Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (16 page)

It startles me that in all these preceding pages not once have
I attempted a detailed description, physical or otherwise, of my Sepideh; even though she was the centre of my life—still
is
, she remains there—as also, she must inevitably be of these copious, rambling notes. Having realized this, I ought at least to try. Though the very thought of such an effort makes me clammy, sinks my stomach into queasy disequilibrium—but why?

The answer is obvious. Seppy’s gone; and because she’s no more, I must rely solely on recollection to evoke what would surely have overblown into an impersonation larger than life. Do I need to fear this? How indeed could exaggeration creep into a description of someone who constituted my world, my whole life? Or am I being dishonest to persist in believing so?

How quickly it becomes difficult to remember a person who is dead with any sort of clarity. No matter how I may long to believe otherwise, there are no signs or messages from her, from the beyond, that she’s still there. Or, if she is, that she has any interest at all in the fate of us living. . . The details are fading faster than I can hold on to them.

Though we enjoyed being together at all times, Seppy and I never did have much to talk about, or discuss. By way of shared experience, we began with little in common. And as far as the world outside was concerned, by no stretch of imagination or experience, was that our domain. Cut off, completely and irrevocably from it, all the news that ever filtered in from that world came by word of mouth, or emanated from the large wooden cabinet of a box-like radio that Temoo owned.

In his own estimation, ‘a priceless instrument’, the radio was manufactured in Germany, and had been acquired somehow by his late wife, Rudabeh, from some well-wisher in earlier days. No, in those early days, our living quarters were not electrified—no electric lights, no fans, no radios. We lived by candlelight and, if we ran out of those, or oil for the lamps, or kerosene, as was so often the case, natural light alone defined the shape of our waking hours.

Though electricity was in Bombay already, it was still just a bit expensive and there were relatively few domestic consumers. Buchia’s own office-cum-quarters had electricity. And one electric street lamp splashed a patch of brightness at the beginning of the wooded path leading to the upper funeral cottages; happily, this lamp post was situated immediately outside the khandhias’ tenement block. It was from the junction box of this lamp post that Yezdi ‘Electrician’—that’s what we called this lanky youth with the long hair and awkward, camel-like gait to distinguish him from Yezdi Tumboly, another more senior corpse bearer— would tap the line to power Temoo’s radio.

This was a covert operation performed only after sundown, for Buchia would never have countenanced such piracy. Initially, Temoo himself was terribly jittery about the entire undertaking: the very idea of stealing electricity, as much as of the perilous act of sticking a screwdriver into the T-shaped slit of the junction box to prise its lid open, then locating the tiny cranny pointed out to him by Yezdi (amidst a jumble of other wires and terminals) into which he must insert the open end of the extended power cord that snaked from the radio, out his window, along the ground and all the way up into the junction box. It did seem frighteningly unsound; but then, once accomplished, the radio— and Temoo, and several others from our community, too—came into their own.

Usually that street light was switched on at dusk. If not, he would call on me to hold up a candle or a kerosene lamp while, fumblingly, he sought to make contact. Yezdi had created a permanent joint for him to the radio’s power cord, increasing its total length by some eight or nine yards. He had warned Temoo repeatedly, of course, about the danger of coming into direct contact with a charge of electricity. No wonder Temoo was so jittery. But, over time, he grew more confident about rigging this clandestine power connection even when Yezdi wasn’t around to supervise.

You see, Temoorus was always terribly proud of his radio and had jealously protected it ever since it had been gifted to his wife; even in the days when it was no more than a mere showpiece that occupied one corner of his dining table—a mute wooden cabinet—he would wipe the dust off it with a soft cloth every morning, tending to it almost worshipfully as if it were a deity, or the very fountainhead—a magic box from which all knowledge and truth flowed. Now that it could be made to break its silence, he was overjoyed.

Whenever an event of any significance occurred in our country or the world, and we got wind of it from someone who had heard something, or seen a newspaper, the event or crisis immediately took on the excitement of a festive, social occasion in our small community of corpse bearers. For then—sometimes by advance notice, or prior submission—the power connection was rigged, the radio turned on, and the air became thick with voices, music and the crackle of static.

Word spread quickly. Anyone was welcome to drop in and listen, and subsequently, sit around airing views, analyses, predictions. If they had something to drink, or munch on at home, they were expected to bring it along—a sort of tithe or offering for the privilege of listening to these critical broadcasts. Most often, of course, nobody had anything of the kind, and they came empty-handed; but nonetheless felt free to hold forth.

1935 was the year in which Seppy and I got married. It was also the year, I remember, in which a new Government of India Act was proclaimed by our British rulers. When Gandhiji undertook his famous Salt March in 1930, I was still in school. But the response had been terrific: there were similar marches undertaken all over the country, and massive civil disobedience. People refused to pay rent, revenues and taxes. In the face of this open challenge to the law, once again we witnessed brutal police violence, repression and mass arrests. Gandhiji and Nehru were both clapped in jail; but the British remained unbending in their attitude.

The call for complete Swaraj was then countered by this very insipid legislation of British parliament that promised ‘gradual development of self-governing institutions’ with a view to progressively achieving responsible government in India ‘as an integral part of the British Empire’. The demand for setting up a committee to draft a constitution for independent India was completely overlooked. Temoo often tuned in to ISBS as well, or Indian State Broadcasting Service, which later became AIR—All India Radio, or Akashvani. But sometimes, he was also able to catch short wave, and we heard the news from England.

