When families uncontrollably brimmed with people akin to Mettur or Idukki reservoirs, an assignee was in readiness to make condolence calls, if the deceased did not merit the personal visit of the head of the family.Such an emissary would invariably be single, having gainfully squashed the compulsive urges of matrimony. He will be bamboo thin (roly-poly varieties were reserved for happy occasions) with sunken cheeks, furrowed brows and baleful eyes.
I ran into Paramu, a bespoke specimen, when a nonagenarian called it a day. Having missed the obsequies, I went later to meet the eldest son Dorai on the thirteenth day. The house was abuzz with a battalion of men, women, children, looking like the crowd scene of a Cecil B DeMille saga. “Life is like a bubble,” said Paramu in a sombre voice, “You are alive and kicking one moment, but gone the next. But where did you go? Who can tell? Those who left never tell us where they have gone. And those who tell us where one would go, have not gone there yet.”
All profound utterances, irrefutably true. No response is called for such rhetoric. Silence would do. “Blessed are those who pass away without being bed-ridden, with a bedpan under the cot, battling bed sores, troubling themselves and others devoid of nursing tendencies.”
A swarm of children, dressed in bright new clothes, were playing catch-me-if-you-can, screaming with glee. Paramu looked at them with censorious eyes. Dorai, who came in, shooed them away. Paramu ceremoniously clasped his hands and mumbled he was so sorry to hear about the death.
“Did she suffer a lot?” he asked. Paramu, taken aback, looked up. She? He should have said he. But he saw my secretive wink and wore a gloomy mask. Paramu’s allotted time perhaps was over. Or perhaps he had another such unpleasant call lined up. “It is customary not to take leave… so …,” he said, shaking his head again in grief for good measure and withdrew.
Dorai burst into laughter. “Poor Paramu is so confused, with many condolence calls under his belt. He doesn’t even remember who passed away, my appa or amma. Did you know my appa was good at mimicking Paramu? Only the night before his death, he gave one of his stellar performances, and said, ‘Mark my words, Dorai, if I pass away, he will bungle, thinking Lakshmi had gone. For him death is the subject, the great leveller. Never mind the object.’ Next morning appa was gone, as Paramu would approve, without troubling himself or others,” Dorai said with moist eyes.