Ash Bhardwaj - Becoming Indian

 

The whole family was there in the living room of my uncle's house in Manchester. My mum was there, my sister was there, cousins and uncles. It was only when they brought my father's casket in that people started to cry. It was only when they opened it that people started to wail. I was 21 years old and all I could think about was trying to do the funeral ritual correctly. 

 

My father was a Hindu and the ceremony was conducted by a Hindu priest in Sanskrit, which is a bit like the Indian version of Latin for Roman Catholicism. So, the priest would explain to my cousin what he was doing in Hindi, my cousin would explain to me in English and I would be confused. [audience laughter] There was some throwing of flower petals, I had to light a candle, had to pour some Ganges water and walk around the coffin a few times and touch it at the end of my father's feet. 

 

My dad, as I said, was a Hindu, but he wasn't really a typical Indian. He was the white sheep of the family. He was the only one of all of his brothers or sisters to marry a white woman, my mum, who's English and Scottish. When we were kids, he had no interest at all introducing us to our Indian heritage. It's only because of my mum regularly taking us to see my family in Maidenhead that I had any understanding of my Indian heritage at all. I can remember every time went to the family house of having to ask them what the food was, I have no idea today what Diwali really means and I know the names of none of the 330 million Hindu Gods. [audience laughter] 

 

Back in the afternoon of the funeral, we were back in my uncle's house. It was quiet now. There were a few family members tidying up, moving things around and the mood was quiet, but it wasn't particularly somber. I remember a cousin telling me about a story of dad trying to get the Rolling Stones to play at Slough College. My eldest uncle who sat at the table with his hands folded and he asked me to sit down and he said, “Son--” He always called me son. He said, “Son, you have to take your father's ashes to India.” 

 

This is a ritual called tarpan. And tarpan is part of the Indian metaphysics and part of the philosophy and the religion that you take the ashes to this place called Haridwar, which is where the river Ganges comes out of the mountains and flows across the plains. You put the ashes in the river and this helps the soul of the deceased person move on into the afterlife so they can be reborn. 

 

Now, this didn't mean a lot to me. The idea of being Indian felt about as true to me as being French or Greek. I also didn't feel particularly obliged to do anything for my father. I didn't really feel any duty towards him. There had been a time when I would have done anything to spend time with my dad. In fact, when I was a kid, I started to play cricket, just because my father had played cricket in India, and I thought that we could go and spend some time together in the nets. But I think that only happened once. I did spend time with my father going around the pubs and restaurants of Windsor. My dad had been a pub landlord and he owned some wine bars and he was well known. He was a well-liked character around the town. 

 

One time, I was about 13 or 14. Dad had actually lost the restaurants by this point through bankruptcy, and he was still managing them, although he didn't own them. It was only really through the efforts of my mother that the bars and restaurants were still going at all. She was also working a second job as a cleaner to try and get enough money for us to get the things we needed for school. My dad was playing pool, and by this time, I was starting to get a bit of an understanding of what an alcoholic was. And even though I could recognize his frailties, I still believed in him. But he decided to bet with the guy he was playing with. Because I still believed in him. I crossed my fingers and I willed the number eight ball into the pocket. He missed. In doing so, he squandered an afternoon of my mother's hard work. And I never respected or trusted him again. 

 

I was supposed to have taken the ashes back within one year. And six years later, my family were insistently calling me and telling me that I had to go back and take them now. They said, “Look, you've taken your time, you've done the things you wanted to do, you've enjoyed the things you wanted to do, so now you have to do this duty.” So, I went to Manchester, picked up the ashes, and I went to India to go and do the ritual. But I'd actually gone via an expedition. My younger sister came to meet me in Delhi from Heathrow and I'd come from Nepal. We met together at the airport and we drove to my cousin's house on the outskirts of Delhi.

 

When we got there, my cousin told me that I would have to leave my father's ashes outside the house. It's bad luck to bring them into a house. The next morning, my cousin told me I had to shave. I had a beard from the expedition. She told me to put on a long white shirt, a kurta. This felt quite significant. It felt like I was preparing for some significant and important ritual. When we left the house, it was early in the morning and the streets of Delhi were quiet. I'd never seen them quiet before. They're normally full of cows and traffic and pollution and cars and motorbikes. But on this morning, it was one of those amazing dawns that you only ever find in the subcontinent. The only things on the road were a few cows munching at the roadside and people on bicycles. It was really quite magical. 

 

As we carried north and left the city behind, I saw the green of the Indian countryside and rivers, and it felt like the India of myth and legend. And then, when we got to Haridwar, our journey ended in a municipal car park. We got out and we started to make our way down towards the River Ganges. And on either side of the road, there were shops and stalls selling trinkets and holiday tats and pictures and postcards of Haridwar. All the paraphernalia of ritual, because Haridwar is a place that people go to on holiday. They don't just go there for these funeral rites, they go there for pilgrimages and for blessings.

 

We went past these stalls and we got to the edge of the River Ganges. And bizarrely, the first thing I thought about was Henley Royal Regatta, because the river runs very straight here and there's steps leading down to it for people to go into the river for the rituals. There's loudspeakers blaring prayers and security announcements, and all the temples on the other side are covered in bunting. We crossed over the river and we went down to a place called Har Ki Pauri. This is where God or one of the 330 million Gods had stepped onto earth from heaven. My cousin pointed to a stool. She pointed at the stool and she said, “Bhardwaj,” which is my family name. I looked at it and realized she was pointing at the writing on the stool. I realized that I couldn't read my own name in Hindi. I looked at it, trying to see some familiarity or recognition in it, but there was nothing. It was just Hindi scribbles. 

