The rites were the first time I saw him since he left for India at San Francisco International Airport on August 1st week. I hadn’t cried when my grandpa died, though a lot of things were happening in my brain. But now that I had seen him motionless while everybody was there,  crying, and shaking him endlessly, I knew he was dead and was not coming back anymore. I turned off the WhatsApp video so no one would see me crying. I started weeping while praying for his afterlife. But I was not the only one grieving. Through the video screen, I could hear my grandma weeping the whole time, still grieving from his death and not letting go.

My parents always tell me that he was fond of his whole family, but he was most fond of me. He spent about 7 years of his life with me, a good four years in India, and the final 3 years through the frequent 6-month trips to visit to meet us. He even gave me my name. After all of my US-based relatives heard the news, we made plans for a get-together in honor of Dadu. Me and my mom went to my cousins’ house on Thursday afternoon. We had made plans for a sleepover but those plans were quickly dashed after one of my cousins who had traveled here tested positive for COVID-19. You can imagine how mad all of us were at him after that fiasco. We still played soccer outdoors with them. We even played online games on our Xboxes on the weekend. We still did the sleepover at his house the next weekend. While we were doing all of this, I thought “Isn't this a good way to stop grieving? Playing with my family, honoring and remembering my grandpa. My dad and his family had to stay in India for a month more to do all his death work and get my grandma started with her permanent US residency process. A month after his death, on Christmas Eve, before going to the Hindu Temple Sunnyvale, me and my family put up a 12in*16in poster of my grandpa with the Indian flag behind him. 

As I mentioned before, me and my family had gone to India this summer to drop off my grandma and meet my extended family, whom I hadn't met in 9 years. We started in Pune, stayed for 3 days, then went to Silvassa on a 6 hr drive through the west coast of India. We got there at about 5 pm and I saw my grandpa’s house for the first time. It had been packed very neatly and there was a picture of him when he was 20 sitting on the bookshelf/TV holder. We stayed there for 5 days, and during those 5 days, we visited a lot of places. We visited Daman Beach, where you can walk for a mile into the sea during low tide, Gnyan Dham School, my dad’s high school, and a few temples here and there. The one thing that was common throughout all of these places? These are all places my grandpa loved to visit.  All I can do is remember the good moments and conduct myself in a way that I know would make him proud.