Geetanjali Krishna: The strangeness of some rituals

In my line of work, I've often been asked strange questions. But none have thrown me as off guard as the time when my cook and cleaner converged on me one morning, after being huddled together in a long, secretive conversation. "We were wondering," they asked, "if you knew any poor people." As I couldn't think of an appropriate answer, I asked why they wanted to know. The story they narrated made me laugh at first, but also gave me plenty of food for thought.

Apparently two weeks ago their neighbour had passed away. He was an old man who had lived a full life and his wife wanted every possible death ritual to be followed to ensure that his soul was able to rest in peace. Being traditional Bihari brahmins in a neighbourhood of migrants from across the country, the bereaved family's subsequent actions left everyone puzzled. "She insisted on asking priests from the largest temple in our neighbourhood to perform the funerary rites," the cook narrated. The priest performed a mind-boggling variety of rituals, which many neighbours didn't quite understand, and then decreed that the widow and her son must feed 21 brahmins on the 13th day after the old man's death. "Many of us wondered why she wanted to spend so much money on someone who was dead and probably didn't care," said the cleaner. "But perhaps this gave her some solace."
 

Thirteen days later, the widow and her son organised a grand feast. "By this time, many elders in the community had advised the family that there was no need to spend so much money on the death feast," she said. But to no avail. For the bereaved family, the splendour of the death feast was a matter of prestige. In grand style, a caterer was called and the feast prepared. "There were puris, kachoris, three types of vegetables and several desserts," the cook said. "It was a feast fit for kings!"

But the widow wanted to feed brahmins, according to the specified rituals, and not kings. When she sent her son to invite the fancy pandits from the fancy temple, it seemed they were sick of the rich feasts people expected them to eat, several times a day. They arrived, grumbling. One said he had developed diabetes after he started working in this temple, as he was expected to eat such lavish feasts every other day. Another said his doctor had warned him that if he didn't lose weight, his knees would eventually give way.

"Listening to them, I realised they were definitely getting too much of a good thing," said the cook. "Ritual feasts are an occasional thing for people like us - but a bane in the lives of pandits who are expected to consume them as part of their duties." Eventually the priests accepted a banana each from the bereaved family and left, leaving behind mountains of sinfully rich food. "This has happened today, and before sunset, our widowed neighbour has to feed some brahmins, or else, she believes her departed husband will not be able to rest in peace," said the cook. Why didn't she simply feed the neighbourhood, I asked. She had, but apparently, feeding brahmins was mandatory, said the cook.

Later in the day, the cook added a postscript to this story. When her son begged some brahmins to eat the food before the day ended, they finally consented, but for a token fee. "So they finally had to pay them to partake of free food," said the more prosaic cleaner. "But if you think about it -why not? This is their job after all."