I talked to my father. He is a very sprightly 72 year, still running the Central Europe sales of the Danish company he works for, and flying all over the place almost every week.
He and his wife had moved to Villach on former Austrian/Yugoslav border some eight years ago, both to avoid taxes and to be close to Croatia. So what has he been up to last few weeks?
He knows an architect that was remodeling some tombs in the pretty 18th century Zagreb cemetery, and the architect found for him a good empty tomb just in the front row by the entrance arcade (with all known Croatian poets, writers, politicians, sculptors etc.). He has space for six, so he is now moving in my grandfather and grandmother's coffins from Rijeka, and grandgrandmother from Slavonski Brod (rest is in Derventa across in Bosnia, town which Serbs leveled with the earth in 1992). He will also put up his brother's name (he was buried up to his neck alive by the Serbian partisans in 1945, even though he was part of the Croatian partisan underground), and so he has three free slots. He says it is more convenient for him to have them all in Zagreb, as he has an apartment there and they are there often.
I think he 1) has too much money and nothing reasonable to use it on 2) he is being his usual manic obsessive. In other words, he is thinking of mortality, and the response is a catholic one - it is important there there be a grave, and as many generations of family names on it as possible.
I ate with a group of Indian colleagues/wives last night and asked them - what do they do with the deceased? A family and friends getting together and remembering - cremation - then a remembrance on the date a year later, each successive year less elaborate. They believe in reincarnation, so the sooner all material aspects are gone, the better for the cosmic cycle - only the saints are buried, ase they have reached nirvana. At the same time, each Hindu is supposed to know his patriarchal descent through 14 generations - this has to do with 1) property 2) arranging marriages. Each Hindu knows the name of the first in the family tree - primordial first, not the 14th generation back, and one avoids marriages between the descendants from the same tree. Only the men count in the tree.
