I had to go to India in late January to attend religious rituals after my elder sister passed away unexpectedly. It is customary in India to complete the cremation within a few hours of death, the origins of which have to do with the high temperatures and lack of easy access to cooling technologies. This has changed in recent years. Even now, generally, cremation is delayed only for a few important reasons, one of the most important one has to do with who, according to our religion, should carry out the last rites and how far they have to travel. In my sister’s case, there were no compelling reasons to delay the cremation because the person to carry out the last rite was her brother in law, who was right there. Unfortunately, there was another death in the family during my stay there and I participated in the cremation.

For Hindu Brahmins, there is a fairly long list of religious rituals that are carried out over 13 days after the death of a person. Nowadays there is an abridged version that go on from 9th to 13th day, so I was able to go and participate in these. I learned a lot by participating in these events thanks to the priest’s explanations as things were performed. During these days relatives join, recall past memories and participate in the various rituals. These rituals revolve around donation to some of the Brahmins, offering food to the soul of the dead person and a lot of chanting of mantras, all of which is supposed to help the soul rest in peace. Going into further details is daunting and I will leave it there.

The priest is an interesting man. He holds some high position of a society of Brahmin priests and was constantly interrupted on his phone while he was doing all the rituals. At first I found it annoying, but I got used to it and frankly surprised how he was able to multi task, by picking up easily from where he left off and being selective about picking up the calls. At least the ringtones were all religious chantings of one kind or the other. Later, he explained to me that his cell phone has 4 different SIM cards (I have heard of being able to install 2 or 3, but 4? On the other hand, in India anything is possible) and that he gives out the different numbers to different clients. The associated ringtones provide him a way to decide whether the call is important enough to be taken or hung up for later.

I continue to be amazed by the accessibility of cell network in India. No matter where I went, it was no problem. And it is so cheap, because I was able to use a local SIM on my unlocked phone for a while. I had to attend to work related matters once in a while and creating a hotspot on my phone and using my Mac to take care of things was a cinch. I did this even on a train ride at night.

Cell phones are ubiquitous and everyone seems to have them and use them constantly. Since there is a move to mandate helmets for the drivers & passengers of two wheelers, it makes it harder for them to talk on the phone by holding it. I am sure that there are bluetooth enabled helmets, but they are safer than someone holding the phone in one hand and driving a two wheeler.

The other thing that is ubiquitous is a national ID card called the Aadhar card. It seems to be fairly well linked to prevent fraud. I found out that the cremation cannot go forward without the copy of the Aadhar card being presented. Apparently, this is then used for issuing the death certificate as well as informing the banks and other financial institutions so that they put a block on withdrawals etc. until the official process for transferring the assets take over. This all sounded positive.

Finally, I was able to visit a few relatives and the usual talk about skyrocketing real estate prices were muted this time around. I asked about it myself and was told that there is a lull because of some governmental policies that go after the “black money”, which was a big driver of real estate transactions.

This trip was a difficult one, but, I should say that the religious rituals made it far easier on all of us.