Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (17 page)

The flowering of meaning and intellect in my life happened only after I met Seppy and fell in love. We shared something very special which even now isn’t easy for me to define. I could oversimplify and call it a sense of humour. But it was something much tougher, yet more frail. A shared matrix of perception?—I suppose one could call it that—whose common nodes so intricately intersected that there was complete parity in our understanding of all things: the world, people and every eventuality we encountered in life.

This was no small thing, I should say, for it meant that no matter how rough a day either of us had had, a mere look in the eyes, the subtle sparkle of a smile, a fleeting caress in passing, any form of communication however insignificant could transform one’s mood in an instant, engendering a whole new perspective for the other partner as well. It worked that way with both of us.

Our daughter, Farida, was already a year old when, one afternoon, Temoo’s radio was turned on. This had become possible only because Buchia was away on leave for three days, making a personal pilgrimage to Udvada.

The news was all thunder and fury about maverick Germany’s invasion of Poland, and Prime Minister Chamberlain’s reluctant but angry declaration of war. There were disturbing though still unconfirmed reports coming out of Germany—Austria and Czechoslovakia as well—about the deportation of Jews to concentration camps.

I remember some of the excitement, comments and expostulations that were flying around Temoo’s crowded living room, before we made our exit.

‘What have we to do with their war, tell me? Let them perish if they want to!’

‘Just like that, without asking anyone, without checking with us first they declare that India is at war, too. . .? And what prizes can we expect for fighting in their war?’

‘No prizes, brother. Just the glory of crushing the bogey of Fascism!’

‘Fascism-bashism is all very well but why put our lives on the line? Don’t we remember where all our sacrifices of the last war got us? The Jallianwalla massacre, the Rowlatt Act. Why is Gandhi being such a hypocrite?’

‘No prizes for guessing why Congress leaders are such arse-kissers. . . So they can step into British shoes, once vacated. No matter if they be stinking with the sweat of those red monkeys, or soaked in Indian blood. Finally, power is the key. . .they’ll do anything to take over, once our lords and masters decide it’s time to go home.’

‘Actually, that Hitler seems to me quite a decent, no-nonsense politician, really. We could use someone strong like that in our own country, don’t you think, instead of these crafty khaddar topeewalas!’

‘Oi, oi,’ interrupted Temoo, derisively, ‘we already have one Buchia here, don’t forget!
Behnchoad
,
Hitler no baap!’

Farida will wake up any minute, Sepideh said to me, softly. It was time for us to leave. This time we weren’t planning a stroll, just getting back next door to our end of the tenement where our infant babe was sleeping, like an angel. It’s time for her feed, I can tell, she said; the ache in her milk-engorged breasts was growing more intense.

What I had said by way of reassurance to Seppy was quite true. To this day I am amazed how strong I was, how easily I took to the work. I am short, and built a little stockily, but I had endless reserves of energy.

I still remember my embarrassment on being teased by the other candidates at the naavar retreat which I flunked. It was the old priest, Muncherjee, in fact, who indulged in a sly witticism, while the other boys roared with laughter:

‘Perhaps
koustee
, not kustee, would have suited you better, Phiroze!’ he had punned, while reaching out to pinch my biceps.

Maybe freestyle wrestling, rather than ritual and prayer. God knows, he could have been right! Some of my strength and bulk has survived, though the muscles have frayed. When I look in the mirror I see that outwardly, give or take a little, I still look much the same as in my younger days. Except that rather rapidly I’ve lost almost my entire curly mop of hair. Now only a wispy aureole still attaches itself to my shiny pate, giving me an appropriately monkish appearance. If Seppy were still here, she would have had to think up another pet name for me: Egghead? Ostrich?

I miss my Sepideh very much. Sometimes I fear I won’t be able to carry on without her calming presence. Why did she have to die so suddenly, so improbably? Just when our happiness was reaching its zenith, and hers, too: just as she was beginning to realize the meaning of motherhood, the joy and anticipation of watching her only child grow up. . .

But no matter how bereft I may feel, I have to carry on, if only for Farida’s sake. I had promised Seppy as she lay dying I would look after her daughter, make sure she went to a good school. . . No, for my own sake, too. . . There’s no choice in this, is there? At all times life demands from one courage, and perseverance. Humour, too, perhaps wit and discretion as well. . . Without a grain of each of these, I’d certainly feel crushed by the monstrous encumbrance of an incoherent and meaningless existence.

Dreams, reality, nightmares—are these, in fact, distinct planes of consciousness? Or merely different modalities for perceiving the one grand canvas of an indivisible reality?

There have been moments in my life when I have felt genuinely confused by this question—whether a distinct line of division exists between subconscious and wakeful reality; or whether that bewilderment we experience in such moments of obfuscation is
itself
an illusion. . .

The very last night I slept in my family quarters in the Soonamai Ichchaporia Agiari—for that is what my father’s small fire temple is called, in memory of its founding benefactress, an entrepreneur of the last century who, incidentally, provided employment to dozens of indigent women at a barn-like sweatshop on Sleater Road which produced bhakra, pickles, popatji, and other savouries—I was terribly exhausted; both physically and emotionally. The next morning, I was to leave for the Towers of Silence: that is, to make a more or less permanent separation from my family and the home I had grown up in—perhaps all too quickly. I still had two-and-a-half months to go before I turned nineteen.

