The Hosur Road Cemetery
It was early morning, she said, when she and her family and many other families went to pay their respects to the departed. The graveyard lit up with candles. A gust of wind suddenly snuffed all the candles, except for a lone one — the one my friend had lit in her brother’s memory.
This picture has stayed with me and finally last Saturday I visited a graveyard.
It wasn’t a morning Dawn had spoken of, nor were there any solemn candles. But the calmness was the same, the serenity also similar and… something more — so many stories untold.
A small granite grave of a two-day old child spoke of the grief of the mother barely out of her labor pain, the pretty picture of an 18-year old girl spoke of untimely deaths, of accidents, bricks being removed from an old grave to make place for kin of the constancy of it all, of the pattern of life while fenced in larger areas with one grave and place for more spoke of the sadness of truth, of inevitability, of times now when bookings open not only for a place under the sun but also for a space under ground.
There was more… the stamp of patriarchy where every woman who died was identified as w/o, her parents not anymore a part of her being and men remained proud individuals, needing no identification except the worldly qualifications acquired at earthly institutions.
Silence took over conversation as we left the graveyard. For some in the car it was probably many of the departures before the final arrival while for us it was a reminder of the day we would be reduced to ashes…
On the happier side of it, if I live a full life with relatives, children and grandchildren rallying around me, I will probably be able to avoid the limitation of being just somebody’s wife.
(Don’t know why I felt like adding this last bit)
