Offering

This was the third funeral like this in the past few months. Same rituals. Same electric crematorium.

Perhaps it was the recency. Perhaps the repetition.

But this time, something lodged in my mind and stayed there.

He would have turned ninety next week.

His father had been fading for a while. Not dramatically, just that quiet softening age brings. The kind where memory loosens and time begins to blur. A bout of pneumonia a few months ago had rattled everyone, but he had pulled through. So when he got the call last evening saying his father looked like he was struggling, no one expected that it would end here.

But it did. Quietly. At home.

I went to see them that morning. The apartment was one of those from the late 1970s, possibly early 1980s, with a name ending in “- Kiran”. The layout was familiar — odd corners, low ceilings, octagonal rooms, tiny grilled balconies that looked out onto nothing in particular. The whole place had that smell old apartments carry, a mix of varnish and dust, with the lingering trace of turmeric in the walls.

Upstairs, the furniture had been cleared to the shared landing. Where the sofas once sat, a body now lay. His father was wrapped in white, his skin rubbed down with sandalwood paste, turmeric, neem oil, and ghee. Grains were scattered across his chest and shoulders. A little ragi, some wheat, a few rice kernels like some forgotten harvest ritual. He looked small. Still. Tended to with care, but not with ceremony. Just the quiet hum of presence. Family, a few neighbours, some cousins, a priest. No urgency. No performance. Just the slow, steady movements of people who have done this many times before.

He had led a good life. People said it gently, as if reminding themselves it was true.

Then came the crematorium.

The pattern repeated. Rosewater, tulsi, camphor, and banana leaves. His body was lifted onto a metal tray placed over a thin wooden briar. It felt symbolic, not practical. More water was splashed. The leaves wrapped again. A final arrangement before the slide inward.

And it was in that moment, watching him disappear into the chamber, that something turned.

This was cooking.

The oils. The herbs. The wrapping. The heat. It didn’t feel like a farewell. It felt like preparation.

Papillote-style, like the French do with fish. Wrapped in parchment, lightly seasoned, and steamed in their own aroma. As the banana leaves touched the hot metal, they hissed. And that was it — I couldn’t unthink it.

We call it an offering. But to whom? For what?

Across cultures, we dress the dead, perfume them, anoint them with oils, wrap them in leaves, surround them with spices, salt, coins, grain. We call it respect. A final kindness.

But maybe that’s not the only reason.

Maybe it’s fear.

Maybe our gods are not what we imagine them to be. Not merciful or watchful. Maybe they are something older, something hungrier. And what we call ritual is just a recipe passed down across generations, designed to keep them sated. What if sandalwood is a marinade? What if turmeric is not just antiseptic, but flavour?

What if the line between devotion and self-preservation is thinner than we’re willing to admit?

No one else seemed to notice. The tray slid in. The furnace began its low hum.

And I stood there, thinking. We always say they have departed, never that they might have been devoured.

I went home and washed my hands. The scent of neem and ghee still clung to my fingers.

Later, lying awake, I tried to recall the first one.

The face was gone, but the wrapping was the same.

The tray was the same. The hiss. The heat.

Every detail identical, except the name.

There will be a fourth.

And a fifth.

And one day, mine.

And whoever is there will say,

he led a good life,

as if that changes what comes after.

The line between offering and offering up is all that remains.

And even that is mostly ritual.

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Originally published on Substack on 4 July 2025. Read on Substack →