Sep 11 2008
I made my first visit to a crematorium. No funeral dirge, no waling women since, in our community, they are not allowed to come for the cremation. We had elected to go with the electric crematorium.
The crematorium is in a small tree lined complex. There is the traditional wood burning one and the electric one. As I disembarked from the car, I could smell the faint odor of holy offerings. The priests are efficient and the paper work so far, has not taken much time. We had to wait for a bit, but the machine was free so, the ceremonies began. They were not very elaborate. The priest said something then my father had to go around a tree and sprinkle holy water.
I had read in Q and A by Vikram Swarup about the skull needing to be cracked to provide easy passage to the soul. My father did not even hesitate. It was a clean blow, no fuss nothing. We then went inside.
The inside of the crematorium was a large hall with the furnace towards one end. The hall was tangibly hotter than the outside. A series of wall fans relieved the heat but made conversation difficult unless you were standing close to the person you were conversing with. There was a small depression near the furnace for placing offerings and carrying out other prayers. This was done and then I heard the crash of the handles as the body was lifted from the bier. One of the handles was then turned anti-clock wise and the body was lowered into the furnace. When the furnace was opened, and though I was about 4 feet away, I could feel a blast of heat. I do not know what the inside temperature was. Another crash, and then the lid were slammed shut and that was that. We could have collected the ashes after 2 hours but we have chosen to do so in the morning on our way to immerse them in the river.
Note:
Given the inside temperature, I could not understand why it would take 2 hours to convert the body to ashes. It turns out that the conversion takes place in about 15 minutes but then the ashes need to be cooled before removal, hence the time taken.
We all trooped out. The priest brought us to a halt and then announced the time of the prayer meeting which is on Monday afternoon at 16:00 to 17:00.
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