Appeasement of legitimate national aspirations was flatly denied to us Indians. Yet, almost every other night or certainly on weekend nights, we heard confusing reports which indicated that British, and other European leaders, were recklessly appeasing the insane ambitions of a dictator who was systematically militarizing his country—in contravention of the restraints imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles. It was a frenetic and difficult time— difficult to understand, I mean. Events unfolded so bewilderingly fast one couldn’t hope to grasp their logic, much less the politics that had inspired them. The fragmentary bits of information we culled from short wave often didn’t make any sense to us at all; yet, there was a frightening momentum in the build-up that led to World War II.

My interest in sports and sporting events was rather keen even at that age, for I remember listening with dismay to a BBC report that alleged exclusion of several high-ranking Jewish athletes from the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Why on earth any government should want to exclude its best sportsmen I couldn’t understand until I had learned a little more about Hitler’s own beliefs and ideas.

Initially, it did seem that he was intent on presenting a clean image of himself to the world. Before the international press delegation could arrive in Berlin—we heard of this only much later, of course—Hitler had ordered his stormtroopers to clean up the city of its anti-Semitic posters and insignia. Even later, after the war had started, we heard reports of the cold-blooded murder of a handful of German journalists who heroically refused to toe the Nazi line: who had believed it was important to report accurately on what was going on in Germany during those years.

Well, as I said, all this proceeded at a reckless pace, but we did get some glimpse into the shape of things to come. It wasn’t our world, though, and we didn’t have much to do with it. Except that it became very obvious that our rulers adopted different standards when dealing with unrest in their own colonies, and quite different ones for negotiating with their European neighbours.

Seppy and me, we listened awhile but usually, once we had grasped the gist of the headlines, we left the old fogies to their meagre celebration and boisterous arguments. If it was a bright, moonlit night, we would stroll through the groves into the forest. The truth was our lives were so closed, so dispossessed, even world wars, riots, or our own country’s struggle for independence hardly seemed to matter. So far removed were we from these fateful eventualities of history that, except by a complex chain of inferences and deductions, none of them touched our personal lives at all.

It wasn’t very late one evening when Seppy and I walked through the casuarinas, towards the pear orchard, without speaking. . . The sky was beginning to darken, but still held promise of great calm.

‘Tell me one thing, Fuzzy, will you?’ she said, breaking the silence.

Seppy thought Phiroze sounded too old-fashioned and staid, and almost always called me by that pet name she had made up. I must add, in those days I usually wore my hair long, and it was very curly.

‘But you must promise to be completely honest,’ she insisted. ‘Only then does it make sense. . . Promise me you’ll search your heart before you answer.’

‘But answer what?’ I was curious. ‘You haven’t asked me anything.’

She waited a long moment before replying. Come to think of it, something
had
been bothering her lately.

‘Do you have regrets about your decision? I mean to marry me, and be trapped forever in the Towers of Silence?’

‘Trapped? Didn’t know I was,’ I joked. ‘I still have a few years left before they carry me up and dump me in a tower. And even then, the birds won’t take more than ten minutes to set me free. Before you know it, I’ll be soaring high in blue skies.’

‘I’m serious, Phiroze,’ she said, almost mournfully. ‘I stay awake at nights sometimes thinking about this. It just wasn’t fair to you, was it? To have to give up everything: your family, your studies, the whole world, and be confined to this shadowy, overgrown reserve. . .’

‘Oh I don’t really see myself as confined,’ I replied. ‘Usually, once or twice a day at least I do go out—to fetch a corpse or two. As far as my studies went, I was always rather a dummy. If I hadn’t given them up, my school would probably have expelled me. Anyway, I’ve come to think of this place as the most beautiful in the whole world, Seppy. It really is. This is paradise we live in, Seppy, don’t you think so, too?’

‘You know what I mean, Fuzzy, don’t let’s pretend. . .’

‘No, I don’t, honestly. I couldn’t ask for any better deal than to be held captive in paradise. With a licence to roam freely inside its boundaries—and with you by my side at that. You don’t know what the city outside’s like: all noise, and dirt, and people. . . Anyway, I should ask you, what is it that
you
regret about our marriage?

‘I don’t. I only feel that I didn’t give you a chance. You are so young, Fuzzy. And sex is such a powerful thing. Once I had made love to you, I knew there was no way I would lose you. . .’

For a moment my mind flashed back to what Mother had said on that night of the confrontation, that my first encounter with Seppy was no more than a cleverly plotted ruse for seduction.

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have made love at all until we got married. . .’ she mused. ‘That’s what I feel, I shouldn’t have let you. That way you would have been free to find out if you really
wanted
to marry me. . .and all the baggage that came with me—this place, the ostracism—whether you really wanted to take on any of that. Of course, you didn’t. Nobody could have.’

‘Given a choice, let me tell you. . .’ I said, putting my arms around her, ‘I’d marry you again, sweetheart. . .’ and kissed her beneath a raspberry tree in full blossom, under the waning blush of a darkening sky.

We lingered awhile under its canopy, and she persisted with her train of thought:

‘You’ve always been so gallant and charming about this. . .I love you, too, Fuzzy. . . But the work itself doesn’t bother you? I mean, don’t you find it too demanding, too demeaning?’

‘It’s a cakewalk, dear Seppy,’ I remember replying. ‘Don’t you worry about that. . .and you, Sepideh, are my sugar plum fairy of these woods. It’s you who make it all so easy. But if you don’t watch out, soon you may end up being my sugar
plump
fairy!’

We laughed. Just a week or so later, Seppy found out, and told me that she was pregnant. How beautiful she was with child, how sated with happiness. . . There were worries, too, because we had been reminded over and over again of the dangers of marrying a close family relation. But thank heavens, Farida was born absolutely normal.