Fasting and feasting: Memories of ancestor worship during 'shraaddh' – the season of shraddha

Today, September 17, the shraddha* season – the time of the year when Hindus pay homage to their ancestors – is upon us once more. For families, two shraddhas, or the ritual invocation and feasting of several generations of ancestors or pitars, were deemed compulsory. Of course, there were also naimittik (occassional) shraddhas, but they were observed only on an if-and-when basis, as part of some other ritual. Our interests lay more in the more elaborate niyatkaleen (repeated twice a year after regular intervals) that ended in a delicious feast. There were two seasons for this variety of shraddha, one arrived just before the spring month of Chaitra (March/April), preceding the Chaitra Navratri, and the other before the onset of winter, that dovetailed into the nine-day Sharadiya Navratri festival.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no one mother lode or text for rituals or the sacred duties the progeny (usually the sons), must perform for the ancestors during this season, also referred to as pitri paksha.

The root word for shraddha is shriddha, or veneration. And if that is in place, definitions of the actual rituals may multiply and various versions accommodated by families.

The fixed canonical tradition in traditional families like ours survived like a thread on which women of the family strung their own family versions that were handed to them by successive generations of women. It is they who fearlessly interrupt, and correct, the family priest to give him the correct data relating to the lineage, number of progeny and tithis (dates) for all departed family members in India or abroad. And yes, they would also take care to include all those who may have died childless or at a very young age, in war or on foreign soil.

Fasting and feasting

For us children, the night before the shraddha tithi (the date in the lunar calendar on which the grandfather or grandmother had passed on), was marked by fathers sitting havik. During this time, the potential performers of the shraddha, fasted to cleanse their souls before facing their ancestors-turned-demi-gods.

But mothers and grandmothers being mothers and grandmothers treated them like precious black pearls and kept them rehydrated with milky sweets and drinks, fruits and dry fruits, all declared kosher (falaahaari) delicacies. We, who received them from indulgent fathers and uncles as fringe benefits by hanging around with unconcealed greed in our eyes, munched on them happily after our regular meals. I remember a cousin getting a thwack from his mother after saying “Wah! I wish my father had died too so I could sit havik like babuji!’

On the morning of the shraddha the women of the family, who were early risers, woke even earlier and cleaned the stone courtyard, washing it ritualistically and purifying it further by sprinkling a few drops of Ganga jal brought back from some Gangetic pilgrimage by some family member and kept in a tightly-capped brass pot in a corner of the puja room. After the cleaning was over, the women busied themselves cooking a ritual meal.

This meal was special. It avoided some of the usual ingredients like turmeric, tomatoes, onions, garlic, black gram dal and had a proliferation of root vegetables and greens and various varieties of gourds. The blandness of the meal was toned down by addition of puffy puris, aromatic kheer with dry fruits and vadas of all kinds. Some unusual delicacies that the departed ones were said to have fancied were add-ons: bitter gourd fritters, badam halwa or stuffed kachoris.

Our cousin Anil was convinced that the old crones may themselves have fancied such rare delicacies and included them in the colourless shraddha meals in the guise of some venerable one’s favorites. We were, of course, stoutly barred from the ritual area as potential polluters and noise-makers but allowed to take the day off from school.

Complex ritual

At the set time, our lean and ever so emaciated looking family priest Lachhi kaka arrived with his reference books and bunch of Darbha, or holy kusha grass, out of which he fashioned rings for the men. He threw an indulgent glance at us enquiring of our brothers if they were doing well in school and then said “good-good” in English, sending us into peals of laughter.

The men took their place on kusha grass mats, or on sand, wearing a ring made of kusha grass and sipped water to purify and cleanse their mouths before uttering any holy words. All were bare-chested with their sacred threads hanging reversed on their right shoulders, signifying the link between death rites and shraddha. Before each performer of the shraddha stood a pot of clean water and a leaf plate with turmeric, rice, kumkum and flowers. These would be offered to the souls of their ancestors who would descend from the heavens after Lachhi kaka rang his brass bell and urged them to grace the place and partake of the ritual feast. All sat cross-legged and Lachhi kaka helped them form cooked rice mixed with ghee and black sesame seeds into several balls. The balls were pinda (literally, the body), and offering these to the venerable deceased, was pind daan. The ritual was an affirmation of the eternal chain of birth and continuation of life in the body of one’s descendants.

It may have been the male heirs who performed the shraddha as karta, or the doer, but illiterate or semi-literate older women turned out to be far more knowledgeable about actual facts. And so we discovered that the men and the priests both leaned heavily on their memory and culinary skills in preparing for, and the actual performance of, the shraddha.

Pind daan is a complex ritual that covers five generations on the male and three generations of the female lineages of the performer. Geneticists say that is how far genes can and do travel. We, of course, were then quite unaware of that.

The rice balls, representing the subtle spiritual form of an ancestor, were laid out in a ritualistic pattern before the shraddha doer, like a complex chess game, under Lachhi kaka’s eagle eyes. They were by then the men and women whose ansha, or genes, the doer and indeed all of us, said grandmother, still carried within to be passed on to future generations.

The rice balls were kneaded together to signify the merger of humans, and went on to form a family pinda. Then once again, in a complex exercise, they were subdivided into three parts to denote the individuality of maternal and paternal as a mixed heritage. The doer then sniffed them to denote imbibing of the total essence and passing it on to the souls of the ancestors within him. The leaf plates and the rice were finally offered to crows, deemed divine intermediaries between the mid-way heaven where ancestors’ souls must take a break before rising up into the heavens and merging with the Great Soul. We sat down happily at this point to the feast for our ancestors. It was called not a meal (khana or bhojan) but prasad. Platters of it were also shared with neighbours as holy offerings blessed by ancestors on their way to the heavens.

Lachhi kaka left after eating in grandmother’s kitchen served patiently by her with an indulgence she rarely showed her numerous progeny. He is eating what your grandfather will enjoy in heaven henceforth, she said by way of explanation and wiped her eyes.

Time that is intolerant of the brave and innocent
And indifferent in a week 
To a beautiful physique
Worships language and forgives
Every one by whom it lives...

— – WH Auden

*Most people now (mis)pronounce the word as श्राध, but the correct word from the Sanskrit Dharmshastras is Shraddh (श्राद्ध) from the word श्रद्धा. In rural areas, in the Hindi belt, however, they often refer to it as सराध.