Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (4 page)

‘Make way! Make way for the corpse. . .’

By the time we reached Kalbadevi, Rustom’s resounding bass had lost some of its operatic flair, his cries feebler and less frequent. My own legs felt tentative and wobbly. Nonetheless, people stepped aside respectfully, some even muttering to themselves—‘A
Parsi
corpse!’—as though impressed that death had actually touched a member of that privileged and idiosyncratic community.

This was going to be a long and tedious trudge, we all knew, even though we were taking the straightest possible route—past Flora Fountain and Dhobi Talao, through Girgaum and Hughes Road, then on to the Towers. Once, under the sun, I stumbled, nearly losing my grip on the bier.

I had had nothing to eat since last night. Just before leaving the house in Cusrow Baag, kindly neighbours of the bereaved family had handed us an earthen pot of fermented toddy—tart as hell, but I drank thirstily, my mouth was parched—and brown lumps of sweet jaggery tucked into rounds of soft white bread; sustenance for the long walk back.

For a while, the weight of the bier and corpse seemed entirely manageable. In fact there was a spring in our step. On certain streets, which were practically deserted, remembering Buchia’s admonition about the next funeral having to start at four o’clock, we raised the tempo and jogged. There, Rusi’s sporadic, breathless bellow actually helped us find our rhythm, but we couldn’t keep up that pace for long.

‘Let’s slow down a bit,’ gasped Boman.

‘Slow down, of course, slow down. . .’ seconded Rusi, wheezing and heaving, ‘we’ll make it back in time, not to worry.’

But it was already half past two. We had lost a lot of time almost at the start of our return journey when we were held up by a commotion in the street caused by a large group of rowdy nationalists, who were yelling anti-imperialist and pro-Swadeshi slogans outside an emporium for clothes near the Army and Navy Stores. It was a place called Crawford and Allen:
Importers of Fine Apparel
. The protestors were taking exception to the dress shirts, jackets, jodhpurs, derbys or whatever was contained in a large number of parcels a wealthy man and his wife had just walked out of the shop with; browbeating them to show allegiance to the cause of India’s independence by consigning every last parcel in their arms to a large bonfire blazing on the macadamized public road.

Traffic had slowed down, there was smoke everywhere. Several Anglo-Indian officers in white stood by, glowering under their sola topees, none too pleased with the sweltering summer heat, smoke, fire and the sloganeering of nationalists. The protesters were cordoned off from the general public by a posse of Indian sepoys. Then something happened, what it was I didn’t see.

Perhaps somebody threw a stone. The officers barked a directive, and immediately a fracas ensued. The sepoys, in their baggy blue shorts, began caning the vociferous protestors. Many were arrested, and bundled into a waiting police van. Moti was barking her head off. Finally, one of the officers noticed us waiting patiently with a corpse and dog, and gave instructions to let us pass.

A Parsi funeral must be concluded before sunset. In Parsi-populated areas there was certainly no call for vocal histrionics. The sight of four burly men in white muslins, shouldering a corpse on a bier and walking as fast as they could was self-explanatory: the public knew where we were headed, and why in such a hurry. People made way for us long before we approached. Jungoo, the erstwhile driver of the defunct hearse, was walking a little ahead of us, holding on tight to the excitable Moti’s leash. It was he, really, who should have been clearing a path for us, admonishing pedestrians that a corpse was on its way. But, that very morning, he had complained of a sore throat; as always, Rustom was happy to take on the part of crier, boastfully revelling in the reverberations of his own deep voice.

‘Make way! Make way for the corpse. . .’

Nobody quite remembers how the custom of showing a corpse to a dog began, but it’s probably as old as ancient Persia itself. Before modern medicine reserved that right for itself, it was canines that were believed to have an uncanny ability to sniff out the slightest flicker of vitality persisting in a body presumed dead. Hence, not once, but thrice in the course of the funerary ceremonies my Moti is brought before the corpse. Invariably though, after no more than a moment’s hesitation, she wrinkles her snout and looks away.

