I paused reading Arundathi Roy’s God of Small Things as the death of the character Ammu blinded my eyes with tears. The evening of the same day, I received the news that my mother had passed away. The real and fictional deaths shook me. I felt as if the death of Ammu was a harbinger to my personal loss.
The funeral was arranged the next morning. I stayed awake throughout the night. After prayers, we carried the coffin to the graveyard.
In Malayalam, the graveyard of Muslims is called “Pallikkadu”, which literally means the forest of the mosque. This “forest” is actually manmade. The family of the deceased plant two saplings on the grave of the deceased, one at the head and another at the legs. It is said that the Prophet had once passed two graves and had placed the branches of a date tree at the graves so as to bring peace to the dead. The tradition is followed to this day.
I brought a jasmine plant for my mother’s grave. It was summer then, and I would visit the grave twice a day to pray and take bottles of water to tend to the plant.
I worried about the absence of new buds. When most of the leaves started withering away, I felt scared. But soon, I saw new shoots. It was the reply that mom had sent to the message I had sent through the water. When the jasmine bloomed for the first time, I spotted bees and butterflies around it. In the winter days, there were green caterpillars.
The Pallikkadu is not only home to the deceased; thousands of other inhabitants live there. Birds perch on trees to eat the fruits and nuts of the trees nourished by the bodies of the departed souls, snakes make it their own heaven and wild foxes frequently visit it.
There is a man appointed to clear the weeds in the Pallikkadu, but his blade does not touch the trees or plants in memory of the departed souls; he knows that the roots are gently hugging those long gone and the buds are slowly blossoming to bring life to others.
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