Rajkumar, Mary’s husband Michael, and Rajkumar’s nephew Prakash (who is seen in the pictures carrying Grace through the woods) while the ladies and gents processed behind—and it was accepted that I took pictures—down to the main road below our house. I went with Ambassador Murugesan who, you can see in one shot, has a Mercedes insignia on his bonnet, as we drove into Pudukottai Maharaja’s gate to reconnoiter for a hike to the burial place.

Grace’s wish was to have an apple tree planted over her. Amazing luck that I can even think about fulfilling it, and she also wanted to be taken out sitting up which I been unable to accommodate, with drunken dancing on before, all in funerals she had witnessed in south India. But all the same, she went with flowers, and in nature. There was never a sense of gloom around, through some ladies wept freely—early during the wake when Balu’s kids were around the four of them played with each other and posed for photographs as if nothing particularly sad or bad was happening; Grace would like this too, I thought, this normal feeling of relaxed chaos around the house along with whatsoever prayers and incantations and expressions of love were being made.

In Tamil Nadu in most communities only the men go to the actual “funeral” … horrible sounding word, and I find myself repulsed by it, some other expression?—Send off?—Anyway, the men are expected to do this, and I didn’t mind one way or the other, when Radhika who wanted to follow us, agreed that everyone could attend a gathering on the farm after the sixteenth day or 22nd day, because anyway even if a lot of people had wanted to come to the site, it was a bit forbidding after the rains. And so we plan to go there after a suitable duration of time when I shave my head at Poombarai temple and return to sprinkle milk over the grave.

Her send off was beautifully choreographed by our household and friends, with electrician-plumber and handy man Ramalingam in the lead with a muffler wrapped around his head and his poly-jacket taking over duties as a priest. It was he who organized the sacraments of our dhotis and washing in the river, filling the clay pots (which had to be somehow acquired on a Saturday at seven in the morning) and organizing the staff you see me carrying (through my neighbor Mr Karrupan’s land) with burning embers, don’t ask me why.

The people in the foreground lifting Grace are Mathan Lal, Prakash, in the back are neighbor Mani our mason Rajendran, Rajkumar with a handkerchief tied around his head, and Kamakshi’s son Murugan and others whose identities I shall ascertain, but all friends, family and community who know about such things, especially in crossing the slippery river bed.

We are headed to the site we picked called a samādhi where we are putting Mum’s body—I know the photographs look like I am leading the procession through the trees and fields but I am not, I am doing exactly what I am told to do by Ramalingam, and barefoot … with leeches, no, not really… they must be right in the vibe … though another processioner picked up some.

What looks like a wide road is the stone riverbed we are cautiously crossing for slippery algae under the flowing water. I applaud these guys and take it as one more oneness of the oneness in the people around us who really show pluck and how much they care about Mum.

John had done an excellent job making the way passable and the site ready. We had all classes of people around who had this in common, this recognition of the rites associated with a death, since the common usage in Dravidian culture is burial not cremation. I was able to fulfill Mum’s wish as close as possible, even though apples do not come very well down there, pomegranates and loquats do, and I intend fully to plant a grove around her “last resting place”, though I expect her influence and light will be around for some time.

Michael and others set candles, and Ramalingam poured ritual water on the grave from one of the clay pots from the nearby river. Aftab read a wonderful text by Rumi which I will transcribe.

You’ll see my job was to walk around the grave three times, with dear ones following, each time a crack on the pot was made by “priest” Ramalingam following behind me so that some water trickled along my side. I must say, Ramalingam was very skilful cracking a hole and only breaking the pot completely at the end, the third round culminating in a final smash with the water flowing away from me miraculously somehow. My out held palm and splayed fingers in the last shot of the circumambulation indicate the empty space of the pot. Thanks to Adam’s friend Raja and Prakash for these pictures.  

Lots of flowers, and stones to keep out wild animals, and a headstone shaped serendipitously, the selection, I thought like an upright triangle, a Buddha stone, or Kali. After a day or two John covered the grave in raspberry brambles and began work on a dry retaining wall on the terrace below. I thought of having a photo of her put on a ceramic tile. We do not intend a western style gravestone as in Shiva’s blog, something more colorful, less grim perhaps.

