Traditions

The day before yesterday was the 13th day since my father-in-law's death.  There are several days that have special significance and that was one of them.  The four sons were required to go to his "native place" (the house where he grew up) and perform some rituals.  In a strange coincidence, the 13th day fell on October 31st.  The strange thing about it is that one of the rituals involves the father's family feeding the sons pumpkin.  Interesting, huh?  No Halloween for us this year but Vikas still had to do Pumpkin activities.

Then yesterday was a big function involving all of his father's family.  There is a tradition here where the sons have to take the father's ashes to his native place for a final ceremony.  It's a bitter-sweet tradition in my opinion.  Let me give you some background on Vikas's community.  First of all, in India there is not only caste and religious divisions, but within those categories there is also a very important section called your "community."  Your community is really what dictates the customs and traditions your family lives by.  You are not allowed to marry outside of your own community.  Vikas's community is "Shetty" or, more specifically "bunt."  The bunt community is matralineal by tradition.  That means that the property is passed down through the daughters of the family instead of the sons.  In a way, I think this is a very good tradition because it kind of insures that the women will never be tossed out onto the street.  The other side of it, though, is that when your husband dies, you have no rights what-so-ever to his home or belongings.  So, the ceremony yesterday was a combination of welcoming his father home for his final resting in the fields of the place where he and his family are from, and absolving the rest of the family from any rites to it.  The day was full of ceremonies between the sons and the father's nephews.  In the middle of the day there was a big lunch provided by the nephews on dad's side.  I think there were about 150 people there.  And it was very, very hot.  The family home is about 160 years old and way out in the country.  Obviously there was no air conditioning.  The houses have a really interesting design where all the common areas are outside in what is basically a huge covered porch.  Then there are interior rooms for sleeping and keeping personal things.   So, we were able to go up into one of the private rooms from time to time to get a little break from the outside heat, which was good.  The day ended with a dinner pretty late in the night, then a stop by my mother-in-law's family temple and her family house.

During the function there were a couple of things that the women had to do.  Before each meal the women had to each put a serving of the food that was prepared on a banana leaf as an offering to dad.  Then that was taken out to the field and left for the crows to eat.

Backing up several days, all of the sons had to shave their heads on the 5th day.  I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about seeing Vikas bald, but he actually looks really good.  The hair has grown out to a soft peach fuzz now and Jasmine loves to rub his head.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes to grow back in and if it comes in any differently from how it was before.

So, there's one last ceremony that will take place at my mother-in-law's native place on the 16th day (which happens to be my mother's birthday.)  After that things will go back to the normal routine.  In the mean time, I've gotten pretty good at cooking dal, upma, bajil, peera, beetroot and rice.  I think my repertoire will be expanding soon.  I'll keep you posted.

Aside from those activities, we spent a couple of days nursing Jasmine.  She came down with a high fever (102.7) that lasted for a couple of days.  She gets this fever every time we come to India.  We're still not sure what caused it but she better now.  I think it might just be brought on by the exhaustion from the long trip and the extreme change in climate and timing.  Anyway, I'm just assuming that it only makes her immune system stronger in the long run.

I think that's all for now.  I'll be posting again when I have time to write more.