Saibin (the Visitation of Our Lady)

cast from Konkani to English                

When those crackers started going off, pop!, pop!, pop!, and that thick sandalwood smell of dhoop filled the air, we knew it was beginning: Saibin. Down below, the village ladies—the kind we all had been—sprang into motion, cleaning and cooking, plucking double jasmines or bougainvillea from their gardens to put into skinny vases in their homes.

Whereas in life, we had focused on the most dramatic moments—births, deaths, weddings, funerals—now that we were dead, the more commonplace moments were what held our sustained attention. Watching our descendants spoon up simple bowls of congee mesmerized us. During our lives, we had taken for granted that nourishment, even complained about the sogginess and blandness, maybe because it represented the redundancy and difficulty of the times. Yet, now that we were dead, what we would have given for one spoon of the warm porridge.