Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (2 page)

I first set eyes on my Sepideh in the forest on the hill. Even the most fleeting remembrance of Seppy can bring tears to my eyes—so evanescent her presence, so brief our togetherness.

This was her home, in a more literal sense than I realized when I first saw her. I had caught glimpses of her before—wandering through overgrown banyan vines, running, once, at breathtaking speed after a peacock through tall grass. I didn’t know then she considered animals her dearest friends. She fed as many as she could every day, often by her own hand: wild squirrels, pheasants, pye-dogs, stray cats, as though they were her personal pets.

The first time I approached her she was stooped to the ground placing a small bowl of milk in a clearing.

‘Who’s that for?’ I asked, as she straightened herself.

She was shy and only smiled without meeting my eyes; but after a moment answered:

‘A snake. A big grass snake who comes and drinks it all up, whenever I have any to spare.’

Lovely as the breeze wafting through the trees, just as light and feathery, she seemed to me a gawky, yet beautiful child of nature, completely at home in these woods in which I befriended her, and later, became her lover. Seven years have passed since then. . .

Already I feel like a pack animal. I am twenty-six years old and strong as an ox, but the work’s definitely telling on me, on each of us. . . No, I don’t mean the physical strain—that can be rough, no doubt—so much as the contempt and abuse we receive for doing a job no one else will touch.

Can’t deny I always knew it would be rough. It’s more than most people can stomach, many had warned me: let alone
you
, the coddled son of a priest. But in those first years, Seppy was at my side. Nothing, not the direst predictions of ruin and misery could have kept us apart. People said it was disastrous for first cousins to wed, that our children would be cretins! But we never felt we
had
a choice, you see. And never once in those seven years did I ever feel let down, or regret my decision. Nor did she, for that matter. Every evening, returning home from work, the happiness that gleamed in her eyes salved my every ache and bruise, healed the smarting of swallowed insults. In our mealy, narrow cot at night, her love refreshed and rejuvenated my body. And all that alarmist talk came to nought; our child was born perfectly normal.

But now, Seppy’s no longer with me. . . And even in dreams I don’t see her so often. Dull nausea swelled and passed as it did every morning when I woke to the certain knowledge of being alone. My heart ached with longing for the woman who had taught me how to love; but I was running late. . . I threw a crumpled muslin gown over my night clothes, slipped into my white cloth bootees and cloth cap, both essential accessories of my uniform, and knotted the strings on my face mask. I paused for only an instant to gaze at my three-year-old curled up in a corner of her mattress. Unmoved by Buchia’s ruckus, she was still engrossed in a deep sleep. A fierce surge of tenderness shuddered through my body, and I swore on Seppy’s sweet forehead to protect her, always.

‘Come son, your tea’s getting cold. . .’

Temoorus’s living quarters abutted my own, separated by no more than half a wall of exposed brick and flaking plaster, and a thatched veranda. He would have heard Buchia’s screaming, and got a cup of tea ready for me. Not so much from the kindness of his heart, I should say, as to hasten me off to work so he can have my little one all to himself when she wakes. It annoys me how possessive he grows, day by day.

Crossing the threshold that divides our homes, I came face to face with Temoo: seated, as always, in his square, rattan chair, in the same pair of striped pajamas I’d seen him wearing for weeks now; the same translucent vest with the ripped sleeve that revealed his dark, hairy body: a thin, vulpine man of scruffy habits, made ridiculous by age, and an incongruous tumescence at his abdomen. Since Seppy’s death, we’ve been thrown together a lot—I depend on him much more now, I do—but try never to forget I shouldn’t trust him an inch. Yet nearly every day of the week, for several long hours, I am compelled to leave in his custody the most precious portion of my being: my baby, Farida. Simply, I have no option.

A large mug of tea stood on the small teapoy beside him, covered with an upturned saucer.

‘Behnchoad Buchia woke me from such a deep sleep,’ said Temoorus. ‘Bullying and yelling his head off first thing in the morning! What that bastard needs. . .no, I won’t say it. . .’

‘What. . .?’

‘Don’t like to start my morning with swear words, but really, a bamboo up his arse. All the bloody way. . .’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, swallowing a generous swig of lukewarm tea. ‘Six corpses, yesterday! No joke, Temoo, lugging them in from all over town. And on top of it, the joker claims we came back sozzled.’

‘Fucking slob doesn’t know his arsehole from his gob. Stinks up the place with his farts and his taunts. What that man needs is a good hiding, but who’ll give it to him, I ask you? He’s our warden. . .our boss. Who’s going to question the boss?’

‘Not to fret, my boys!’ said a voice over our heads. ‘Just leave it to the One-Above. . .’

We looked up and saw Burjor, leaning over his balcony. But he wasn’t speaking of himself.

‘Time will come for that man, too, when he will choke on his wickedness—mark my word, boys—bleed remorse.’

Once a bodybuilder, this fair-skinned and still handsome corpse bearer had suddenly lost an alarming amount of weight in recent months, and much of his proud swagger. Though he grew feebler by the day, and his clothes had started to hang loosely on him, he remained rather self-conscious of his looks—the prominent, clean-shaven rock jaw, the thickset, well-trimmed moustache, green eyes—what’s more, Burjor never once complained about life’s unfairness. He remained confident of the infallible perfection of the divine master plan. He now declared, in the dramatic and slightly pompous fashion he’s given to:

‘One-Above watches everything, mind you. That maaderchoad’s days are numbered.’

Was I imagining it, I wondered, or had a furtive edge of bitterness crept into Bujji’s voice of late?

