Brotherhood Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream Read Free

remember tears after that. (There was no wailing at the cremation, either. We have strong women in our family.) My mother was in her bedroom, sitting up, waiting. Because she had become more and more an invalid, none of us had expected that she would be the parent left alone. There were arrangements to be made about where she would live now. We had to face the creeping signs of dementia. But none of that came up the first night. My mother was somber and lucid. I remember only one sentence from her: “Your father’s upstairs. Spend the night with him.”
    His body lay on the floor in a third-floor bedroom. It was wrapped in a winding sheet that left his face exposed. When I saw it, there wasno sign of Daddy in the grayish skin and masklike expression. I sat until dawn, letting my mind wander through memories that came randomly. My brother and I were well loved as children; none of the images that ran through my mind were troubling, and for that reason none were exceptional. The army camps we lived in, called cantonments. My mother sharing a meal with the kitchen maid; she and my father had no tolerance for the traditional caste system. A procession of anonymous sick people coming through the door. My father as a young man, striking in his uniform with a blaze of medals across his chest. He was comfortable being our household god, modest as he was.
    Flying in from Boston, Sanjiv had arrived at Link Road before me and had been sent to bed to soften the edge of exhaustion. He was waiting when I came downstairs after dawn. Nothing dramatic was said—few words at all, in fact. The extended family would arrive soon. Sanjiv’s wife, Amita, had flown over with him, but it was agreed that my wife, Rita, would come later, after the four days of immediate mourning were over, to help my mother settle my father’s affairs and sort out his papers.
    On the third day Sanjiv and I took the car to Haridwar, four or five hours north. The bits of bone from the cremation were to be immersed in the Ganges. Cultural genes taking over again. The city of Haridwar is one of the seven most holy places for Hindus. The name translates as the Gateway to God; it is where the Ganges tumbles out of the Himalayas and the steepness of Rishikesh, the valley of the saints, before it broadens out on the plains.
    The city is sacred chaos. The minute we stepped out of the car a gaggle of priests converged, assaulting us with questions about our family: my father’s name, my grandfather’s, and so on. Temples line the river, and countless people wade into the water for holy ablutions. At night a flotilla of burning lamps is launched, creating an incandescent mirror of the starry sky.
    Once we had answered enough questions, Sanjiv and I were guided down a narrow alley filled with pilgrims, putt-putting scooters,and sweetshops. Inside a small courtyard a priest unrolled a long parchment scroll. Before ashes are scattered over the Ganges, the deceased’s family marks their visit by entering a message on the scroll. The event doesn’t have to be a death. For hundreds of years this has been a place where people have come to mark important passages in their life, such as a birth or a marriage.
    The days of mourning for my father had scattered my energies. Now, looking at the messages left by my ancestors, my mind was suddenly thrown into sharp focus.
    In that dim, airless room I saw that the last few entries on our family scroll were in English: My father coming to scatter the ashes of his father. My grandfather arriving right after World War I with his new bride to “bathe in the celestial pool.” The record turned into Urdu and Hindi before that, and if the family line had held strong, the record could have stretched back to one of the earliest Vedic rishis, the seers who began the spiritual lineage of India before there was even a religion labeled Hinduism.
    I was unusually moved, even though I had had no real interest in our family tree. Impulsively I added a