Caeser Must be Buried

"I come to bury Caesar not to praise him" is the most infamous obituary in history. The unkindest acts of revenge are the ones that we heap on our dead. The impotent rage of a lifetime that now remains unfulfilled, bursts forth in a myriad ways, for its the only opportunity left to revile the person whom you will have no further opportunity to hate.




While people in different parts of the world have different structures dedicated to the dead, the Hindu world of the dead is remarkably devoid of any signs of physical commemoration. The best commemoration that a dead Hindu can hope for is the ritual feeding of the crows whom his soul is said to take temporary abode in. The body is duly burnt at the first available occasion, because a corpse to a Hindu is a great source of pollution. The ashes are scattered and the charred fragments of bone are thrown into flowing rivers. The result is remarkable- absolute hygiene and no memory. Perhaps its also the reason why the grossly overpopulated universe of Hindu myth has no parallels to a zombie or a vampire. With the physical basis of existence so utterly destroyed there could be no fear, no memory, no institutionalization of sorrow or ritualized recollection. The only thing one is obliged to do is to feed the dead once a year- not to honor them, but because not doing so would be catastrophic to the surviving family. It's for your own good that you feed them not because they are worth being remembered.



My father was the kind of man that everyone loved, the blue-eyed boy of the family who was always on the verge of something great. The one about whom there was this unmistakable air of expectation, the kind that always hung about- because he never cared enough to fulfill the expectations and finish off with it. I never once remember him from the collage of my childhood memories burdened with anything more serious than laughter. He could be the life of any party and could solicit the charm of anyone he set his sight on. His sense of entitlement was something that could put Alexander the Great to shame. He could be stunningly magnanimous to strangers and mystifyingly elusive once they'd lent him some money. He lived effortlessly, because most of the effort that sustained him fell to other people's lot.




It's been 8 years since I left my father's body to burn on the pyre. I returned the next morning to find his ashes cold after a night of rain. I ran my fingers through pasty ashes for bones, tied them up into a neat bundle and packed them in the ceremonial pot to throw them in one of the numerous Sacred Rivers of India. The hope was that he would find some way to salvation, at least in the calm muddy waters, at whose shores numerous men, women and children, bathed and chanted hoping for great virtue. The day we threw his ashes and bones into Godavari, I had to travel on a small thermocol dingy haplessly struggling under my weight, adding an element of mortal danger to the entire exercise. I hadn't cried in the days following his death, people thought I was bottling everything up. I desperately wanted to get the ritual done and get back to pretending a cataclysmic sorrow. I just didn't feel any great emotion stirring deep within as I was told I would. Somehow, I was pretty embarrassed at this utter lack of emotion that had overcome me. For years, I had hoped secretly that this man would one day miraculously disappear from our lives, and I was being told that I would need to rue that it had finally happened. I was scared that it was all just a set up and that he was playin a cruel joke on us, that he would come back the next day laughing at my naivete.



The only lasting memory that I can associate with my father is him banging furiously on my door asking my mother to cook or clean or wash. The only lasting sensation is one of a visceral pain at the prospect of sitting next to him smelling the alcohol on his breath. Evenings didn't come with the hope of a family dinner but with the terror that any moment now there would be boys running towards our home to excitedly tell us that my father had collapsed in some lane after drinking too much. In a particularly telling moment of desperation , he had sold off all the old newspapers and scrap he could find, to muster enough money for his fix. Ironically enough he sold my horoscope with all the rest.



The man has now been gone for 8 years. He made a huge impression on me, I have dutifully fed the crows and a bunch of greasy Brahmins every year, on the day he died. I still haven't come around to crying for him but his inheritance sits easy on me now. The future might be a dream but the past is set in stone. When Brutus came to bury Caesar, he came there to exactly do that. To bury Caesar was his burden, to praise him was not.