BLESSED ARE THE MEEK.

His name was ‘Kattu Pillai’. It meant a ‘jungle child’ in Tamil. It also meant ‘The child of the Ghats’. For indeed he was a child who had grown up in the cremation grounds of a small town in Tamil Nadu. He had been found as a one day old boy abandoned in the Municipal cemetery of that town. The boy had been raised by the Keeper of the Pyre at the cremation grounds.

The Keeper of the Pyre was a Municipal employee and he was provided small asbestos sheeted accommodation in the cemetery itself. The shed in which the pyres were lit lay to one side of the cemetery while the rest of the grounds were filled with the graves of the rich and poor, alike. The Keeper of the Pyre had also a little boy named Muniyandi of almost the same age and Kattu Pillai had grown up with the boy as his bosom buddy.

The Keeper of the Pyre had sent both boys to the Municipal school in the town. While Muniyandi had not shown much inclination towards academic exercises Kattu Pillai had excelled in school. Muniyandi could not complete his secondary school leaving certificate examinations while Kattu Pillai had topped the school with the highest marks. However, the Keeper of the Pyre did not have much financial resources to afford sending Kattu Pillai for higher studies and Kattu Pillai had therefore dropped out rather than make his adopted father suffer to meet his educational expenses.

Having dropped out of school Kattu Pillai used to do odd jobs for the Keeper of the Pyre and also assist him in his work at the cremation grounds. The Keeper of the Pyre had grown old and needed help while Muniyandi was least bothered and spent his time gambling and drinking with friends.

The Keeper of the Pyre suddenly died one day leaving behind his wife along with Muniyandi and Kattu Pillai. The Municipal administration had then provided the father’s job to Muniyandi as his legal heir. It was then that Kattu Pillai decided to become a drummer. Not an ordinary drummer playing with a music orchestra or part of a band but a death drummer.

It is the custom in these parts of the world to beat a round flat drum slung over the shoulder to honour the dead. The drummer would lead the funeral procession with relatives and well wishers dancing to the beat of the drum as the procession wound its way to the cremation grounds. The kin of the dead would provide the drummer with country liquor, rice, a set of new clothes and some money as fees for services rendered by the death drummer.

It was this profession that Kattu Pillai chose for Kattu Pillai was a different kind of person and his material interests were very limited. Kattu Pillai considered it a worthy profession for he considered drumming for the dead as a divine service that he performed to honour the dead. The first time that Kattu Pillai played the death drum was at the demise of the old Keeper of the Pyre, his adopted father.

Earlier the old Keeper of the Pyre used to take on the additional responsibility of beating the death drum but after he passed away Muniyandi had not seemed interested in what he thought was a very cheap task. It was only because of the disinterest of Muniyandi that Kattu Pillai had taken up this profession for he had seen a need that had to be fulfilled.

Kattu Pillai had grown up into a dark handsome young man and had a broad forehead with a Greco-Roman kind of aquiline nose and a strong determined chin. The only flaw in his otherwise classic Dravidian face was his lips which were thick and gross. His big eyes were always bloodshot and bleary. Kattu Pillai never bothered to wash or comb his hair and it had a perpetually tousled appearance about him. Kattu Pillai would be woken up at odd hours to drum for the dead and announce the demise to the town at large. Kattu Pillai’s proximity to death had resulted in his retaining a constant stench of death about him.

Surprisingly, for his virile appearance, Kattu Pillai had no interest in women and was only devoted to the family of the Keeper of the Pyre. The arrival of Muniyandi‘s wife had resulted in an affectionate sister's attention in Kattu Pillai’s life. Muniyandi’s children were his nephews and nieces and he loved them dearly but Kattu Pillai never felt the need for a wife or a family of his own.

The moment there was a death in the household, the bereaved family would send for Kattu Pillai and Muniyandi who would then take charge of the arrangements for honourably sending off the departed soul to its destination in the other world. In death, Kattu Pillai saw something very noble. It had to be experienced by all; both rich and poor, strong and weak. There was no escaping death. Moreover, Kattu Pillai believed that death was not an end but only a new beginning and it was this joy of a new beginning that Kattu Pillai conveyed through his drumming.

Every death was a new beginning for Kattu Pillai. His drumming would sound different for each funeral. Each performance was the creation of a new symphony in percussion. Kattu Pillai would take the rice and money back home and give it to Muniyandi’s wife. He would consume a part of the country liquor provided and save the rest to be shared later with his brother Muniyandi. The new clothes he would give away to the needy or at times sell at a throw away price to some poor soul.

Kattu Pillai’s drum beat accompanied all the rich and famous of the town to their funeral pyres. It was he who drummed in front of the funeral procession of the local Member of Parliament who had served as a Finance Minister in the Central Cabinet. It was he who drummed the way for the I.T. tycoon who had made it big in Silicon Valley and then returned to his hometown to die shortly of exhaustion. It was Kattu Pillai who accompanied the head priest of the big temple in the town on his final journey. Kattu Pillai had taken not only the rich and famous but all and sundry including the local prostitute and the local milkman on their final journey to a new beginning.

