Well Spring of Memory: Next Piece

Bisrampur

               

Standing at the place where the gate used to be I look down the long expanse of over-grown yard to what is left of the house.  I am there to bury my father’s ashes.  He asked specifically to have his ashes returned to Bisrampur and that there be a “big khana” to celebrate.  In the yard there are two large shamyanas being erected of bright patchwork canvas where those coming to the service will be fed an extravagant lunch of rice, mutton curry, vegetables and gulab jamuns.

The house was built in the mid-1800’s by Rev. Lohr the Germany missionary who came by bullock-cart from Calcutta, gathering orphans on the way as people were dying by the thousands in a terrible famine, leaving babies by the roadside.  It was colonial in its proportions, six large rooms spread down the length of a verandah with bathrooms, dressing rooms, and kitchen arranged in the back.  The ceilings were 18 feet, with narrow upper windows that could be opened to encourage air movement on the scorching days of Indian summer.  It was always white washed each year after the monsoons to cover the mud splashes and ever-present monsoon mold.

I see it as it was, potted plants, ferns, philodendron, and coleus, along the porch between the pillars.  The small stone ramp that went up at one place where, if I was very careful, I could ride my bicycle right up onto the verandah.  I missed it one time and still bear the scar on the back of my leg from the deep cut from the kick stand on my bike.  I see my dad driving down the long driveway, into the port cochere in his Willys Jeep, jumping energetically from the driver’s seat and bounding into the house calling for my mom.  I am reading on my bed, for the second time, a paper back copy of Hawaii left by some American visitor. 

I am beckoned back from the past as the young men digging the grave come to ask where the stone is to be placed.  The enormity and importance of the day intrudes.

I see the large tamarind tree, which was at least 90 feet, is gone now.  A large limb of it has fallen onto the tiled roof and it has not been removed.  The few rooms that remain at the far end have been painted a dull red, a way to not paint every year to cover the mud stains.  There is a large, temporary kitchen being constructed in what is left of the port cochere – huge pots of rice that will boil as we conduct the service.

It was our family home for about a dozen years but as children we were only there in the winter, as school was 1000 miles away in the Himalayas.  But it is where I am from in many significant ways.  It is now where I will always return to visit dad’s grave but then he is in my dreams on many nights so we are never really far apart.