A Hindu ceremony where crow believed to be ancestors are fed My brothers and sisters are calling our ancestors from their hideout in heaven where they wait dead or denied, mortally reminiscing on the good food they ate, until they grow wings to sneak back as ravens. It must be the smell itself that gives them directions to homes of relatives who're cooking the burden. A fat one eats only rice, another pecks on pickles, one grumbles about the cook, another perches praising a niece whose recipes came from a book. A foreign dead asks for knives, another circles the house cawing directions to a flock of frenetic wives. Fed by the scriptures, my ancestors still remain unimpressed: a burly beak declares flatly my wife's curry is a sorry mess. The last one to leave is a lecher, sighs at my wife's sumptuous look, signals he'll be back later, for favors off the hook.