By the time we reached Opera House, obstructions in our route had increased manifold: all manner of traffic, crowds of people on foot, bullock carts, stray cows, taxis, public trams rattling past, and every now and then, a chauffeur-driven private sedan honking obstreperously. The voices of street hawkers rang in our ears through several long stretches during our journey.

‘Fresh leafy vegetables. . .fresh methi, sua, maat. . .’

‘Bombeel. . .taaji, safed bombeel!’

‘Langraa. . .langraa. . .dasheree. Juicy, sweet dasheree. . .’

Given the fierceness with which the sun was beating down, it was unlikely that either the leafies or the Bombay duck had retained any of their proclaimed freshness. The mangoes looked quite luscious, though. It was already a quarter to four, and I was terribly thirsty.

‘Shall we take the short cut through Khareghat Colony?’ asked Jungoo.

‘Hardly much shorter,’ snapped Rusi. ‘And taking those steep rocky shelves with a corpse’ll slow us down even more.’

Clearly, he was peeved, for not once had Jungoo offered to relieve him of his load. Not a corpse bearer himself, Jungoo was no stranger to nusso either; his own elder brother had been shouldering corpses for years. And Jungoo would have known just how difficult it is for the same person to yell for gangway while carrying the weight of a corpse and bier.

Having made it up to Kemps Corner and almost into the gates of the funeral grounds, something happened to me which I can’t quite account for, even after all these years. It’s never happened before, or since.

Fatigue, dehydration and exhaustion—all that, yes, but something else, too: for I went under at the very junction where one road bifurcates to Forjett Hill—towards the small fire temple where I grew up. Even on a normal day, if in the course of my work I happen to casually pass by the lane that leads to my father’s temple, the emotions that surge in me can be quite disordering. This time, however, I simply passed out.

Not in an instant, as with the flick of a switch, but rather gradually. . .my legs turning to jelly and folding in, even as I heard clearly the agitated voices of my fellow-shoulderers.

‘Oh my God, watch out!’

‘What’re you doing, ghair chodiya! The bier! Hold on!’

‘Help, someone. . .Elchi’s collapsed.’

As I crumpled to the ground—all this was reported to me only later—the corpse slid off the bier and turned turtle, causing a great uproar and commotion among passers-by. For me, the only odd impression which I still retain is that it wasn’t a gradual tunnelling into darkness; rather, I felt overwhelmed by the intense, dazzling heat of an inferno—a fierce, blinding white light—that drew me to it relentlessly and then, at the very last moment when I felt I should be consumed by it, repelled me violently: plunging me into complete darkness.

And all through this vertiginous delirium, but one bleak and sorrowful awareness held me in thrall: the white marbled spotlessness of the fire temple where I had spent some of the happiest years of my life, and the all-pervading presence in it of my father, its head priest, who, in the last many years, had refused to speak to me, or even set eyes on me. When I came to, minutes later, I felt immense bereavement. All that immaculate purity and holiness was out of bounds for me. Everything I had once held dear was lost, and forever, I had become a pariah. . .

My earliest memories are aural: a burst of startling thunder, the
thrumming of torrential rain. Early evening, but already rather dark, a storm is raging outside.

Father has just woken up from his afternoon nap. While Mother puts the kettle on for his tea, he carries me in his arms, strolling idly, but at the same time gripping me with what seems like excessive caution. He carries me through the cool, shadowy back rooms of the temple, and into the dry, thatched arbour of the open-air well. When he stops by the well to peer in, Father clutches me even more tightly. I squirm in his arms, lean forward and drink in a glimpse of its deep, dark emptiness.

Another thunderclap and he moves away from the well. But I want to stay on: I twist my body in his fixed grasp, turning towards the sight we are walking away from.

‘What is it you want, Phiroze?’ asks Father. ‘All those sparkling jewels?’