I need to include a picture of Grace’s view, even though on this Saturday morning when we put her in the ground there was a delicate rain, never off-putting, gentle, merciful, from a cool grey cloud in a long low curtain completely covering the view of the mountain walls of valley to the west of her, but still this in itself was a Rothko-esque view, or darśana.

After the clay pot was broken from behind and without looking back and with help from Ramalingam I plunged the incense stick I had in my hand into the grave. You try and stick incense in a mound of earth from behind you, it is not actually easy to do, but I did everything else rather well, I thought, and was back in my old capacity in Performance Art, though this time for real, really real.

A white dhoti was placed over my head (which should have been shaved but isn’t, yet) and I was handed the aruval or machete which broke the pot. I don’t know what it means but it was perfect.

We had people of all persuasions with us on very short notice. But I was gratified to realize that we were a mix of Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Socialists, uncertified Buddhists and other unassociated non-dualists.

As I say many people here wait a few days to allow relatives to gather, thus the refrigerated Lucite box. We were not able to notify many more people who would have liked to attend, but I do not think Grace would have wanted a huge shebang. It was perfect as it was. Hindi Pandit appeared purely by way of paying us a visit on Friday and was able to say a prayer in Sanskrit over Grace’s body. Padmani too was here on the afternoon of Grace’s death. We were all having cups of tea. I think I was the only one to eat something that night, some chickpeas and greens. The next morning Arogyaswami an old friend from the seventies and Rayan were not able to see her body, but came to the house with flowers and paid their respects.

It was seeing this little shrine to her that made me realize I have a ancestor god here.

Vigil and Afterwards

That afternoon, evening, and night till the early hours all I did was sit around in the same dirty dhoti barefoot phoning, texting and then when it was too late to call to email, which I abhor so I sent Sally’s message, sorry it also praises me and this was not the intention, heaven forfend, and now when I write this I think of all the people I know who met Grace and might like to hear about the samskar or rites of passage as practiced by the great mass of people in Tamil Nadu with variations all throughout India, so I took photographs. She died at almost one p.m, it was the New Moon and a Friday, all good signs, we should bury her today, Saturday is bad, Shani, Saturn, says Radhika. Others spoke of keeping her in a fridge, a box like Lenin’s I saw one recently with advertizing painted on the Lucite; no thanks, she’ll be ok overnight won’t she? Sure. We’ll get by Shani, anyway his vehicle is a crow, good juju, we take her down to the farm tomorrow. There was a wonderful spot overlooking the valley she would adore, sorry too she couldn’t live down there …

Noon, Friday, June 11

Families ask why their loved one died without them there, our friend Priya in Auroville says of the hospice experience. After, say, a four hour vigil by the bedside their loved one dies alone, apparently, so often, just as the family leaves. I think it is because of the connections and perhaps the tension that they stay on, they stay connected. In Mum’s case we were letting go, all quiet and sitting cross legged with her on the floor. She had her head in Mary’s lap and I was holding her legs and just being mindless and relaxed, watching my own ego and its accretions and magnetic iron filings and somehow letting go of the magnetism the iron filings of thoughts dropping away around when Grace’s breathing—which was labored—became calm and smooth like a sleeping baby, she relaxed.

This stunned me, a confirmation, I say now, that what I experienced this light from her, must have some validity because I felt her speaking to me, not in words, but in a golden light. I didn’t see it in my head, but felt it in my heart, and as if speaking to herself … that up there where she was now looking back down at her body she felt free, like a child, and she reflected that she never expected it to be like this.—I felt this powerfully in my gut and heart, my head pretty silent.

Despite a “spiritual” orientation I am still a hard skeptic and doubter when it comes to anything. And sure, I know this is possible, especially now given that we are encased in dense medium that conducts electromagnetism which is light, out of which all things are fashioned and have as their medium, so it is scientifically possible to have an energy body, quite aside from the overwhelming evidence of near death experiences (NDE). Say I am delusional but this is what I experienced, and this is my first experience, even if vicarious, of someone looking back down at themselves and others in the time of death, as if both saying farewell and for all intents and purposes giving a last farewell blessing which came to me physically and mentally an expansion of heart-mind, or as we say in India, manas.

