Celebrating the dead

For years Parsiana has been reporting the divergent, opposing, impersonal views of what has been referred to as "the disposal of the dead” among Parsi Zoroastrians of India, and in Bombay, in particular. With the dying out of vultures, the problem has become more complicated between traditional rites, modern science, and the social fallout of the Towers of Silence on Malabar Hill in the middle of a residential area. We argue, not so piously, ignoring the hearts and minds of the bereaved. Even elephants seem to show more emotion over their dead!

The very word ‘disposal’ implies a neutral attitude towards arrangements for the final treatment of the dead bodies of our family. I would like to offer the Parsi community in India (and elsewhere) another, more humane, more celebratory way. I give below that way in the joyful service after the death of my cousin Gev Nadirshaw Mody in Sydney, Australia where there are no Towers of Silence, no professional priests and few Parsis.

It is an exemplary way, a beautiful way, a truly spiritual way, the way many of us may wish to go. The reading of the poem from The Prophet, written by Kahlil Gibran, was by Jeroo, Gev’s wife. It movingly explores "the secret of death” in a "river of silence.” It further conveys, "For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?/And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless/tides that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?”

In another poem, What is Dying by Bishop Brent, Adi Davar recited and explored what it means to be "gone:”

"A ship sails and I stand watching till she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says, ‘she is gone’ Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all; she is just as large as when I saw her.

"The diminished size, and total loss of sights is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘She is gone,’ there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout, ‘There she comes!’

"And that is dying.”

And in between, there was the beautiful music of Verdi and Tchaikovsky for a lover of good music whose spirit was on the next journey. What better way of remembering, of celebrating, of accompanying the spirit, and drinking from the river of silence "to indeed sing.”

ASPI D. MODDIE