My Uncle’s Last Pilgrimage - 1

My uncle or bodo mama (big uncle, since he was the eldest) was 87 when he died. So, for him, Life had been a long journey and when the end was near he sensed it with the unerring wisdom of one who knew he belonged to the ages. An Ayurvedic physician, like his father – my grandfather – he had read and learnt the intricacies of the Vedas. His father made sure my uncle knew all the mantras, did all the yogic asanas, meditated, and took his daily dip in the Ganga, that holiest of holy rivers, that flows into Calcutta, the city he lived in all his life, on its way to the Bay of Bengal. Every morning, before sunrise, without fail, he would set out for the Ganga Ghat, winter, rain or summer. He obeyed his father, for he revered him, like all the children of that house were taught to.

When the end came near, he was frail. With his unerring wisdom, like his father before him, he made his last pilgrimage to the city he knew he had to die in. Like his father had known and done before him. He took his frail body to ancient Kashi, also known as Varanasi and Benares. When the end came near, though we had been out of touch for many long years, he wrote me a last postcard wishing me well, wishing me long years of happiness, and a peaceful life’s journey. He didn’t ask me to go to him, for he thought I would be too caught up with my own life. But I felt the silent call and I went.

When I set eyes on him, I saw at once how feeble he had become. His eyes were sunken, his face was cadaverous with the pain from the peptic ulcers that gnawed in his guts all his adult life. When he smiled at me, as I entered the room he had made his last home on earth, I tried to find the uncle I had always known. The uncle with the deep laugh, the uncle who swung me out of the taxi when I wore frocks, and tossed me high up and caught me squealing in his strong arms, the sun in his honey brown eyes, even white teeth shining in a smile, on my annual visits to my mama’r badi or uncle’s home, as it was always referred to, though it was my grandfather who had built it, in Calcutta.

The uncle whose strong, but elegant, index finger I clutched when he took me to the fish market to buy the Hilsa fish I especially loved. The uncle that brought home rossogollas, shondesh and mishti doi especially for me – for I didn’t get them where I lived, in South India. The uncle whom I had long arguments with, arguments that no other child of the house – my cousins (I have many) or even his own siblings (6 sisters, 3 brothers, all younger than him) – would dare to have. As the oldest son, he was only lower in status than the patriarch of the house, my grandfather.

For some reason he tolerated all my impudent questions. My mother would be frantic with worry, warning me about my uncle’s terrible temper – a temper I experienced directed towards me only one heartbreaking time. My aunts too would often caution me to better hold my tongue or one of these days I would experience his anger. But I was heedless, questioning his reasoning, disagreeing with his arguments vehemently, from early in my childhood, and even when I grew up into an awkward teenager. An age that especially meant lectures, not discussions, with one’s elders, in my uncle’s house. But, he tolerated them from me; he even seemed to enjoy them, answering me teasingly, playfully arguing with me, all the while his eyes twinkling. For some reason, he never lost his patience with me. I guess because I was only an occasional annual visitor.

My uncle was handsome. A broad forehead, bespeaking wisdom, a mouth chiseled in sensitive lines, and his skin shone with the lightness of the first rays of the sunrise. His voice was low and deep, which sounded especially beautiful when he hummed his beloved Tagore’s songs. And when I snuggled into his lap (I never saw any other child in the house snuggling in his lap) he smelled deliciously of tobacco and aftershave lotion. 

He looked regal when he reclined on the huge white bolster pillow on the large expanse of a wooden bed – it can only be called a bed, though it wasn’t used for sleeping on. This bed had a thick mattress, covered by a huge crisp white sheet, in the large room on the ground floor of the five storey house. My bodo mama would sit on it and drag on the hookah which the servant placed beside him, while he waited for the patients to arrive.

When my dadu (grandfather) was alive, both of them sat side by side, reclining on those bolster pillows. But at that time, it was only my grandfather who would smoke the hookah – it would be unthinkably disrespectful for my uncle to smoke in front of his father, though, when my dadu was not in the vicinity, my uncle really chain-smoked on strong tobacco, which he rolled himself into thin cigarettes, or laboriously poked and prodded into his pipe. He was fastidious about the tobacco he smoked, he was fastidious about the way he rolled his cigarettes, he wouldn’t let anyone touch his pipe – not even me. And my grandfather I am sure knew that, but my uncle would never smoke in front of him.