Perhaps, so I think, this is due, not only to Grace having lived a long and full life, but also because she had been basically healthy. She just ate less and less, her skin color was healthy when she died with us sitting on the floor around her (shall put it in my will, to allow me to die comfortably on the floor not in a bed) and also that she was not in a hospital with tubes coming out of her, a thought she always dreaded.

Our goal in the past two years after she turned 100 has been to make her life as comfortable and pain free and medicine-free as possible. She lived for the longest time on pomegranate and other fresh juices, papaya, veg, some scrambled (country) eggs and butter, small amount of chicken or liver etc., sea fish, Horlicks, and oatmeal. During these last days she refused solid food. Over the past weeks we gave her baby antibiotic once to relieve the fluid build up which I understand is inevitable when the circulation slows down to the lungs and blood becomes stagnant … not wanting to repeat antibiotics we gave black cumin seed oil (Nigella sativa) with honey (a miracle medicine used reportedly by the Prophet Muhammed) and this also relieved the congestion a few weeks after the baby medicine dose.

Then Friday midday Pakkiyam called me from my room upstairs where I was writing and said I‘d better take a look. That’s when I found Mum resting her head on Mary’s lap on a quilt on the floor so they could change the bed sheets and air out the mattress. Her breathing had the fluid again and in the sleepy way that she has been over the past month or so. We then mixed up some of the baby amoxicillin and gave it to her with a spoon; she swallowed it and then gave her spoonfuls of water and I helped Mary turn her on her side so the lungs would not be compressed … I am telling about all this to show that she was, indeed, for short while, in difficulty and I was at that point imagining that even if the medicine worked, some day not too far from now things might turn ugly with her gasping for breath; however, I did not expect her to die at that time but to just get weaker and sort of drown in an agonizing end, a horrible hostile prospect which passed through my mind.

Then Grace looked wide eyed up to the corner of the ceiling across from her, a place where she used to say that she saw girl talking back to her, a kind of visualization she had for years, and I wondered if she was seeing her again, or something else strange and wonderful.

As I held Mum’s legs and Mary stroked her head I did this thing of looking in my heart and letting go of the thoughts and attachments of mind that somehow like magnetized iron filings constitute our ego fears and so on, and then, as I say, all by itself came this golden light, not in my eyes but in my heart … which epitomized Grace’s personality somehow, encapsulated almost and I felt her presence not from her body before me but from that place up in the corner of the ceiling of her bedroom … absolutely childlike and free musing on the freedom of it all while simultaneously her breathing became calm and smooth, no congestion at all … totally relaxed, “sleeping like a baby,” as they say, on Mary’s lap.

Now, Pakkiyam came back in from the kitchen and stood with her arms akimbo asking what was happening. I felt this alarming to Grace up there looking down and gestured, shh, to her, sit down with us, which she did … because in my mind it was as if Grace (looking down) was alarmed at this person standing there hovering, and when we five just sat quite calm as she went calmly to sleep, I was in this glow, so calm, sweet, no drama, no Sturm und Drang, no emotion, stress, or turbulence. I was impressed. Mary looked over at me, since Mum was resting on her, she knew, and I took her pulse as I had done so many times before and unlike those times when it had always been strong, there was nothing, this in itself was one of the strangest things I have experienced, a warm body with no pulse, it is something I have never experienced before, still of this world but the heartbeat no more. I got up went into the kitchen and looked at the clock, it was about 12:50 pm that she would have died.

Though I am not sure of the cosmology here, Frank’s wife Debora described the essence anyway or for me the feeling of the event perfectly in her condolence text message when she said, “The world has lost a true woman and how lucky is the other side to finally have her back. She stayed with us for a long time, Mark and that was such a selfless gift from her to you. Thank God her spirit is free again as in her youth. I know you miss her.”

This is what I experienced beyond all expectation, that she felt free.