Life, Lilies and Surf

Chapter 1

One who does not beget a son

To perform rituals for his departed soul,

Is condemned to veritable hell.

Sesame and water offered only by a son,

Can save a Hindu from such catastrophe.

The sea spray carried by wind blowing from the sea to the land made the face wet with salty water. The never idling sea sent another long curl of a few hundred feet to rise up as a wave of white froth. The feet and legs up to the knee had their wash and rinse for the twentieth time. It was not sufficiently deep despite the frequent lashing of the waves. He had kush grass in one hand and the other hand was lifting the folds of his five yards of cloth wound round him as the uniform dhoti prescribed for his trade. He was encouraging by bold words, the poor mortal holding the ashes of his father to venture further out to the sea and immerse the remains of what was once his father, five feet and ten inches tall, corpulent and miserable in his last days. The change from corpulence to corpse to ashes now collected in a small earthen pot was as per the ways of the world. For the priest or purohit, as he was called, it was another transaction. For the bereaved also, it would be a transitory phase and transient as things all around are. Sorrow is also transient and bless the transience for it.

The mantras muffled by the sounds of the sea were over. The dutiful son inverted the earthen urn and the dusty contents were safely entrusted to the everlasting sea. The urchins or fisher-folk pestering and badgering the duo with promises of immersing the ashes at a deeper place in the sea for surer spiritual satisfaction and saving the drowning of the duo, beat a retreat with disappointment in not earning a few rupees for such settlement. The purohit collected the Dakhshina, a few rupees and made demure sounds for a little more consideration, which he proclaimed to the progeny would be a sure method to get copious blessings of his father, who had become one with the immortal sea. A little more cash more or less equal to what is left as a tip in a restaurant is all that reaches the purohit's outstretched hand.

The sun is quickly ascending and the glare and the heat of the beach becomes predominant. The two parted and the purohit repeated the address of the place where after five days further rituals would have to be started. With the earnings of the day, deftly inserted in the folds of his dhoti, held tight at the waist, the purohit made  his way to his two room pigeon hole decently called as his home, where he was the lord and master.

He passed through malodorous locality of fisherman who lived by the sea and thrived by the denizens of the sea. Keeping his nose covered with his upper cloth to filter the smell, so fondly cherished and enjoyed by so many, he went through labyrinth of streets and narrow lanes deep into the bowels of Triplicane. This was the place sung by the poets more than 1200 years ago as a flourishing town with palatial buildings adorned with promenades projecting from each floor and capturing the breeze. That was aeons ago and now there were only flats and small houses built to serve as a sweet home for lower middle class families. Cluster of two room sets in a house harboured the families that optimally used the space of two rooms, as kitchen, bedroom, living room, guestroom and study, a veritable example of maximum utilization of space, which no management expert with civil engineering degree could improve upon.

After his morning endeavour in earning a livelihood, Subbu Krishnan, the purohit, confidently entered his two room set. As in the case of such cluster of rooms called as portions, there was a central space, which was open to the sky. The building had a single entrance that led straight into this central courtyard. The entrance door was a single leaf heavy ornamental one of solid wood with carvings artistically done. The brass studs were securely embedded on the cross beams of the door and they were shining like gold due to constant touch of people opening the door. On the outside, there were platforms raised to the height of three feet, on both sides of the door. This raised space inevitably served as the common free space for all the inmates of the building. But actually, it was carefully earmarked for the aged senior citizens of the building, who spent most of the daylight hours reclining, sitting and lying down in that space ear marked for each.  Such was the custom and usage by the families that have been living there for decades.