The significance of returning to dust

Ash Wednesday, a holy day in many western Christian denominations, marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and austerity that culminates in Holy Week and finally, Easter. Representation Pic/iStock

I had been dreading the midnight clanging of the church bells signifying the transition into the austere season of Lent. I recalled how the year before, I had struggled with returning to sleep because of how incessantly they seemed to ring. By the time I hit the sack - between 10.30 pm and 11 pm, the carnival celebrations in the town square were still robustly underway. Tramin takes this festival more seriously than any other. In fact, carnival ‘time' in this town officially begins at 6 am on January 7. Until the day before, there is a feeling of Christmassy sanctity. But the very next morning, one hears what sounds like a canon ball and a very particular whip-like instrument being beaten against the wind. These midnight bells signalling Ash Wednesday feel to me like the church vociferously reclaiming time from its ‘heathen' or ‘pagan' clutches. They sound for at least 15 minutes. This year, I tried to minimise their impact on my sleep by being in bed earlier and by shutting all the doors to other rooms in the house. I still heard them when they began ringing, but because I was already in the sweet embrace of sleep, I was able to block them out.

I needed to sleep well, because I am approaching the 37th week of pregnancy, and I had two appointments on Wednesday at the hospital, one with the anaesthesiologist, the second with the doctors for my final ultrasound. In all likelihood, I would be given a delivery date, too, since mine is to be a scheduled C-section. I woke up fresh at 6.30 am, and twelve hours later was back in bed ushering our toddler to sleep. At 7 pm, the church bells began ringing once again, announcing the sole service in Tramin. Since he was now fast asleep and I was already reasonably decently dressed, I told my partner I was heading across to the church for the service.

If you grew up Catholic in Mumbai, you'd know that Ash Wednesday is a day of obligation, in that you are expected to turn up for mass. In our parish in Kurla, we had a string of masses in the morning in addition to one evening service, given the sheer volume of attendees who would come to have their foreheads crossed with ash. The day marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and austerity that culminates in Holy Week and finally, Easter. In Tramin, however, given the shortage of priests and paucity of attendees, there wasn't even a mass, just a liturgical service conducted by my partner's uncle, Meinrad. The choir was the highlight for me. I love the sombre notes of Lent and how they come together in terms of harmony. There's a minimalism in terms of instrumentation, and during this time, the pipe organ is sometimes left out, so that the music on Easter sounds so audaciously festive, with trumpets and other loud instruments whose impact gets accentuated because of the architectural acoustics of the church. Instead of smearing ash on the forehead in the shape of the sign of the cross, over here, the Ash is sprinkled over one's head in a cross formation. But what is said is more or less the same: Dust you are and to dust you shall return.

As I age, I find myself increasingly drawn to this philosophy. It is a humbling reminder not just of our mortality, but of the fact that we are not necessarily born with an expiration date, that when we die, our bodies return to the earth, which should always be an indicator of our alliances with every other species that inhabits this planet. The message signifies a warning against hubris and vanity, and a reminder of what is truly important, what endures, after we die, is not the wealth we accumulated, or the hours wasted in pursuit of its accumulation, or what we never managed to accrue or accomplish, rather, the quality of the love we showed to ourselves… the authenticity with which we cared for the ‘dusty' nature of our composition. For, as I thought earlier in the day when our toddler was shovelling mud in a friend's garden, to be dust is to be soil - potent and rife and capable of hosting mycelial ecosystems. To say that we are dust is not to reduce the significance of our beings, rather to celebrate our celestial and terrestrial nature.

As the service continued, I thought about all the people in the world who are currently sifting through rubble in order to rebuild their homes. Images came to mind of people in Gaza breaking their Ramadan fast on a long, communal table surrounded by destruction and devastation. I thought about what it means to endure as an act of resistance. I had the suspicion that real divinity lay not in altars or tabernacles, but in the gestures of nourishment that we make towards each other daily… our everyday defiance of hatred and animosity through radical love.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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