A special trip to Haridwar...

I've been to Haridwar many a times but this one was very different. There was special purpose to it...we had gone for my Dadosa's Tarpan i.e; "Asthi visarjan". Normally Son or grandsons get this pleasure of taking the last physical remains of your loved ones to some holy place and say the final goodbye (as the Hindu tradition goes) but as i said, this was different coz 2 of his grand-daughters were a part of this and not grandsons!!!

Well my purpose of writing this is to share something i saw there for the first time which i guess very few people know. At "Hari ki pauri"(biggest ghat at Haridwar) there's a pandit assigned to every village, who takes care of all the rituals of that village families and that guy has the complete record of all the deaths in your family in bahi-khata of the last 100-200 years!!!!!!!

Just out of curiousity we went to that pandit's house to see our family history and it was amazing!!!! He opened this bahi....very old one....with that parchment paper and kalam which had to be dipped in syahi after every 3-4 words.....and started noting down the purpose of our visit. Apart from the date,time,place , he made a record of all the living members of my great-grandfather's family...and we were made to sign...it was as if we were writing history!!!!!!!!!!!

While seeing the old records we came across a 100 yr old from which we could track our ancestors. There was another record of my great-grandfather death, signed by my grandfather exactly 30 yrs back seeing that badepapa said "aaj hum inke tarpan ke liye aaye hain".

Another new thing which we got to know...when you are carrying the asthiyan,"Phool" as they are said, you are suppose to take it as a person i.e; u say to it...chalo sa, khana khao sa, utro sa...like that..

This was a  very different experience for us. Ek alag si feeling thi....something was very different in that air of haridwar.....

(to be continued...)

panditji with the bahi-khata

Ganga ke ghat pe

Record signed by us..