14/06/2025
Funerals and Little Flower Collectors by Roshni S
FemAsia - April 2025
There are some sights and smells that hit a rewind button in your mind and your body responds to it. The sight of a river, the smell of smoke from firewood stoves in a humid part of the country, and the chembakapu (Frangipani flower), take me home, instantly. As a child on vacation, I spent many hours clomping around our homes and the neighbourhood, collecting flowers. This was usually a part of our contribution to funerals and death anniversaries in the family. We were well acquainted with death. Do you remember the moment in your childhood when you learned that people were mortal? I don’t. Did we just know? Did the first death just happen around us, and we connected the dots from the conversations adults were having?
During our annual visits home to Pala, the biggest gatherings of people we saw were for funerals. Long, long processions of people walking from the church to the cemetery. The nuns piled into jeeps with loudspeakers, singing in the nasal tone reserved for songs of death.
There are some sights and smells that hit a rewind button in your mind and your body responds to it. The sight of a river, the smell of smoke from firewood stoves in a humid part of the country, and the chembakapu (Frangipani flower), take me home, instantly. As a child on vacation, I spent man...
