Of beliefs and Customs

It was a long day at work, had so much of work to do that I actually skipped my lunch too!!. After work my friends and I went to our regular chat shop to have the delicious chat. We are their loyal customers and the fact that we prefer that shop is cuz it’s kind of very light on our wallets. All of us were hungry and called the waiter to place our orders and to our disappointment fond that the chat section of the hotel was closed. Dejected we came out and thought we will try out the next shop and to our surprise found even that one was closed. Cursing the shops nearby I bid goodbye to my friends and started to ride back home.

My stomach started to grumble so I started to drive as fast I could to reach home soon. But to my luck I got caught in a traffic that was caused due to a death procession. I was caught in Aminjikarai and the road there was narrow and due to the death procession the vehicles were standing in a queue for the traffic to clear. As I was waiting for the traffic to clear something caught my attention.

Yes the death procession. I was very bewildered by that whole custom. Death is something that is horrid and unpleasant. It’s a scar that stays in our life for a very long time. I somehow fail to understand this whole custom of death procession. There is a family grief struck due to the death and the way this whole procession is carried out seems to be very illogical to me. Firstly you take the corpse seated in a chair and have a whole bunch of dancers dancing the traditional “Dapankuthu” leading the procession. Is this an event that has to be celebrated dancing? And to top it all you have flowers and mostly the fresh red roses strewn all around the road. Flowers are something that are used for a happy occasion. I feel sad to see these flowers being crushed under the wheels. The icing to this whole is the bursting of crackers scaring the passer byes too. 

I was lost in these thoughts and for a moment I could hear the auto man behind me horning to move ahead as the traffic cleared cuz thankfully the death procession took a right turn. Finally I reached home and the first thing I did was to eat no no hogged. Then I asked my mum the reason for the Dapankuthu and the throwing of flowers and likes of that. The answer my mum gave was so quirky that it left me toying with the question how on earth they find such social beliefs and customs!!!

Apparently when someone dies the send off needs to be grand to that person in a way that it brings happiness to him. And that’s the reason for the Dapankuthu and the others. It seemed totally illogical to me. Many of the Hindu families still follow this tradition and may be will continue to do so. I personally feel that people need to change with the times. 

This is a plea to all the people who indulge in this custom

 5 concrete reasons as in why this system should be scrapped off

1. Chennai is becoming traffic prone and this one is jus adding to the list.

2.  The amount of money that is being spent in all this if available to the family will be a lot helpfull.  

3. Cleanliness of the environment is something that all of us are least bothered about. Strewing flowers and making the roads dirty and not driver friendly is not appreciated. 

4. It just annoys someone to see a death procession when a person is on the way to work

5. For god sake we are in a civilized society and acts like these seems really funny and stupid.