No Go! India & Time for Eulogy

There are three mothers in the family now - my mother, my wife and my sis-in-law (mother-to-be lah). I surprised my wife with a bouquet in the morning, as presented by Zayed (who was, as usual, lying down and talking to the air-conditioner). Later for lunch, we decided to bring my mother to a restaurant at Vivocity known as Go India!.

I was struck by Go India!'s diverse patronage - 90% North Indian nationals, 9% Singapore Indians, and 0.5% each of Caucasian and Malay. (Of course, this is a highly biased observation taken on one day at one point in time.) But you get the drift. Somehow, it's very popular with the India Indians.

The food was very good - the mango lassi one of the finest I've ever had. The decor was commendable. Chic and all that jazz, complete with an alfresco option, overlooking the scenic construction and multitude of cranes that are working hard to finish the IRs.

But the service seriously sucked. No one asked us what we wanted. No menu. No water. It was as if we had to instinctively know that there was a lunch buffet going on and we had to join in the fray. So we did. The menu came upon request, as with the water. As with everything else. Hell - we could've left the place and nobody would have asked us to pay!

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I went for a 7th-day prayers of a person, which is basically prayers conducted on the 7th day since the decease of the person. Prayers can be conducted any time - but my community has a way of setting the odd days aside for special prayers, like the 3rd, 7th, 10th and so on (with the exception of the 40th day).

The prayers can take any form - recitation of Surah Yaasin, followed by repetitions of the names of Allah, or with a combo of recitation of Qur'anic surahs and exaltations of Allah (ratibs) and so on. Today, the ratib Jalaliyya was recited, with repetitions of over a thousand times of Allah and His qualities, and asking of forgiveness from Him.

As we recited, I realised that many of our gatherings where we pray for the death do not include talking a bit about the person who passed away - eulogy equivalents. Today's sessions had not a single mention of the lady who had passed away, except for the part where the recitation of the Yaasin was dedicated to her. There was no mention of her character, how she lived her life, and what legacy she left behind in this world - things that would make us remember her with joy.

Maybe it's just this majlis. I know for my dad, one of the imams I had invited to conduct prayers actually spoke at length about death, the condition of my dad in the Hereafter as a result of our prayers and so on. At least there was something about the person for whom the whole session is conducted.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, we all don't talk openly about our love for a person or talk about a person after they're gone. But I feel it'll do the family members a lot of good to just talk about the deceased person, and about how the person will be in the Hereafter. It will be a good opportunity for every majlis to reflect about the temporal nature of this life, and to anticipate the abundant joys of the next life, which is permanent.