Physically, of course, I was tired because I had spent much of my day finding, deciding about and putting together the things I would be taking along: my few clothes, my sudrahs, my topee, a couple of pairs of underwear and socks, various knick-knacks and lucky charms that held an emotional significance for me from childhood. A volume of Gujarati stories about a folk hero called Hameed Mia who had the power to become invisible at will, and his adventures with Parween Banu, his wife. I had heard these stories read out to me several times by Mother when I was a child, yet felt reassured by the idea of keeping the book with me. They were funny stories, and Mother used to read them to me when I wouldn’t sleep. My entire luggage fitted into my old school bag, and Vispy’s, both of which I had been told I could use to transport my things. We had no suitcases or trunks in the quarters which could be spared.

I spent the whole afternoon searching for a scrapbook I hadn’t come across in a long while. In it, I had pasted a rare newspaper clipping of the first All-India Cricket Team to tour England, which boasted of seven stalwart Parsi players, including Homi Kaka and Meherji Bulsara. The scrapbook had never got further than three or four pages of cricketing snippets—for want of a supply of printed matter—after which I had diversified to include swimmers, cyclists, bodybuilders and other stars from the sporting world. The eighty-page notebook was less than a third filled, but it was something I had done, something I didn’t want to just leave behind—even though Vispy had located and contributed about half a dozen of its portraits. No, it was
my
scrapbook.

My exhaustion, I’m sure, was most certainly caused not so much by physical exertions as by the unrelenting emotional flagellation Mother inflicted on both of us, herself as well as me, unable to accept, until the final moment, the inevitability of what was to befall her unhappy family.

Throughout that entire last day she had been at least partly effective in suppressing her tears—not so for most of the previous week; but now Mother resorted to a new stratagem—of abstaining from looking at me altogether, wearing an expression of dreamy nonchalance, or looking into the distance even while speaking to me, which she only did if she absolutely
had
to. Perhaps it was her buffer against breaking down altogether. Whatever had to be said, in any case—in simple phrases, or lamentations of grief— had already been expressed, and expended in fairly extravagant measure. Now, only lassitude remained.

In the evening, after he returned home from work, and Father hadn’t yet come in for his dinner, Vispy pulled me aside for a brief, confidential chat.

‘You’re still only eighteen, right?’ he said to me in a slightly hoarse whisper.

‘Nineteen, soon,’ I pointed out.

‘Lucky bugger, aren’t you, Phiroze, you should know that. . .’

‘Lucky?’

‘I’ll be twenty-seven next month, you know. . .and so far, I’ve never been with a woman.’

‘You will, you will. . .’ I said to him with an air of superiority, unwilling to forgo the trump he was offering me, ‘when the right woman comes along.’

‘Right or wrong, I don’t know,’ he confessed, almost mournfully, ‘right now I feel just
any
woman would do.’

I didn’t see Father that night at all. It appeared he had decided to make an appearance much later than usual, so he could avoid meeting me. In the last few days his nocturnal schedule of early sleep and rousing had gone completely awry; although, however tired or somnolent he might feel, he had never once missed his morning’s vigil of ringing the temple bell at cock’s crow.

I embraced Mother silently and wished her good night. She didn’t speak, but returned my tight embrace and kissed me on the forehead.

I must have fallen asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow, but my sleep was disturbed by a string of dreams. As usual, they were rather fragmented and humdrum. A boy of eleven—me, presumably—was being taken through the paces of tying the sacred girdle around his waist by an enormous, bearded priest. My father? Not Muncherjee, certainly.

Evidently what was in progress was my navjote ceremony, for the burly priest standing behind me held my hands aloft, in which I held raised, my kustee. He was enunciating with precision and vigour those passages which must be spoken while knotting the thread in its three all-important stages. I had to articulate the words in unison with the priest, while he guided me through the procedure. The odd thing was I couldn’t concentrate on any of this, because the priest’s long beard kept caressing the nape of my neck as his chin wagged while uttering the words of the ancient text with guttural precision. Unintentionally, yet without respite, and perhaps without his knowledge, the priest’s whiskers tickled me so that finally I broke into a helpless chuckling. This angered him greatly, and I immediately desisted. But somehow, before I knew it, I found myself hopelessly entangled in my own sacred cord which had developed elastic properties, elongating inexplicably into a coil several yards longer than it should have been. Enraged, he expostulated in my ear:

‘Shame on you! Don’t know how to do even that much? And you’ve come out to perform your navjote? Shame on you!’

Next I was on the terrace of the fire temple, flying a kite with Vispy. But this time, it was I who was in charge; Vispy was only cheering me on, guiding me with hints, strategies, tactics. The sky was chock-full of other kites, and very breezy; with masterful finesse, I cut them down, one after the other, watching them detach from the controlling strings of their manipulators, swoop and go into free fall. Even more than myself, it was Vispy who seemed to be enjoying himself greatly, yelling whoops of orgasmic delight with every kite that came a cropper, urging me to cut some more. . .screaming, after each triumph, that blood-curdling war cry of every kite fighter:
patang kapyo che
!

Then I was in a dark forest: it was dusk; this was
my
forest, I was sure, though an exceptionally dense and wooded part of it which I had never seen before. On the darkening horizon I could make out the silhouettes of the Towers. In a small clearing at my feet, I was digging a pit with a shovel, to bury a collection of dead animals—presumably, my own expired pets. I shovelled in a dog, a leopard, an ostrich, a porcupine, and finally, incredibly, an entire hippopotamus! When I looked up again, I saw that every branch of every tree around me was populated by hundreds of vultures. A moon was up and, by its light I could see that each of these dark creatures was staring hungrily, not at the dead beasts I was burying, but at
me
. In my dream I remember thinking, how odd that there are vultures still out even after dark. . .