India, Dec. 14 -- When a soul crosses the river, a granddaughter's journey through the Vedic art of saying goodbye.To everyone who loves quietly and loses suddenly. In the quiet, early hours of 4 November, before the day could even break, my grandfather - as we fondly called him 'Baba' - exhaled for one final time. And in that silent moment, something arose within the walls of our Patna home: a language of grief older than our memories, older than the family he built and left behind. Something far older than desolation, cries, and silence awakened. It was the Vedic language of leave-taking: a departure in honour of the one who not only lived but completed the cycle of life given, and guidance to the one leaving the physical world.

A pilg...