As Muniyandi grew older, he seemed rather disinterested in even fulfilling his official duties as Keeper of the Pyre but only keen on collecting his salary every month. Kattu Pillai therefore took it upon himself to discharge these duties and help his brother while Muniyandi lounged around on one of the graves drinking and smoking beedis. Shortly afterwards, Muniyandi fell ill and passed away due to cirrhosis of the liver. It was left to Kattu Pillai to perform the last ceremonies for Muniyandi and send him to his heavenly destination with his fervent drumming. Muniyandi’s eldest son was now provided the job of the Keeper of the Pyre by the Municipal administration, since there were no takers for this rather lowly profession.

Times had changed. So also the practice of giving country liquor to the death drummer. Kattu Pillai was nowadays provided a bottle of IMFL, Indian made foreign liquor, instead of the usual jerry can of country liquor. Similarly the cremation grounds itself had undergone a sea of change. The old shed where the pyres used to be burnt was now replaced by a modern concrete structure which stood there in its stead. It was the new electric crematorium that was now established and Muniyandi’s son did not have to rake the pyre and ensure that it burned evenly. He just had to press a button meant for this purpose and the corpse would disintegrate under the extreme heat that was generated by the machine. However, the stench of death continued to remain.

Kattu Pillai continued to serve the dead by drumming away to glory. Thank god they still hadn’t invented an electronic drummer to do his job. Kattu Pillai lived until the ripe age of seventy and continued to stoke the funeral pyres of three generations of people who lived in that town. Ultimately as all life must come to pass, so also did Kattu Pillai’s turn come. Kattu Pillai was never one to fear death and when his turn came he happily gave up the ghost.

Kattu Pillai never anticipated death to be so liberating. His entire being felt different; without any restrictions and was free. There was no desire in his being since his soul had now come out of the shell made up of the five elements that it had inhabited all these years. There was only pure consciousness. His soul just stayed in a corner of the room where his body now lay, patiently waiting for the final act of cremation to disintegrate its body and proceed on its onward journey.

Muniyandi’s son the new Keeper of the Pyre had loved his uncle dearly. He faithfully and dutifully prepared his uncle’s body for cremation and performed all the necessary last rites before the body was slipped into the iron grate wherein it would be consumed by the heat to burst into flame and disintegrate. Unfortunately, there was no one to send him onward with the beat of the death drum.

As Kattu Pillai’s body yielded to the heat of the incinerator, the remainder of the “Dasa Vayus” or “Ten gases” that had occupied Kattu Pillai’s body all along, started leaving the body one after the other in quick sucession. These Dasa Vayus had entered the body from the sperm of the father; the life giver and had orchestrated his life throughout by its balance and imbalances. Finally it was the turn of the last Vayu or Gas the “Dhananjaya Vayu” which is stored inside the human skull to depart the body as the skull cracked under the intense heat and flames.

The moment the Dhananjaya Vayu left his earlier cocoon or body, Kattu Pillai felt a complete transformation. The images of the world as we know it vanished and he could not see this world anymore. He could only feel a floating sensation as an invisible tide pulled him to an unknown destination. The tide kept pulling at the core of Kattu Pillai’s very being into a huge void. Far away into the distance he could faintly make out a white structure. As he was drawn nearer and nearer he could see that the white structure appeared to be like a bright cloud formation in the midst of the dark void. As the tide swept him nearer to the cloud he could make out that the cloud appeared to look like some sort of a floating stairway. His being was being forcibly pushed towards the stairway.

Without any self-control his being began to climb the stairway and divine music erupted all around. Melodious voices sang an anthem of victory as he further climbed the stairs. At the top of the flight of stairs he turned around to have one last look at the world he was leaving behind but there was nothing there, only void. He turned around and calmly proceeded to meet ‘The Divine Force’ who is addressed by many titles. Kattu Pillai was not prepared for what happened next; he found the stairs culminating in a grand hall filled with many other beings. He could make out quite a few known beings amongst those assembled there, though they being only souls did not posses any face by which he could identify them.

There was the former Mayor of Kattu Pillai’s town whom Kattu Pillai had despatched on a similar journey a few years ago. He could make out the I.T. tycoon from his town who appeared to be rolling out some kind of a red carpet to welcome him. There was warmth in the being of the former Finance Minister who also belonged to his town and who had been sent on his heavenly journey by kattu Pillai many years ago. The former King of Nepal as well as former Kings of many other kingdoms were there as well to welcome him. At the far end of the hall to which Kattu Pillai walked on the laid out red carpet, he came face to face with the ultimate Light , the lover of mankind, the Creator, the Protector, the Destroyer, the Energy, the Governing Force that we all call God.

Kattupillai was honoured and felicitated by God to whose right he was seated and was awarded what could be termed a “Moksh Ratna”; the highest order of God’s kingdom. The greatest honour possibly given to any soul or being. The Divine Force also provide Kattu Pillai’s soul with the option of being reborn as a ruler of all the souls that it had despatched to God or be reborn as a simple saintly man who would liberate the minds of all those whom he had once burnt on the pyre. Needless to say that Kattu Pillai’s soul chose the second option.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth, nay Heaven.