This episode began in April 2011 when my Canadian first cousins, Matthew Wang and Jenny Rambarran, son and daughter of Aunt Shobhit, proposed that the cremated remains of their recently deceased mother’s be taken and dedicated to the soil of Darjeeling from where she had begun her life in the early 20th century. Aunt Shobhit, my late mother’s immediate younger sister and a Canadian citizen since 1968, had passed away recently in her adopted land.[break]
This decision took place when my family and I visited Minneapolis for the preparations of our son Ratna Deep “Ricky” Karthak’s marriage to Meera Shrestha. The Wangs from Ontario in Canada and Florida in the US were also invited to the wedding, scheduled to take place in Chicago on April 29, 2011. However, Aunt Shobhit, nearly 90 then, fell ill and succumbed to the inevitable before the event.
Photo: Peter J Karthak
But the wedding couldn’t be postponed in mourning as it was planned for months in two continents.
Matthew and Jenny attended the wedding in Chicago, representing the Canadian and American sides of the scattered Karthak Clan. They also brought the urn containing the ashes of Aunt Shobhit. Thus began the saga of the urn from Toronto in Canada to Mirik in Darjeeling, India.
Having decided to honor the wishes of Matthew and Jenny, I brought the urn with me from Chicago to Kathmandu along a most circuitous way imaginable. This was an epic return to the East of someone who had once taken the first transcontinental flight to the West.
The Quest
In Kathmandu, I solicited the advice of the Karthaks in Kathmandu, Delhi, Siliguri, Darjeeling, and Mirik on the final resting place for Aunt Shobhit. I preferred the cemetery of our mother church in Darjeeling, St. Columba’s, where my mother, another aunt, a maternal uncle and other relatives are buried.
My email consultations with the clan also considered the places Aunt Shobhit had lived and worked in Darjeeling – Chong Tong Tea Estate and Nor Busti of her childhood years; Peshok Tea Estate and Badamtam Tea Estate where she worked as senior nurse; as well as Calcutta where her husband lived. I also kept the American and Canadian cousins informed of our plans.
All these prospects, however, came to naught for obvious reasons: While the aforementioned places were already distant to us with rarely remembered memories by now, the church cemetery in Darjeeling had suffered damages in the recent rains and landslides.
Finally, it was another cousin, Silas Karthak, a pastor in Siliguri, who suggested that Aunt be given her final and everlasting resting place on his family farm in Mirik – suitably situated between alpine Darjeeling and tropical Siliguri – where her youngest sister, Sosan Karthak, is also buried. The farm and family is still headed by Sukhrani Karthak, the second youngest sister, and she’s the only surviving member out of seven siblings – five sisters and two brothers.
The date was set for the event. So, after seven months of an epic odyssey, the urn containing the mortal remains of Aunt Shobhit was consecrated to the soil next to the tomb of Sosan Karthak in Mirik. Now the two sisters, one the second eldest and the other the youngest, lie next to each other. Their white tombs are raised on a plot of land in green sylvan quiet in the middle niche of the forested farmland. It is no coincidence that the two are at last together, because Aunt Shobhit was always concerned about the wellbeing of her youngest sister even in distant Canada to which she had migrated in 1966.
The Gathering
For the grand occasion of dedicating the earthly remains of Shobhit Karthak Wang, an elaborate valedictory celebration was held on Thursday, December 01, 2011 on the front lawn of Silas Karthak’s family home in Mirik.
From Kathmandu came my wife Ranjana, eldest son Prem Deep “Jimmy,” and myself, I bearing the urn and other memorabilia collected from Jenny and Matthew in Chicago. We flew from Kathmandu to Bhadrapur where Silas received us, and we drove to Siliguri in his Santro. Cousin Choden joined us from Kathmandu. From Delhi came my younger brother Mark and son Gyan Deep “Micky” Karthak, making their 22-hour railway journey. We were reunited at Silas’ Siliguri home where we met his mother Sukhrani after many years. We drove to Mirik the same evening and spent the night in the tourist town for the next day’s events.
I, for one, was visiting northeast India in 23 years.
Photo: Peter J Karthak
The Memorial Service
The appointed day at Mirik was cool, fresh and sunny. The cloudless skies provided a clear view of the unpolluted hills, punctuated by rural settlements and tea gardens, and the Kanchanjunga Range of the Eastern Himalaya was majestic.
The valedictory assembly had many relatives, friends and other attendees, many of whom I didn’t recognize or was seeing after many years and decades. For our own immediate scattered families, this was an impressive reunion, despite the fact that some couldn’t make it to the event. Silas had made faultless arrangements and had worked on the invitation list.
The memorial service was hosted by Reverend Dr KA Rai, the Pastor of the Darjeeling Church who also is the Principal of the Mirik Bible School. He conducted a full religious service, supported by four other pastors by his side – an honor befitting our dearest and most respected Aunt Shobhit. Silas had slotted me as speaker after the Reverend’s commencement because, as the Reverend correctly mentioned, the deceased was unknown to many in the assemblage. So it fell upon me to enlighten the gathering on Aunt Shobhit.
The “Keynote” Speech
I began by making it clear that I was not praising the deceased as “a great soul” or “a great personality” or a “kind and merciful lady.” I mentioned that my recently completed novel (in English) had a theme that coincided with the person of Shobhit Karthak Wang herself, and it was an intriguing coincidence that I was asked to speak on her on this particular occasion.