 

Now, every time someone goes to Haridwar to get their ritual done, the family is always looked after by a single priest. So, my uncle had already called ahead to get the priest to be ready for us. My cousin rang him on the mobile phone when we got there. He came down and he was wearing all white and he was quite small. He had a moustache and he had glasses and he didn't speak English. So, he spoke to my cousin and shook my hand, nodded at me and then they immediately began ferociously haggling over the price. 

 

Now, I'd heard about the mercantile nature of Hindu priests, but my understanding of religious men is based on the doddery old vicars of Anglican tradition. So, this was still something of a surprise. It was all very dramatic. There was head tossing and flare and, oh, looks of dismay. Eventually, they settled on a price for spiritual peace for my father and we made our way down to the river. [audience laughter] We sat on a small square of marble that projected into the river. I was closest to the river, and my sister was on my right-hand side and the priest was opposite us. And we immediately began the ritual. 

 

He was saying words in Sanskrit that I had to repeat and I didn't know what the words were, so I asked him to translate through my cousin, who he spoke to in Hindi, she spoke to me in English and I was confused. And then, the ritual continued. There was lighting of candles and there was throwing of petals. We got to this point where we had to hold a coconut. And this coconut represented the temporary carriage of my father's soul. It was taken out of limbo and prepared to be sent on its journey into the afterlife. And then, the priest asked for more money. 

 

Apparently, because I'd taken six years to do this, it was much harder for him to pull Dad's soul out of limbo, [audience laughter] put it in this coconut and send it on this journey again. So, my cousin and he eventually agreed to a price 2,000 rupees is the cost of bringing a soul out of limbo after six years. And the ritual continued. And then, we got to the final part where we had to pour the ashes in. This is the moment that I'd been hanging over me for six years. This was the mission that my uncle had set for me six years beforehand. This was the culmination of all of that. 

 

I was expecting a sense of closure, a sense of satisfaction, a sense of even though my father hadn't been a great dad to me, I'd done something for him. I wanted to take this moment in. I wanted to feel very present in it. I wanted to share it with my sister. I looked at her and I could see a tear running down her cheek. I felt very present in this moment, and then all I got was “Jaldi, jaldi, jaldi,” from the priest. The only reason I knew what he meant was because from watching cricket, this is what the Indian cricket team say to their bowlers when they want them to go faster. [audience laughter] So, whilst I was trying to absorb this spiritual moment, I was being hurried up by this Indian priest. My sister and I both put our hands on the urn and chucked dad's ashes into the river. And that was it.  It was done. I felt no closure and I felt no satisfaction and I felt no completion. 

 

And then, the priest got up, nodded to my cousin and walked off into the streets of Haridwar. My sister and I sat there bemused. We looked at each other and we hugged each other and we looked around scared, just as we had the first time we'd gone to India when we were kids. We followed my cousin through the streets of Haridwar. We followed her through to a courtyard. And in the courtyard, there was a cow munching some grass and a plastic bag. And the courtyard was surrounded by rooms. And inside one of these rooms, we found our priest. He was sat on the floor and he had a scroll open in front of him. He was all smiles and friendly and he offered us tea and he asked us to come in and sit down and he pointed at the scroll. 

 

It was long and it was thin and it was bound along the top. And on it there was Hindi writing. And on the walls, all around us there were shelves with hundreds more of these scrolls bound in really incongruous cloth, like Burberry tartan prints. They looked like snails curled up on the wall, hundreds of them. He started to talk to him about the one on the ground translated through my cousin, of course. Every time somebody goes to Haridwar to take their loved one to ashes back, they go and do this ceremony afterwards. We wrote down all the names of all the people who'd come to do the ceremony, me, my cousin, my sister and we wrote down the dates and we wrote down the story of how my father died and we wrote down a bit about him, and then we wrote down the entire family tree. 

 

And then, the priest showed me the first time my name had appeared in this book. He showed me the first time my dad's name had appeared in this book. He showed me my grandfather's signature when he'd come to bring his father's ashes back, and my great grandfather's signature. The family tree in this place goes back 13 generations. That's 350 years. In other parts of India, my family tree is recorded back to two and a half thousand years. And all of a sudden, I felt connected to this long tribe of Indians, all of whom had done exactly the same thing as me. They brought a loved one to Haridwar, poured the ashes in the river and then, nervous and bemused and scared, they'd come to this room and done this same ritual and written their names down. 

 

I felt connected to them. I felt connected to my heritage. The priest said to me, he said, “You know, it's a good thing you've come on this day.” I asked him why. Apparently, it was a solar eclipse, and astrology is very important to Hinduism. By doing the ritual on the day of a solar eclipse, it'd been extra powerful and been very good for dad in his afterlife. So, the irony was that by delaying it by six years, I'd actually done a good job for my dad. [audience laughter] As I sat there taking all this in, I just imagined this connection to my family, this lineage of people that I'd come from. And so, even though my dad hadn't been a good father in life, in death, he finally helped me feel a little bit Indian.