IN MEMORIAM: SHRIMATI GOMATI AMMAL- OUR BELOVED-“PERIAMMA”

Lord Krishna said in the BG: “For one born death is certain, so is one to be reborn once dead”. While the second part of the sentence of this excerpt from BG is a matter of belief or faith, the first part cannot be denied as on date- even with the march of Science and Technology. Our beloved Periamma- my mother’s eldest sister passed away in the wee hours of November 1st, 2010. She had lived a long life of about 90 years. She was, we learn from her caretakers, bed-ridden needing help from others in the process of waiting for Death.
What makes me want to write an obituary to this very ordinary lady is—I have not come across as far my memory goes, anyone who had had a load of misfortune, or say, a profusion of ill-arranged circumstances in her life. In any one’s life there will be a mix of good and bad so that most can withstand the pulling-down effects of the bad patches in life on the strength of the good times there had been!
Here is a woman in whose life good was as sparse as sugar in a conscientious diabetic’s drink. Married early, when she must have been about 9, she had spent the 81 years of her life battling one or the other disappointment. But the classical training of those years wherein, no formal education was given to the female child might only have stood in good or bad stead for her not wanting to have given up fighting the pathos. Her husband - my Periappa- would never spend time at home, a very expert astrologer that he was, he was the cynosure of his officers. He was more outside home either on the plea of duty or to attend to the prognostication requests of his clientele, done chiefly at their place, perhaps to let the anonymity be. As a reason her five children had to be disciplined by her- a very lenient and voiceless person. If there must have been one who never ever uttered one harsh word to anyone or even expressed anger or frustration, all through her life, it was this person. In short, one must confess everyone took advantage of her goodness, benefitted a lot by her unflinching efforts at serving all at home with their needs and necessities, without even as uttering one word of displeasure, tiredness or what not. Yet the most shocking thing is that neither of her sons has ever felt like sympathizing with her plight- her helpless situation of having to be the man and the wife in the house. When young and dependent they (her sons) perhaps did help her running errands, but nothing more than that. Her husband, my Periappa, did not have any bad habits like gambling or boozing so as to lay a waste of money earned; he used to give his salary at home at least in good part. But she never spent it on her. She was content with whatever was needed for minimal existence.
Our Periappa passed away when his sons were still in school. The responsibility of managing the family finances also came upon her, though her eldest son-in-law helped her with investing the moneys received in the form of terminal benefits of our periappa wisely. The authoritarian presence of the son-in-law as a guardian only served to alienate her sons from her further for they were both so terrorized as to form warped personalities- one son taking to frugality to the extent of being miserly and the elder one incapable of independent decision, so much so as to lean too much on a manipulative wife, after having mortgaged his mind to an authoritarian BIL.
Even as the tides were turning against her in her old age her real supports were her second daughter, granddaughter and grand son-in-law, she would not permit them to pick a quarrel with her errant sons. She used to say,”Leave them. They know only that much”
Now, I would love to indulge in my curiosity born of my own religious convictions. What would be her after life? Will she be having a rebirth? If so, how will that be? She has died during the Southward transit of the Sun or what is called as DakShinAyana, on the tenth day of the dark fortnight- all of which point to another sojourn in this world at a future time and that in a disadvantageous yoni! Even human kindness of not so great a description would pray for a better future lifetimes for her. Greater luck and advantageous yoni placement is what I would pray for her fervently, in the least. That, if only Nirvana were possible for an ahimsa-driven life, as in the case of a Buddhist, she would be fully eligible for Nirvana, is my assessment. But I/We are in dark as to her level of spiritual evolvement – vis a vis the state of her desires. One could say that there was very little or no ego in her, but what about her desires in the last moments of her death? She was not very erudite in the Shastras to take a Knowledge-based approach, nor the kind of being steeped in devotion as seen by any random observer. So, one is not very sure if she would be granted mokSha!
If I were asked what should be her desserts, I would say she is a right candidate for mokSha, and to this end any small failings should be overlooked. Even in mean human minds, there is the magnanimity of not granting a death sentence to the worst criminals. Going by these standards, grant of mokSha – the libration from the cycle of births and deaths- should be the only fitting gift to her life torn of cares, concerns, disappointments and ill-luck all through.
That alone would be my constant prayer! Another lifetime, unless that is one of great means and advantageous placements, will be too hard a burden to bear. It might break her faith in the ONE, even if, in the next life she were to go through this kind of life, and that would be the saddest thing! One might say, she might not be able to remember anything of this life. But the Atman remembers!