INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

When a person dies, after death he can see and listen to what is happening
around him, but he cannot speak. He can see that people are crying
beside his dead body. When they bring him to the cremation place,
when they offer the fire, he is seeing even that! In gurbani there is a
stanza saying; when Yama’s staff hits you then you won’t remember. It
takes time to get this head burnt and after that you do not remember a
thing. He does not know the worldly things after that.
According to this perception the spirit of the dead person is conscious and able to
observe his surrounding until the fire fully consumes the head during the cremation
ceremony. Considering this, rituals for preparing the dead for cremation and the
cremation itself are especially important for the soul’s proper departure from the
body.
THE DEATH OF DEVI
The immediate response to death among Sikhs are various, depending on many factors
such as the circumstances of a death, local family traditions, origin, status, gender
and age of the deceased and which family members are left behind. Sikhs do not
have any set duration for mourning and discourage public expressions of grief. Nonetheless,
businessmen usually close their shops for at least four days after a death in
the family and keep a period of mourning until they have completed a reading of the
scripture. There are several actions most Sikh families take between the time of death
and when the body leaves the house for cremation: immediately after death they
arrange readings of gurbani hymns, give the dead body a bath, dress it and pay the
last respects to the deceased at the house. To illustrate how families may act I will
exemplify with the death of Devi, the mother of a Khatri household.
Devi was of old age and died a natural death. When it was clear that her hours
were numbered, her daughter-in-law brought Ganga amrit from Nichibagh Gurdwara
and poured it in her mouth. The son went for a doctor but when they returned Devi
had already passed away. Immediately the family placed her body on the ground in
her private room with the feet directed southwards. As death had entered their home
the family stopped cooking at their house and obtained food from relatives residing
outside the household. As long as the dead body was in the house and up to the eleventh
day after death all family members also slept on the floor. As most of Devi’s
relatives lived in Punjab and it would take two days before they could arrive in Varanasi,
the family covered the whole body with ice. In the meantime, they lit incense
for Devi and played cassette tapes with Sikh kirtan and Sukhmani Sahib. The morning
after the death the daughter-in-law cried unrestrainedly, wherefore her husband told
her to play tapes to pacify her emotions. “This shabad kirtan gives you relief,” she
explained. “There is a limit even to crying but kirtan tells you that this is the last truth,
it tells that this body is going, but nothing goes with it...the sons and daughters...everything
is here.”
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008