The Lament

When women cry at someone’s death, it sends a chill down your spine. Every time someone dies in the village, the village women gather and lament the loss of the person they barely knew. They participate in the grief of other people. They cry recalling perhaps, their own losses. Their cry is so powerful, it overwhelms you. It takes you to a place where you feel one with the pain.

As I stood watching the group of women who had gathered to lament my masi’s death, I noticed a lot of things. It started with the eldest of women. They did not cry but made a shrill piercing sound which tore at my ears. A few newly married girls were snickering in the periphery of the group. “These traditions are so stupid and irritating. I’m sure there are better ways of expressing grief than howling like that.” said one to another. To be honest the noise was kind of irritating. Initially.

However, after a while I could see it working its way through the entire group. It was like a wave being emitted from those women which affected everyone it touched. After a while nobody was snickering and everybody was lost deep in thoughts.

I was lost in the thoughts of my maasi(aunt from my mother's side). The amazing person she was, the reason she died, her children who would never have their mother again. I looked at my mother. She was crying, sobbing silently into her handkerchief. I wondered what she was thinking about.  Perhaps she was remembering her childhood, those endless memories with her sister or maybe she was thinking about her sister’s children or perhaps about my grandmother, the old woman who had lost her child. Maybe she was thinking about losing me or my brother. I did hear in a movie that the worst thing that can happen to a mother is losing her child. I felt choked up. What if I had lost my mother? I just couldn’t bear the thought. 

I took my eyes off my mother and they wandered to my grandmother. She was crying convulsively as the old women around her lamented the death of her first born. It had been fifteen days since her death and she cried like it would never be over for her. She would never get over her loss. I remembered one of the women say earlier in the day that she would never be able to wear brightly coloured clothes or clothes with too much embroidery ever in her life. Maybe life had lost all its colours for her now.

Tears were welling up fast inside me. I took my eyes off her and looked at everyone else. Even those young women who were snickering earlier were crying silently as the shrill voice continued to pierce the hall. I had started crying by this point of time. I was crying for the unfairness of it all- to my masi, her children, her mother, my mother. It was at that time that they brought her son. Her twenty two year old son made his way to his mother’s mother. The son who had lost his mother held on to the woman who had lost her child and they cried together. The only two people who could perhaps, understand each other’s loss. And I cried looking at them wondering how any of it was fair.

 

Author's Note

It is the depiction of the post death lament in a village in Rajasthan, India.