Once upon a time yesterday morning, in a place very close to the wall cutting my house off from the rest of the neighborhood, my mum and i found a large rat's corpse in pitiable shape lying quite unconscious of itself, while its stench made its presence felt quite strongly for miles to come and eyes to see.
The senses are what they are, we had to do something about the case in point. This little devil had apparently taken to the place since around two days from yesterday. Describing it is easy and fun but i wouldn't count on anyone's pleasant mind to take it with that ease, so i'll skip that. It wasn't what you'd call cute, see?
The idea for this writing struck me like lightning when mum said "we should pour Nallennai on it and let it burn." The image this formed in my mind was simply too strong.
The deal, apparently, with funerals is that they're somehow necessary for a passing-over. For me, its an expression of respect of the highest order---not merely for a thing, but for a thing that has no further perceivable use to an individual. Cremating the rat did not seem to me to be an act of any lesser importance than cremating a dog or cat or personal human being.
So i said "mum why not do it?" She said "We don't have Nallennai right now". She said we could pour sand over the corpse so that it would neither smell nor be infested with flies or other nasty nosy pests that prey on the dead. This, to me, was a cool idea. We weren't going to cremate the old boy/girl but were going to bury him/her. Send the body back to the earth, and all that.
Mum has a knack for accuracy. She took a large vessel filled with sand and poured it on the corpse (we were on one side of the wall and the corpse was on the other, you see); not one grain of sand landed on the rat.
She then decided we use the jalli stones that were lying unused in a distant part of the house (actually, they'd've lain unused anywhere in the house, but i digress) and put them on the rat. Cool again; instead of burying the old devil in sand, we were going to give it something like a tombstone. I was thinking of a proper epitaph like those which people who know what a soul is prefer having on the bodies of their graves, but then realized that you can't carve letters on a pile of stones.
She stood near the wall's edge and began raining stones on the weary worn-out rat's resting body. Same result, not a stone touched the corpse!
Mum had lost all energy, we came back into the house. I was told later that she had poured some disinfectant over the body to keeep it free of dangerous germs that could kill us.
Yeah right, there weren't enough in the house, or the air.
Well, what can i conclude? I'll leave that part to you.
The senses are what they are, we had to do something about the case in point. This little devil had apparently taken to the place since around two days from yesterday. Describing it is easy and fun but i wouldn't count on anyone's pleasant mind to take it with that ease, so i'll skip that. It wasn't what you'd call cute, see?
The idea for this writing struck me like lightning when mum said "we should pour Nallennai on it and let it burn." The image this formed in my mind was simply too strong.
The deal, apparently, with funerals is that they're somehow necessary for a passing-over. For me, its an expression of respect of the highest order---not merely for a thing, but for a thing that has no further perceivable use to an individual. Cremating the rat did not seem to me to be an act of any lesser importance than cremating a dog or cat or personal human being.
So i said "mum why not do it?" She said "We don't have Nallennai right now". She said we could pour sand over the corpse so that it would neither smell nor be infested with flies or other nasty nosy pests that prey on the dead. This, to me, was a cool idea. We weren't going to cremate the old boy/girl but were going to bury him/her. Send the body back to the earth, and all that.
Mum has a knack for accuracy. She took a large vessel filled with sand and poured it on the corpse (we were on one side of the wall and the corpse was on the other, you see); not one grain of sand landed on the rat.
She then decided we use the jalli stones that were lying unused in a distant part of the house (actually, they'd've lain unused anywhere in the house, but i digress) and put them on the rat. Cool again; instead of burying the old devil in sand, we were going to give it something like a tombstone. I was thinking of a proper epitaph like those which people who know what a soul is prefer having on the bodies of their graves, but then realized that you can't carve letters on a pile of stones.
She stood near the wall's edge and began raining stones on the weary worn-out rat's resting body. Same result, not a stone touched the corpse!
Mum had lost all energy, we came back into the house. I was told later that she had poured some disinfectant over the body to keeep it free of dangerous germs that could kill us.
Yeah right, there weren't enough in the house, or the air.
Well, what can i conclude? I'll leave that part to you.
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