For the Ashes of my Father and the Temples of my Gods*

Dr. Roopali tells us about voyages to distant lands. Her father’s family left Dhaka during his childhood. It stayed with him. A highly decorated Air Force officer, her Rakhi brother, had died and was buried in London. Find out what she did for him. An exclusive for Different Truths.

“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!”

~ Walter Scott 1771- 1832

Something in the land we are born in draws our heart and soul together. It could just be the land of our forefathers and foremothers.  It is its fragrance, the “mitti ki sugandh” that makes us restlessly toss and turn at night. Even the down-filled comforter quilt in a faraway place of plenty fails to quell the unconscious longing. 

Memories call us to the wet monsoon-soaked mud under our feet.  And sometimes, fistfuls of earth remind us of our childhood. We wander the world and yet want our ashes and our mortal remains be returned to the earth of our birth?

That is why our martyred soldiers bedecked in flowers are taken by air, sea, and road to villages and cities where they belong. Even the mortal remains of enemy soldiers are returned to their homeland. The Geneva Conventions make it mandatory.  You see, we must not die as Walter Scott says, “Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.” 

House and Home

Of this, I have many stories to tell. One is the unforgettable sight of my brother heading out with his luggage-loaded trolley at the airport. He would head for a patch of earth, lift a fistful of soil, and sprinkle it on his head. It was 40 years since he had bought a house in London. Still only here in India was the home.

Someone was asked to carry Cousin Asha’s daughter’s wedding “havan samagri” from India to Chicago. The dhaan, the jau seeds, the mustard oil, and a pot of soil all the way from Nagroli village, in Uttarakhand, to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

Immigrants speak often of their heritage. And their progeny long for it. “I am from Germany,” a lunch companion on a cruise ship explained. “My parents came to America, in 1944, during the World War-II. I was born in New York. Last year, I visited our village in Germany and stood outside my grandparents’ home.”

“Did you go in?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t go in. It now belongs to someone else.’’ He spoke wistfully. 

Nostalgia for Home

He had shared with a total stranger his nostalgia for home. What makes a man born in the United States long for his parental home in faraway Germany? Perhaps those stories he grew up with as a child lured him. The blissful life followed by the horrors of war. The fleeing parents. The concentration camps.

Some years back, I had visited Weimar and had paid my homage to the victims at Buchenwald the deadly Nazi concentration camp. Nothing I read or imagined had prepared me for what I saw. 

I also remember asking my daughter what reminded her of home. She has lived in the United States for half her life. “The sounds,” she said. “I miss the sounds of the early morning. The birds, the doodhwaala, the sabzi waala, the doorbell ringing, the dhobi hollering. I also miss the smells that are a preamble to the sound of the pressure cooker ki seeti!”

An incurable Wound

My father left Dhaka when he was just 15 years old. His family fled to Karachi, now in Pakistan. I grew up hearing him say, “We are refugees from both the Pakistans!” It was an incurable wound he carried in his mind. One that still ached. I was too young to understand. 

In 1971, anew nation Bangladesh was born. The dream could now be realised. But our ancestral home had been damaged considerably from aerial bombing. The journey did not happen. Somehow, the fragrance of that maati (earth) never went away. 

In the tree climbing koi fish and the delicate taste of the silvery Eeleesh, and the shukto my mother refused to cook, the fragrance stayed. The river Buriganga flowed through my mind. That was home for me too.  His dreams became mine and in my dreams, I travelled to Dhakha many times.

A Highly Decorated Warrior

Air Vice Marshal Hamid Mohammed Shahul was a highly decorated Indian Air Force warrior. When he joined our family, I welcomed him with the traditional Rakhi. It bound us together in a forever relationship. A veteran of the 1971 war of liberation, he was later chairman of the Airports Authority of India. He travelled far and wide. 

Each year he visited his three children spread across the world. Who knew one such flight was to be his last. His death in London was a terrible shock to us. I grieved not only for my personal loss but also for the loss to this country of a committed soldier.

His children decided to perform his last rights in London so that they were close to his burial place. It was a good decision, but one that deprived him of his nation’s honour. A nation that this man in uniform had served all his life. Did we not have a claim on him?

A Handful of Earth

Restlessness gripped me. I had to bring him home. I left for London on my way to the Washington, DC.  In my luggage, I carried a handful of Earth and some rose petals.  Desh ki Mitti. The land of his birth and the land of his deeds. His janma bhoomi and karma bhoomi. 

His final resting place was tucked away in a quiet tree filled cemetery in London. We were escorted by his daughter-in-law, a British citizen with Bangladeshi heritage. She was the only witness to his passing. The grave was still fresh. The marble epitaph still to be set up. 

Saluted a Comrade in Arms

With a proud, yet deeply mourning heart, I sprinkled a handful of India’s earth on our Air Warrior. The rose petals were miraculously fresh.  My military spouse stood to attention and saluted his comrade in arms.   

Walt Whitman’s lines ran through my mind. 

“Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.”

The journey was done. I knew I had brought this brother of mine home to his land. Brought him back to where the monsoons soften the fragrant earth and coconut trees sway in delight. Home to where the boats rush down the backwaters of God’s Own Country. 

*Lays of Ancient Rome is an 1842 collection of narrative poems, or lays, by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

To be continued

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