well....this post is about a old incident. it happend last october when I went to Gaya to perform some rituals for my dead father.
the ritual was to be performed at four places(the last one due to his accidental death). along with some more people we hit the 1st place which is called the river 'Falgu'. just after getting down from the autoricksaw, we were surrounded by numerous priests who started constantly asking me questions about my ancestors.
(the thing is that there is one priest or 'panda' for each place) and when I named the place from Bangladesh my ancestors are from. they got a old man. who asked me the name ofd the village. I only knew the name of the district and the village. he then tell me name of some police station and asked me whether that was correct or not. I had no clue. but my grandmother who accompanied us. has spend some years there. So she assured that it's the right place and he's the priest for us. so the rule is that our ancestors were came and perform the ritual by the help of his ancestors. and their family is the priest family of us.
fine...but there as yet to come. when I started the ritual with the other priest( the main one. the family priest is a minor one), he came back. but with 3 or 4 heavy and old handwritten books with him. he asked my surname. I told "dhar Chowdhury" and he started reading out all the Dhar Chowdhurys along with their address from those books to see whether my ancestors were there or not.
by this time another family has warned us that if we tell them that our ancestors are really inn the list, they will claim 4 or 5 thousands rupees from us and unless we give that , they won't let us go.
me, my sister and my mother was prepared. and we told my grand mom and her sister inlaw(the sister of my grand dad) about this, and not to say anything.
he was still going on.
and he took name of a relative.the grand moms were elated.
" ye ye, it's a relative"
we gave a cold look to them.
then after naming some more relatives they took name of te grand dad of my grand dad. and the grandmoms said ,"it's family" we again looked at them. the said,"relatives actually"
the preist was a bit startled. but he continued. and he then named the dad of my grand dad, we said,"relatives may be, but not in the family"
the grandmoms were secretly looking at each other with a "i've-to-say-i-don't-recognize-my dad" look. but we were helpless. it was the only solution from their hulliganism.
so each time, he mentioned one from the family, grandmoms gave the same look but said,"no, not in the family". we had to pay the priest around 100 rs. and went to the nest venue.
after we came home, grandmoms were still in kind of shock," we had to say we dont know my dad or my grand dad, but it was the only way"
well, I couldnot write it that well...but u would died laughing if u have seen their manners at that time....
anyways, now I think I should go back to my studies...exam is mere 22 days away, and heaps of syllabus to finish...
