Spice of life: Funeral or wedding, the show must go on

It was a horrible news to wake up to that Sunday morning. Found dead after the door had been broken open, she had possibly succumbed to a cardiac arrest. She was consigned to the flames that evening itself. While we yearn to prolong our lives, there is always a tearing hurry to dispose of the mortal remains once one’s gone. I couldn’t even have a last look of the person, who considered me her son. Mamiji,my beloved aunt, had passed away and now only memories remain.

When I last met her, a few weeks ago, she was so looking forward to her nephew’s wedding, who had been orphaned when both his parents had died during the pandemic. A night prior to her death, she had neatly placed the clothes to be worn for the wedding by her bedside. When fate intervenes, plans of people are like dust in the face of a sandstorm; the nephew was destined to be orphaned once again.

With the wedding scheduled in a week, the post-funeral ceremonies had to be fast-tracked; time is the scarcest of commodities today. During the prayer service, I met relatives who I had not seen for years. The death had a silver lining; it had forced our flock to take out time and be together to share the happenings in their lives.

The wedding ceremonies commenced immediately after the funeral rituals got over. In a strange twist of fate, a large number of wedding invitees were those who had attended the funeral. The seriousness noticed on their faces then, was conspicuous by its absence now. The frigid silence had drowned in music and gaiety with the ambience of the venue and sumptuous food lifting up the spirits. The show must go on; words of cinema’s doyen, Raj Kapoor, echoed in my mind.

The onerous task of overseeing the wedding arrangements had fallen on my aunt’s shoulders, so she must have felt. Nothing stopped; while we bemoaned her absence, everything went on as a ritual. Nobody is indispensable in this world was the hard realisation repeated yet again, even though my heart ached with emptiness.

I visited her house post the twin events, one impromptu and the other scheduled. With my uncle gone years ago and their only daughter settled in her own house after marriage, I shuddered at the thought of strangers occupying the house that had once been my second home. When great emperors have had to part with their forts and palaces, my childhood castle stood little chance of fighting destiny. Death is the great equaliser.

Is this the fate that awaits us once we fade into nothingness? Why do we pursue the mirage of permanence, trying to leave our footprints on the sands of time? I had many pestering questions till I remembered the lines on a tombstone: ‘Main ahem tha, yahi mera vehem tha (I was important, that was my illusion). Some of the emptiness left my heart as I shed a few delusions of grandeur. echpee71@gmail.com

The writer is a Mohali-based freelance contributor