True Tales

I went to a cremation in India in the late 70’s for Jathedar Santokh Singh, who was a prominent Sikh leader from Delhi who had been murdered. No one knew who killed this man at that time and everyone was suspect. Everyone thought that the others were covering something and everyone was scared at what the implications of this killing would be – to the government and to the Sikhs. No one looked at anyone. It was tense. Politics and religion are not separate in India and this man was given what must have been a state funeral because it was in a public place.

I knew Indira Gandhi and was in India at the time as a representative of the Siri Singh Sahib, the head of the Sikh religion outside of India. I was escorted and arrived in a car, which was allowed to drive directly to where the cremation was to take place. I was led up some steep steps to a raised stone platform where the pyre was.

On the platform with me, were his wife, grown children and family members. There were an additional 30 dignitaries, politicians and friends on the platform. I was the only Western person present. It was the first cremation I’d attended. I was strapped to the moment with curiosity, but also with fear of not knowing what to expect and also not knowing how I was going to react. It was a January morning: cool, windy and damp. There were thousands of people wrapped in shawls, on the still dew laden grounds surrounding the platform. Everyone was standing. Everyone was waiting.

The body was on the stone on a palate, wrapped in white linen and now covered with wood (probably sandalwood) which was very precisely placed in horizontal and vertical ways, around the sides and on the top. It looked like a six foot by three foot pile of wood. I could sense the overwhelming emotion that was present on the platform and in the crowd.

I felt out of place among the politicians who were dressed in black woolen ashkands (Mandarin collared jackets) over white churidar pants. No one knew if the crowd would riot or not. The priest in his white dhoti (which is thin cloth wrapped about the lower half of the body and between the legs and drawn up across the chest) was walking around the wood pyre reciting a prayer as he put the ghee and sweet smelling/ herbs on the pyre. It was not a silent moment, but it was a solemn moment with what the din of 5000 people in silence is. Time seemed to be standing still. Ghee was placed on one piece of wood and it was lit and that flame was taken around the pyre to ignite the ghee on the rest of it.

As the fire turned to a blaze people on the dais and the crowd swooned with an intoxicated sound. Emotion was at a high pitch. The solemn moment turned to an emotional one. The reality that this was a rite of purification and release of the soul by fire, was a parallel reality to the sounds and feelings of the crowd. They didn’t riot, but as the flames went higher and could be seen by all they cheered religious slogans. Whoever I was with quickly took me down the steps through the crowds to my car and back to my hotel.

After that Sikhs in India began a distrust of Indira Gandhi’s ruling Congress party. It was the beginning of a hard time for them.

I continue to be in awe of fire. There is something about it that continues to mesmerize me when I am in front of it. Fire for its own sake. Fire of cremations, even the fire in the Western version in the stone vaults of modern day crematoriums, gives a peace to me when I see it. It represents the reality to me that we are nothing. It brings finality to the shell that is the body, and sets the soul free in the flight of its smoke.