The Prayer Beads

The Prayer Beads
By Neha Jain Sampath
for Rani Aunty

It was crowded in the CT scan room. Three generations in the cramped space, all with worried expressions mirroring each other. Her daughter and her mother were hurrying to undress her and take away all the valuables. Her liver was failing and they needed to find out if the cancer had spread to it. Nobody even paid attention to the dark saffron beads as they were unceremoniously stuffed into the duffel bag…

And then when she died, nobody could find them. The whole house was turned upside down, they had been her favorite beads, a precious momento. It was as if she had carried them away into the after-life with her. It was a small disappointment, one of several to come through the years when she would not be present at graduations, weddings, the birth of her grandchildren…

Her husband wanted to fulfill the one wish that he knew she had held in her heart even though she had never asked him for it. It was one of several cosmic secrets she had carried in her heart, for she had been special- one of those rare spirits that moved everyone she touched, who gave always without asking for anything in return, but inspiring generosity anyway. He visited her spiritual sanctuary, the small ashram in a beach town in India that had given her peace and strength through the years. She had always wanted to visit with him at her side but was willing to wait till the desire came from him. And now, time had run out. He went there with his children, hoping to find an absolution…

As they sat watching the sunset, he reached over to grab the camera from the bag that had accompanied him through several towns over the last week, like a faithful companion. And that’s when he found them. How could that be? He had looked, Sameera had looked, Ajay had looked, over and over, into that very same pocket of the very same bag. And yet there lying innocently, as if they had been there all along, were the beads that they had all somehow missed. Then, he laughed. It was her little message to him. She had come with them on this trip afterall.