All around the well are dozens of small tables with rows and rows of oil lamps, neatly arranged in tiny glasses. Most of the wicks are lit, their flames dancing in the draughty anteroom.

This is deemed a holy well. There could be hundreds or thousands of lamps here—the light-and-fog halo of each dazzled my infant eyes, merging all into a magical chiaroscuro.

Each oil lamp lit by a devotee, I later learned, represented an offering of thanksgiving, or a prayer of supplication, towards the cost of which, he or she was meant to slip a one paisa copper coin into the black slot of a large metal box placed on a table nearby. At the end of every month, Father would open this box with the large key suspended from the nail above it. When I was old enough, he enlisted my help in counting the total offerings. All of it, I was told, went to charity.

But right now, Father isn’t interested in lingering by the sparkling lights around the well. Plodding along lazily in his soft velvet slippers, he carries me into the cool marble-tiled main hall, where huge framed portraits of Zarathustra and all the saints brood on the periphery of the sanctum sanctorum.

Standing outside this dark chamber with its enormous gleaming fire vase, he whispers in my ear:

‘Look Phiroze, look
there
,’ directing my gaze at an enfeebled but still penetrating fire, ‘
Khodaiji
. . .’

After he has had his tea and said his prayers, I know that Father will enter this chamber, clean the excess ash and extinguished embers, stoke the fire and feed it with sandalwood and frankincense. Then, when it’s blazing again, he’ll pull the rope several times, softly ringing the bell suspended from the high ceiling.

But before any of this can happen, the silence of the temple is suddenly shattered by an unholy clatter. So deep, perhaps, is my father’s own absorption in the palpating symbol of God he has just pointed out to me—or perhaps so bemused after the nap he hasn’t completely woken up from—that he jumps out of his skin at the loud report. The reverberating crash runs on for a while before dinning to a slow halt and I, too, experience the prickle of my father’s momentary gooseflesh. I cling tighter, sinking deeper into the comforting largeness of his body. But Father has had a real start, and his voice cracks with anger and alarm as he yells in a wild and intemperate manner:

‘Eh Mehernosh! Bomi! Mackie! Who’s there? Who’s on duty? Making such a racket at sunset? Any sense? Show yourselves!’

But no one appears, and Father decides to ignore this non-compliance.

‘Wash all those platters clean. I insist—every one of them again. And wipe them thoroughly with a clean cloth. I tell you, is there any sense in this? And at this, the hour of lighting lamps?!’ he mutters, as we head back towards his after-nap cup of tea.

Father is still trembling with anger, such has been the shock for him of that sudden clatter of silver trays on marble floor. But collecting himself, he whispers to me, almost conspiratorially,

‘Clumsy oafs. Unless I yell at them, they’ll never learn.’

I can tell he is trying to repair the nervous trauma he was afraid he might have caused by yelling so violently in my ear. For that one moment, he forgot he was carrying a very small boy in his arms.

All through childhood, I don’t remember ever being afraid of Father. If I think back, childhood
was
a piously happy time that flowered under his protective shelter and gentle authority. An awkwardly built, lumbering man he was powerful in most ways, but always very kind and considerate. I remember his boisterous laughter ringing through the tranquil temple in the evening, when he was amused by something I said or did, or some harmless prank played by Vispy and me, or our shenanigans with one of the pets. But that laughter was to dry up even before Mother died.

Somehow, over time, it congealed into a grim religiosity, a credulously ‘scientific’ approach to spirituality. Of course, I also remember innumerable occasions when my mother complained of his selfishness, but I never really learnt what exactly she meant by that.

Years later, when I was a grown boy, the distance between my father and me widened. Still later, it became a breach, impossible to ford. The playful whimsicality was all gone, scorched by an unbending sense of propriety and piety. I was to learn then, that his anger could be frighteningly implacable, merciless. But I am moving ahead too fast. . .