Buta Singh began to sniff. A few minutes later Beena turned up. She saw the pallor on her mother’s face and heard her father sobbing in his handkerchief. Sabhrai opened her eyes again and put her hands on her daughter’s head.

‘May the Guru keep you from evil.’

‘Mummy, don’t talk like this. In the name of the Guru, don’t,’ she sobbed.

The tears gave way to a gloomy silence. Buta Singh and Beena sat on Sabhrai’s bed and pressed her arms and feet. Sabhrai fell asleep utterly exhausted. Sher Singh was the last to arrive. Sabhrai woke up as soon as he came in—just as if she had been waiting for him all the time. She smiled and beckoned him to come close to her. She whispered in his ear: ‘I shall not hear the nightingales, my son. May the Guru give you long life.’

Sher Singh was more emotional than the others and began to cry loudly. His father and sister broke down again.

‘What is all this noise?’ asked Sabhrai audibly. ‘You want me to go with the noise of crying in my ears! Say the morning prayer—all together. And do not stop till it is over.’ They suppressed their crying and began to chant together.

There is one God.

He is the supreme Truth.

He, the Creator,

Is without fear and without hate.

He, the omnipresent,

Pervades the universe.

He is not born.

Nor does He die to be reborn again.

By His grace shalt thou worship Him . . .

Sabhrai joined her family in the recitation. She seemed to be at complete peace with the world. An unearthly radiance glowed in her pale face. A few verses before the epilogue her voice became faint and then her lips stopped moving.

Chapter XII

In India an old person’s death is a matter of rejoicing; a young person’s one of sorrow. In the case of the former, they decorate the bier with paper flags and buntings and often hire a band to lead the funeral procession. Married women put vermilion in the parting of their hair and wear their bridal jewellery. Mothers ask their children to walk beneath the stretcher on which the corpse is carried so that they may have as long a life as that of the deceased. During the seven or ten days prescribed for mourning, there is much ceremonial but little sorrow. On the death of a young man, woman, or child, grief refuses to be confined by custom and expresses itself with savage abandon. Relations and friends of the bereaved indulge in orgies of crying, wailing, and beating of breasts till sorrow in drained of all tears.