I always maintained that I wanted to see the ‘real India’, and yesterday I think I caught a glimpse. Raja, our host here at Amala, invited us to attend a local Indian funeral and as the ever intrepid Religious Studies teacher I took him up on his offer. Sadly, none of the students came, as they were feeling quite uncomfortable about the event. However, as Raja informed me on the way to the ceremony, in India everyone is welcome, and if more people turn up, then a greater amount of respect for the dead person is shown. But you must never confirm your attendance, as this will bring bad omens, you simply say, “I will go and come.”
We arrived in a rural village with small huts lining a mud track, there was a group of around one hundred mourners dressed in bright, vibrant colours. The sound was the first thing that struck me, drums, bells and crying, a huge outpouring of grief. To say that I stood out would be an understatement, the only white person in a mass of wailing and screaming local men and women. My intention had been to be the observer, but the mourners had other ideas and included me fully in the ceremony. A man pulled me to the wagon at the centre of the crowd and showed me the body of a young man contained in the open casket. Women around me continued to shout their woes and slapped the floral garlands around the wagon. I was grabbed and held and both men and women tried to explain their grief through noise. At one point a man overturned a table on the road to make way for more people, sending candlesticks and offerings to the mud floor.
The combination of heat, sound and mass hysteria deeply affected me, carrying me away with the feelings and emotions of those around me. But then the wagon lurched forward, a few moments pass and calm is restored. We have paid our respects and it’s time to go home, the wagon continues to the local church for the body to be buried. Fundamentally the service will be a Christian one, but the rituals that I encountered were spawned from centuries of Hindu tradition. For me, this trip has been an opportunity to see Hinduism as a living religion, adapted and interpreted in the place where it began.
Kim Nicholson
