It was a small piece of land with a dilapidated wooden structure that resembled a hut. It was called Kuriala and was where the ashes of our ancestors had been kept. We had located the structure after a difficult search. A series of events in the last few months of my life had led to this exercise.
A severe bout of illness caused by an attack of the deadly pseudomonas had crippled me, temporarily at least. A practising lawyer, I had been virtually thrown out of the profession because of my inability to attend court for long.
Cellulitis had spread through my left leg making it extremely painful to move. There were other disruptions in the standard indicators of health as well. It all made for ‘testing’ times, indeed.
Penicillin was pumped into my body, along with an assortment of other drugs, to control the infection. Fissures had developed all over the infected portions making it agonising to even stretch the leg. Bedridden for weeks at the hospital and for months at home, alone and aghast, I had come to terms with the hardest lessons in life.
Now the bacteria was out, but the wounds had yet to heal. Convalescing meant learning the art of living in dos and don’ts. Hospitalisation involved socialising too. As a recluse, it was disturbing for my ego to expose my wounds before one and all.
Later I came to know that these are rituals that every patient was expected to perform. Even when I was asleep or feigning sleep, my better half would dutifully perform these rituals, as if to convince the well-wishers of our plight.
At times convalescing became an enjoyable experience, with packets of food piling up on the tables in the room, brought by dearest ones. However, there were also some who took sadistic pleasure in forecasting gloom. But most visitors were gentle and soothing in their utterances and earnestly tried to lift one’s sagging spirit.
For a few, it was more than a bacterial infection though. It was a sign of bad times. My horoscope was decoded. Written in chaste Sanskrit, decades ago, the inscriptions had almost faded out. The findings were astounding as they tallied with the trauma I had undergone. This was the period of transition in my life cycle, called ‘Dasha sandhi’. Aggravating the transitional chaos, the ensuing ‘Shanidasha’ encompassed the hardest of times in one’s life, ‘Ezharayandasani’ and ‘kandaka sani’. Therefore, a strict regimen of poojas and offerings to propitiate the recalcitrant stars and gods were prescribed.
Beyond the contours of my horoscope, there were some who were of the view that my woes were the result of not having paid adequate attention to the well- being of our forefathers.
Even a bottle of oil or a packet of incense had not been offered to them. The spirits were wandering about in gloom. They had to be appeased as their displeasure would cast doom upon the entire family. The remains of those kind souls were lying unattended. So we had to walk back through the ancestral pathways to locate their lonely abode. Some elders had only vague ideas as to where the remains of the senior-most ancestor known to us had been interred.
Finally we succeeded in locating the makeshift structure. Its present owner was a septuagenarian, jovial and simple. He quizzed us in amusement. He did not find much our endeavor to be of much importance.
“Who said our forefathers are unhappy my boys?” he asked. “I have been meeting them regularly in my dreams and communicating with them. They have not uttered a single word of displeasure against anyone of us. Do not misunderstand them. Go and do your duties,” he advised me, with a twinkle in his eyes before adding, quite seriously, “Wounds will not heal in a day, my boy. It will take time. Neither the medicines nor the deities nor the spirits of our forefathers grant instant solutions. Accept reality and move on.” All of us were happy to have met this man and to have shared in the knowledge of our common ancestry.
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