Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 14

Imagine building a person out of rice. Not as a metaphor. Imagine, for a moment, that a family sits down each morning and forms a small ball of cooked rice and sesame, and says a name, and that with each ball, something is built. On the first day, a head. On the second, a neck and shoulders. On the third, a heart.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 13 first.

Source note. Label: text. The passage about the ten days of rice-balls, the four portions, the formation of the body day by day, the departed eating on the eleventh and twelfth days, and setting out on the thirteenth, is Garuda Purana Saroddhara, chapter one, verses forty-seven to fifty-five, in the 1911 translation by Ernest Wood and S. V. Subrahmanyam. The passage about refraining from tears  ...