‘Oi, Bujji!’ yelled Temoo hoarsely, ‘don’t wreck your morning bad-mouthing excrement.’

‘Well,
someone
has to flush a turd into its pit and bury it. Too much stink. . .too many flies. . . Am I right or am I wrong? Tell me?’ chuckled Bujji. ‘If I had any strength left in my body, I’d do it myself.’

Like Bujji, everyone at the Towers had some reason to hate the man we were talking about. His real name was Nusli Kavarana, but his treatment of us menials was so sadistic that he was universally known as Buchia, or the ‘Corker’. He was some sort of labour contractor, directly in charge of hiring and firing us corpse carriers as well as all the maintenance staff on the estate; but very thick with Coyaji, the Punchayet’s secretary for gardens. God knows what sort of deal those two had struck up, but somehow, Buchia had become an inviolable fixture in the Towers’ establishment.

‘Now today, God knows what sort of day it’ll be,’ I said, resuming my conversation with Temoo. ‘Do you? I mean, have you heard anything at all? Bloody hell, so many Parsi corpses in one day is just not natural.’

‘Papers say certain districts have seen an outbreak of gastro: Parel, Dockyard, Khetwadi. . .but these things have happened before. Shouldn’t last more than a few days.’

‘Gastro?’

‘That’s only the official euphemism, boys: more likely cholera,’ interjected Burjor from above; then, with apocalyptic finality, he turned to go in, saying, ‘But no one, mind you, knows just
how
bad. . .and it
could
last longer than just a few days. . .mind you.’

‘So much fanfare about that bloody hearse they bought— insertion in
Jam-e-Jamshed
and all—gone phut already?’ I asked Temoo.

‘At the garage being repaired, son,’ he replied. ‘Engine trouble, claims Buchia, but my point is, whether it’s cholera, or gastro, or whatever, they’d better hire more khandhias. You guys should refuse to work like this. Sixteen hours, eighteen hours. . .! And especially, you, a nussesalar! In my time, no hearse, no nothing. But we never saw more than two, at most three corpses in a day. Oh yes, there was another time, much worse than this, even earlier. . .in my father’s day. . .’

It had always been a hereditary profession. Generations of inbreeding within families belonging to the small sub-caste of corpse bearers—together with a self-imposed and socially enforced isolation—had rendered them freakish, awkward and genetically unsound. How completely sad and despairing then, that corpse bearers continue to squirm and thrash about while trying to find ways to escape its inherited tyranny. My own case was completely unusual, of course: people were usually shocked and disbelieving when they learned that I voluntarily chose to marry a khandhia’s daughter, opting for a life at the Towers of Silence.

By rights, of course, I do rank higher than a mere corpse bearer. Before joining service at the Towers, I went through five weeks of training at the fire temple built on an eminence in this vast, forested estate, just a stone’s throw from the Towers themselves. After several days in solitary retreat and ritual purification, after committing to memory several runic hymns in a dead language, I was initiated by the high priest of the temple and formally proclaimed a nussesalar.

This strange word from the ancient Avestan means ‘Lord of the Unclean’. Nussesalars are corpse bearers, too, make no mistake about that, but invested with several ritualistic, priest-like duties. In our faith, dead matter is considered unclean. Segregation of the ceremonially purified corpse, to prevent its re-contamination at the hands of overly emotive mourners, is only one of my duties. More important is the responsibility I have of protecting the
living
from the contamination supposedly spewed by corpses.

All
corpses radiate an invisible but harmful effluvium, according to the scriptures. Through prescribed ablutions, prophylactics and prayers, I’m supposed to protect the general populace—and myself—from the noxious effects of the dead; indeed, you could say the nussesalar shields the community from all that evil and putrefaction by absorbing it into his own being. In return for which noble service, the scriptures promise, his soul will not be reborn. The nussesalar who performs his duties scrupulously, forever escapes the cycle of rebirth, decrepitude and death. What the scriptures forget to mention, though, is that in this, his final incarnation, his fellow men will treat him as dirt, the very embodiment of shit: in other words, untouchable to the core.

Ordinary corpse bearers don’t have it any easier, believe me. That’s how our people feel about their dead—and all who come in contact with corpses. You could say, though, that as a nussesalar, I am a glorified untouchable.

Temoo’s sharp. He’d been rambling on about his father’s time, but is aware I haven’t been listening. Now he stops talking, and won’t resume until he’s sure he has my attention.

‘The plague it was, then, like I was telling you,’ he said, finally taking up his story again. ‘I remember Papa telling Mumma, “Zarthostis are dying like flies; never thought I’d live to see this day. . . And as for the others on these islands, every day hundreds are picked up in bullock carts from the streets—hundreds!—all castes and creeds cremated in heaps at the municipal commons in Parel, Sewree. . .” Come to think of it: that might explain Buchia’s abuses and threats. In times like these, you guys are entitled to an allowance, did you know that? Have any of you seen this special allowance? Now what do they call it?’

My attention had strayed again. Was Farida awake, and crying? No, I had imagined it. . .not a sound from my end of the block.

‘I mean, for us. Our forefathers made provisions for this sort of thing. . .what do they call it? “Pandemic allowance!”’ bellowed Temoorus triumphantly, pleased that his memory hadn’t let him down. ‘Pandemic allowance. . . Trustees have made provisions for this kind of situation—it’s written in the fine print of the Punchayet deed—and Buchia, I daresay, is probably planning to pocket it all himself. Don’t take this lying down, son, I tell you. That warden will eat us alive.’