I mentioned Joseph Campbell’s literary and philosophical coinage of “Monomyth” which he explained in his writing as “hero’s journey.” Many literary masterpieces of the world have already dealt with monomyths: Homer’s Odysseus (Hercules) in the Iliad and Odyssey gave birth to “odyssey” which means heroic and adventuresome journey.
Then I compared Aunt Shobhit’s own life as a monomyth with her own odysseys. In fiction and literature, the protagonist 1) appears (arrival), 2) settles down (respite), and then 3) leaves (departure). Shobhit’s life was the same, but also more: She came back to the place she had left long ago on her journey.
I highlighted her life and works in Darjeeling before she was compelled to leave India and migrate to Canada. This permanent departure was caused by her being the wife of Chen Yuan Wang, another monomyth in our family story. Mr. Wang was a businessman from China’s Shandong Province who was involved in the famous India-Tibet trade which had its entrepot in Kalimpong and passed through the Nathu-La and Jelep-La (Passes) in Sikkim to reach the Chumbi Valley and Gyantse in Tibet and then on to Lhasa, the main business bazaar of Asia during the great Asiatic mercantile traffic called the Tibet Trade between Kathmandu, Calcutta, Kalimpong, and Lhasa.
Fate had it that Shobhit Karthak and CY Wang met in Darjeeling. They were married, and their first child, Matthew, was born there. It was during the WWII boom years in Darjeeling which saw a great movement of Allied soldiers of many nations to and from their warfronts, and Wang made it good in his club and restaurant business in town. When the War was over, Wang left for Calcutta (now Kolkata) and soon opened a successful Chinese restaurant on Wellesley Street, adjoining one of India’s most fashionable stretches called Park Street.
But such prosperous times were to end soon. In 1962, the Indo-China borders erupted in war, and the Chinese in India were harassed, prosecuted and quarantined or deported by the Indian Government. Uncle Wang petitioned the government: That he had lived in India for decades, had an Indian citizen for wife, his two children were born in India. Where would he go? India was his and his family’s rightful place.
But to no avail! So he met the visiting Canadian High Commissioner at Oberoi Grand in Calcutta, and he finally received the news that Canada’s doors were open for the Wangs. That was how Shobhit Karthak Wang had to leave her world in Darjeeling and be Canada-bound.
Now, even the urn containing the earthly remains of Aunt Shobhit had its own monomythic adventures, or hero’s journeys, in reverse travels over the other “Black Waters of the Seven Seas” of the Atlantic Ocean she had once crossed. To come home, she flew over the Pacific.
The following are the route sectors of the urn:
01: Aunt Shobhit’s cremation took place in Toronto, Canada, and the urn traveled from there with Matthew to Jenny in Florida in the US, and they brought it to Chicago where I took charge of the container;
02: From Chicago, I took the urn with me right through Wisconsin on the Interstate 94 West to Minneapolis (eight hours);
03: Then the urn flew with me from Minneapolis to Los Angeles (four hours), then to Bangkok (16 hours), and on to Kathmandu (four hours), where it rested over seven months in my study room, from Wednesday, May 11 until Wednesday, December 30, 2011;
04: The final journey of the urn began on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 from Kathmandu to Bhadrapur by air, then on surface to Siliguri and Mirik the same evening.
In short, the urn’s monomythic journey and epic itinerary runs like this: Flying from Toronto to Miami, then on to Chicago; then being driven to Minneapolis through Wisconsin on I-94 West; rest for a few days; then flying from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, then on a trans-Pacific flight to Bangkok; connect another flight to Kathmandu; rest for seven months; then fly to Bhadrapur in east Nepal and travel to Siliguri, and then reach Mirik as the final destination in Darjeeling/Gorkhaland, India.
As soon as I reached the Mirik house for the grand occasion at the appointed time of the sunny day, I finally took out the beautiful, upright and vertically oval-shaped gold-and-cream urn from my breast pocket for the last time. I placed it on the table, along with the memorabilia I had received from Matthew and Jenny in Chicago – old Darjeeling and Canadian photographs, church funeral service literature in Toronto, etc – which I displayed on the table for the visitors to appreciate. Later, Reverend Dr. Rai had the urn placed in front of him on his officiating desk while he conducted his religious services. Thus was the urn released from my care and custody, at last, and was made “public” for the witnessing congregation.
Among other things, commemorating the earthly departure of Aunt Shobhit Karthak Wang in Mirik brought together most of the remaining dispersed members of the clan from so many addresses.
The elaborate memorial services were followed by a sumptuous buffet, which reflected not at all on sadness and loss but it was a fitting occasion for rejoicing, celebrating a happy reunion and homecoming. It was a festival!
Conclusion
Diaspora directly denotes departures, de-links, divides and dispersals, resulting in odysseys of the ones who leave. Not a single Odyssean protagonist seems to have ever returned to one’s native land. However, attempts are made to redeem the process by reversing an irreversible universal destiny – as we tried to do, in our case: We brought our native daughter back home!
Final Note
And the pilgrimage has already begun! As I write this, Matthew has traveled all the way from Toronto to Mirik to pay his homage and respects to his dear departed mother. Others will surely follow. We thus have tried to deflect in our own possible ways the diaspora that was heaped upon us by fate and circumstances, geopolitical tempers and historical twists. We’ve tried to say, in our own way: “O Diaspora, where is thy sting!?”
The writer is the copy chief at The Week and can be contacted at pjkarthak@gmail.com
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