Can the dead rise from the grave? Ask anybody and the answer would be an unequivocal ‘No’. This notwithstanding the fact that cases have been reported, real or imaginary, of the ‘dead’ getting up from the funeral pyre or the grave just in time.
Whenever such news spread, it spread like wildfire and became a subject of animated discussion in the region. The natural question was ‘How did it happen?’ Everybody would be interested in knowing the minutest details of the unusual phenomenon. There would be conjectures and assertions. One would interpret the event according to beliefs related to his faith.
It has been seen that in the countryside, the ignorant villagers have quite often misinterpreted the momentary pause in breathing and heartbeat and decided in their wisdom that the person was dead. Such a phenomenon has been prevalent mainly in remote areas where the level of literacy is very low and medical aid and advice are virtually nonexistent. In the absence of a qualified doctor, it is the village elder who declares the person dead or alive.
As for the dead coming back to life, the phenomenon evokes all kinds of reactions. There are people who strongly project them as cases of ‘wrong number’, meaning that the deity’s men picked up by mistake the wrong person with the same name. On realisation of the goof up, the ‘dead’ person was ‘thrown back’ to the earth where he or she came back to life and started kicking as usual. Sometimes, the ‘returned’ person narrates to the crowd around him or her, the experiences of the ‘life after’. I was impelled to delve into some of my memoirs by an interesting case of a 10-year-old girl, Indu, which has come to light only recently from Jaunpur district in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The girl was born to Jayaprakash and Saraswati Devi in Ramdayalganj in the district. They lived in abject poverty.
Flooded river
One day while walking through a field the girl was bitten by a snake on her right arm. She fell unconscious. The villagers called a sorcerer but he failed to neutralise the venom and revive the little girl. He gave up. The ojha, as the practitioners of witchcraft are called in the region, declared Indu dead. The little girl being the darling of her small community, the village was plunged in gloom.
The grieving father, Jayaprakash, carried the ‘body’ of his lovely daughter and buried it on the bank of the river. The last rites had been performed. The villagers returned home. Call it quirk of fate, the river swelled, broke its banks and washed out the grave. Little Indu was swept away by the swirling currents for some miles. The flooded river tossed her on the bank of Kinaria village where one Govardhan spotted and rescued her. Finding that the girl was alive, he took her home, tended her and waited for her parents or any other rightful claimant. Days passed by. The wait proved futile.
This happened 10 years ago. Left with no other option, Govardhan and his wife decided to adopt Indu who had come to them by the river route. While Indu’s parents were mourning her “death” and performing the remaining rites, Govardhan started treating her as his own daughter. He named her Pushpa.
Ten years later, Indu alias Pushpa has grown into a 20-year-old woman. Her foster parents had married her off to a family staying nearby. This May, the fact of her having survived a snake bite 10 years ago and the existence of the bite mark on her right arm travelled to her real parents’ village.
Curiosity took her parents Jaya-prakash and Saraswati Devi to Kinaria village but they could not recognise their daughter who was standing before them as a full-grown woman. However, she did. To be sure of her identity, the father checked a birth mark on Indu/Pushpa’s other arm. It confirmed that Pushpa was his own daughter Indu.
Now, it was Pushpa’s turn to visit Indu’s village. She was taken to Ramdayalganj where she exhibited her faint memories of people and places where she used to play in her childhood. For her, it was a 10-year leap that made her sentimental. But for the villagers it was like a miracle. They were staring face-to- face with a girl whom they had buried 10 years ago!
Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.
