A Heart Shivering Incident In Shivpur
Diptarag Bhattacharjee and Indraneel Ganguli narrate a heart shivering incident that took place in Shivpur during a Poite (Upanayan: Sacred Thread) ceremony
1991, Shibpur, Howrah. It was my cousin Bubun’s Poite (Upanayan: Sacred Thread) ceremony and the entire family had congregated at GOSWAMI COMPOUND, our ancestral home.
Upanayana (Bengali: Poite) is the rite of passage for the start of formal education of writing, numbers, reading, Vedangas, arts and other skills. The strands of the thread also stand for purity of thoughts, words and deeds of the wearer. Hence, wearing the sacred thread has been extremely significant in Hinduism as it marked the beginning of education for the child. It is usually an elaborate affair and involves several steps, taking up to a few hours.
But for me, it was special, for I was made “in-charge” of the culinary arrangements – sorting, planning, supervision and ensuring the timely serving of lunch, across batches, to the hundreds of guests and household members. It had its perks too!
And the perks involved Ilish Maacher Dim Bhaja and Ilish Maach Bhaja, served hot, dripping in mustard oil…
Our ancestral house in Bangladesh was exchanged for the GOSWAMI COMPOUND … old memories … lots of stories … around the burning stoves, getting ready for lunch …
Our Kulpurohit (household priest) was a Tantrik. He had a magnetic personality and a roving eye.
The religious rituals continued well beyond four hours … as was expected. But it seemed, never to end … the first batch of guests had settled for the feast.
Everyone was getting a trifle impatient – why were the rituals taking so long?
Now wasn’t it getting a bit too much – the rituals were well over six hours! It was a deviation from the usual …
Finally it ends. A visibly tired and worried Guru emerges from the place of worship … what a relief it must have been for young Bubun and his parents!
Gurudev asks a pointed question to my Jethu (uncle) – he seemed very confident about his query …
My uncle tried hard to recall and after some effort, he blurted out a name – Radhu. He was our domestic help for many years, before that fateful incident …
For reasons completely unknown to the family, Radhu had suddenly ended his life by hanging himself from the Neem tree, within the courtyard. The Police had pursued an investigation for a few months and finally proclaimed it as a case of “suicide”. The matter had ended there, and no one spoke about this much.
What I clearly remember him advising my uncle was, “please try and offer a puja, a Pindo Daan, meaning giving charity to the body of the deceased.”
Those were his parting words.
THE END.
DIG-TALES created by Indraneel Ganguli and Diptarag Bhattacharjee
Illustrated by Indraneel Ganguli
Diptarag Bhattacharjee
Diptarag manages country operations for a US multinational. Photography amateur, food explorer, story teller, cricket aficionado and suffers from wanderlust.
Indraneel Ganguli
Brand builder, artist-writer, storyteller and lover of world cuisine. With a 25-year career across top advertising firms, telecom and IT, he now runs his Marketing Consulting consortium “ReachIG”.