My uncle wore a white starched dhoti, crisp and crinkled, and a crisp white kurta, which had gold buttons on the chest. He was finicky about his clothes – he liked the long sleeves of the kurta crinkled just the right way, the dhoti was fastidiously worn with the tail forming a fan in his hand, which he held when he walked, or tucked into the pocket of the kurta, or panjabi, as it was called.

While my uncle reclined on the bolster pillows, the patients would come in one by one. They would leave their leather sandals outside, on the doorstep, climb up on the low, huge bed, and sit cross-legged. The air was of quiet patience. Never hurry. They waited mostly silently, almost meditatively, for my uncle to finish his hookah. Some made small talk in low voices. They asked about each other’s children, they talked about the rising prices of fish, the rising summer heat, or rain clogged streets. The ancient long yellowing fan, with giant blades whirred gently overhead. The huge portrait of Sadhu Jethamoshai – my grandfather’s guru – hung benevolently over the door through which the servants brought in the medicines that my uncle ordered when he pressed on the electric bell button attached out of sight in the underbelly of the bed.

One wall of the dispensary was lined with big, glass covered, wall-cupboards which had large ceramic jars of the ayurvedic medicines that my uncle collected from his trips to the Himalayas. He learnt all the secret knowledge of the curing powers of herbs and plants, roots and bark, from his father, who taught him from the ancient knowledge buried in the medical branch of the Vedas, Ayurveda.

The herbs were ground and cooked in huge cauldrons in the recesses of the house, on the ground floor, behind the dispensary. They were hand rolled into little reddish brown pellets, then set out to dry in the sun on the terrace on the roof, five storeys up. They were then packed in little white cardboard boxes by the servants who were trained by my grandfather and my uncle. The proportions of these medicines had to be precise, many of those herbs being highly toxic. The whole house, its bricks, its plaster, its foundations, reeked of the bitter-pungent smell of cooking herbs.

After about five or ten minutes of the hookah going phrrrr-phrrrr on each long drag, my uncle would call for the servant to take it away, then he would begin on his patients one at a time. Each one would draw closer, and tell him his or her problem, in low tones. My uncle would listen intently, ask a few questions, take a wrist and feel the pulse with his eyes closed; pin drop silence prevailed when the pulse was felt.

Feeling the pulse is an art in Ayurveda. To the trained fingertips, the human pulse tells many secrets – secret ailments that nestle in the stomach, or the heart, or some other part of the anatomy. The pulse reading could last for as long as fifteen minutes sometimes. A good Ayurvedic physician diagnoses accurately by feeling only the pulse – my uncle or my grandfather hardly ever needed to seek any further. Feeling the stomach, or looking inside the rims of the eyes were only resorted to, for a particularly difficult case.

Once the diagnosis was made, my uncle would call the trained servant and tell him what, and how much of a medicine was needed. The servant would retreat back into the dispensary, where the medicines were wrapped and packed, and bring them to my uncle. Who would then hand it over to the patient, along with instructions. I never heard money being mentioned. There was a big wooden chest in the middle of the bed, which had a slit on its top, through which the patients stuffed the money in. After that, the patient never went right away. He or she drew back and sat amongst the edge of the other patients and would wait – sometimes talking softly, most times just sitting quietly. That was the unwritten, unspoken tradition. My uncle allowed me to sit for long hours beside him watching the proceedings. No other children were ever allowed in there when there were patients about.

When I entered the room in the old house in Kashi, where my 87 year old uncle had come to die, after my initial dismay, my eyes adjusted and I soon saw that uncle that I always knew – through the old eyes, the eyeballs rimmed with grey, through the feathery thin hair, through the indifferently worn clothes, which, though neat, were not crisp and crinkled like in the old days, through the papery thin skin that covered his now stringy flesh and jutting bones. My uncle of old smiled through the toothless smile and his eyes twinkled like in the past. Crisp clothes, hookahs, gold buttons, were left far behind, back in Calcutta. This was ancient Kashi, the holiest of holy cities, through which the Ganga, the holiest of holy rivers flows, has been flowing since time immemorial. This is where people come to die to attain moksha – release from the endless cycle of birth and death.

-to be continued

-by Rita Putatunda