Conducting funeral rites at his ancestral home in Punjab, Navtej Singh Dhillon sifts through the layers of his identity
The liver took the longest to burn. That’s where the disease had likely lodged itself, the maid’s six-year-old grandson explained. I was carrying my father’s remains. The boy walked beside me, already a veteran of the funeral pyre.
Only hours earlier, he had ridden his rickety bicycle to the front door of my ancestral house, which was an act forbidden in normal times. Sweat dripped from his palms; his face and ears looked hot. It was not yet time to return, he said, his voice almost out of range. The boy lived on the outskirts of the village near the cremation ground. He seemed to know something I didn’t: the body can burn for a long time.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2CGQE8S
via
0 Comments