Month: January 2020

It happened about two years ago. One of my friend’s brother went missing or rather he went out of the house and did not return.

Friend’s brother was around 50 years old then. He was diagnosed with mental illness earlier on in life and lived mostly at home roaming around the neighborhood.

One day he did not return and the search for him started. People went all around Kathmandu, all old age homes, all hospitals, all shelters, the brother’s usual hangout locations. Nowhere was he to be found. Police were informed.

3 days later people found him body in the morgue at a hospital. The family went to check and confirmed it was him. Family performed his last rights at the Aryaghat below the Pashupatinath temple on the banks of the river Bagmati.

As per Hindu customs they performed staunch mourning for 5 days. Since he was unmarried and did not have any kids the rights needed to be performed were taken care for by his brothers, including my friend.

On the fifth day they finished the mourning ritual with a puja and all changed the dresses and were getting ready to have proper meal after the five days.

Suddenly my friend got a call from one of his friends who had gone out to an lost person shelter in Patan. He asked if the rites had been completed. Then he said he found the lost brother. To confirm he sent a photo through Whatsapp, which everybody looked at. To the surprise of all it was the lost brother!

This brings up a few questions to anybody’s mind — who did they find before? Whose body was cremated? What basically happened?

The questions remained unanswered till today. The lost brother is fit and fine and still hangs around the neighborhood.

Kashi Di was a very fine lady, nice person to talk to. I would send hours talking to her though we had a good age difference of about 45 years.

My first memory of her was seeing Kashi Di wash her face after her meal during the Dashain festival. We were three little kids, just finished a great meal of mutton soup and rice and washing up, when Kashi di came started washing up. In that process she removed her complete set of teeth. We stood in horror. Our faces became white while she proceeded to clean her teeth with a toothbrush. We had never seen false teeth before. Gathering our senses we ran from there.

We went to a corner, gossiped a little about how she could be a ghost or a part of something evil. Then on I kept away from her, until I was about 25. Then I developed special fondness for her. Not that we met often, but when we did we talked a lot. I would try and find time to meet her whenever I could. During Dashain Tika she would wait to put tika on me.

One Dashain she did not come to where we would put Tika. People said she was very ill. I went out of town and then really forgot about it.

The following Dashain she was there. So we got to talking and remembering her absence the last year I asked her what happened. She told me that one day, just before Dashain, her breathing stopped completely. Assuming that she had passed away, people awaited the Hindu practice of waiting for 4-5 hours, even then she didn’t breathe. So they put her on bamboo poles and carried her to the Aryaghat, near the Pashupati Temple on banks of the Bagmati River to be cremated.

On the banks they waited a while for the cremation as there was a little heavy traffic as well as the ghat rites of her had to be completed. So while doing the ghat rites, one practise is to put the dead body on the Brahmanaal (Brahma’s channel). Brahma’s channel has outlet of water coming directly from the water that is poured on the Shiva Linga inside the Pashupati Temple. Lord Shiva is taker of life, while Brahma is giver of life. So this ritual symbolizes the passes of the soul from the destroyer to the giver as Hindus believe in rebirth and the eternal cycle of life.

When Kashi Di was put on the Brahmanaal, she came back to life. She first started slowly breathing and then she got up. People brought her back home.

And that was the reason why she missed a Dashain tika.

Though its been years since Kashi Di actually passed away, I still remember her. Her coming back from the dead is what surprised me most though.