Cyrus Mistry - Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

Did I know what I was doing? I think I did: the task of preparing for the exams — let alone competing, or qualifying in them — seemed so completely insuperable I felt it pointless to even attempt. It was beyond me. After all, I was the acknowledged duffer of the family; besides, it was now obvious to me, dishonest and without an ounce of conscience. Here I was, cleverly weaving this web of lies to put my parents off the scent of my trickery — for their own peace of mind, too — or so I would have myself believe.

And how did I occupy myself during those eight months? As I mentioned, I had quickly tired of Rohinton and his company. The places I visited, the things I did during that time have no special relevance to this story — to what was to come soon after: that is, the best part of my remaining life — yet, some of them have stuck, indelibly, in memory.

December of my seventeenth year.

It must have been December, I believe, though I’m only guessing: only six in the evening (I remember looking at the luminous dial of my watch, a navjote present from Father), and it was already dark, with relatively few people about.

I should have been hastening homewards, but an argument with Mother that morning, in which she had threatened to curtail what she described as my ‘excessive freedoms’ made me stubbornly decide not to return home until after eight. I had been walking aimlessly, when something made me stop at the derelict shrine of a Sufi saint behind an abandoned railway siding, near the Cotton Green Station.

At least that’s what the flower-stall man outside told me it was. He said the service was about to begin, and offered me a long string-and-flower chaddar he had been weaving, for four annas. I said I had no money.

‘Take it, anyway, bachche, spread it on Baba’s kabar,’ he said. ‘Baba will help you. .with health, wealth, peace of mind. Everything will come to you if you believe in Baba’s blessings.’

I took off my sandals at the entrance, washed my feet under the tap outside, like I saw other devotees before me doing, and ventured in. It wasn’t a very clean place — visitors washed before entering, but there was no duct for the waste water to drain away, and the white-tiled floor — it wasn’t marble, I couldn’t help notice — was smeared with patterns of mud and wetness.

A great many people had gathered inside the cavernous, domed hall. I was directed by an acolyte to first go into the inner room, and make my offering. In a small chamber was the tomb of the Sufi Baba from the last century (whose name was mentioned to me several times that evening, but I can’t for the life of me remember it now) overlaid with dozens of floral tributes, like the one I was carrying. The service was about to begin. Then I noticed that apart from the innumerable devotees and volunteers congregated inside, on a sort of raised balcony above the main hall was a gathering of numerous women and young girls, who seemed to belong to the durgah.

Wretchedly poor, their clothing bedraggled, they looked like they had been rescued from the streets and provided shelter at the shrine. On the other hand, there was something strange about them. Their faces seemed haunted, vacant. They stood, or sat on the floor, motionless, drained of expression, like zombies. Others, among them, however, were completely preoccupied with the enactment of recurrent, mindless gestures — acting out twitches and tics, compulsive rotations of the neck and head, contortions of the hip and torso. I hadn’t noticed this earlier, but was startled to see that many of them were actually manacled, their ankles clamped and attached to individual chains leading onto one collective ring in the wall, secured by a large padlock.

An elderly devotee standing beside me followed my perturbed gaze, and whispered, ‘Yes, poor unfortunates. .their minds have slipped. .someone lays a black spell on them, and their own families don’t know what to do. So they bring them here. .by Baba’s grace most go home cured. He resolves every kind of problem. I could tell you — if you only knew — what miracles he has worked. Oh, oh. .shh. .the service begins. .’ he pointed out, immediately assuming a countenance of devout absorption.

The first resonant murmur of taut skin drew my attention to a huge kettledrum in a corner of the hall, placed on a slightly raised pedestal; a garishly colourful cloth was tied as decoration around the enormous drum. A slow, hypnotic beat began to rumble softly, at first. Dhoom. .da-bhoom-bhoom-dhoom. .da-bhoom. . da-bhoom-bhoom-dhoom . .

The drummer, striking the drum with long, padded knobsticks, appeared to be entering a trance of deep concentration, such were his own exaggerated movements. Slowly, the tempo increased, and he struck the drum more fiercely with every minute: layers of rhythm and resonance enveloped us. The commanding precision of his mighty booming, its irresistibly gradual and intoxicating acceleration brought life, I noticed, to the women in the balcony. Someone must have released their chains for the service, for they were on their feet now, swaying in their places, though their movements were still measured and restrained, as though they were only gradually rousing out of a deep stupor.

But as the drumming grew louder and more abandoned— though still preserving the compulsive strictness of its rhythm— they were possessed by frenzy, a wild spontaneity. Shaking their limbs, rolling their heads, moving backwards and forwards with inebriated ecstasy, gyrating round and round like dervishes, straining every muscle in their bodies with a savage energy. As if they knew in the privacy of their tortured souls that this was their only means to free themselves from enslavement to the overriding beast they had been consorting with.

When, after a passage of twenty minutes or more, the drummer, unable to drum any harder or faster, reached a prolonged crescendo that culminated in a sudden, ear-splitting halt, a great sigh of release swept through the hall. Or did I imagine it? I saw that a great many of the women had collapsed and were lying on the floor of their balcony, made insensible by their pitiless exertions.

This was but one unusual experience I had during my explorations of the city: my discovery of a revered nineteenth century Sufi saint whose grace relieved mental suffering through the medium of orgiastic drumming and dancing. Coming as it did, so soon after my encounter with the fat man at the docks — in retrospect, probably a very disturbed fat man — the spectacle of the crazy women made a deep impression on me. But my fascination with the strange and unfamiliar took me to many other places as well, where most people would never ordinarily venture.

As I left the durgah it was rather late. If my activities of the last eight months were found out, would my parents too conclude I was not in my right mind, that someone ‘had laid a black spell on me’, and chain me here in Sufi Baba’s durgah for treatment? Unlikely. They would probably rely on the restorative powers of my father’s Zoroastrian prayers. Though, if they thought to consult me — again, unlikely — I might feel more sanguine about dancing at sundown to those unstoppable drumbeats as a method for mending my dislocated priorities.

But I was clever enough not to be seen hanging about those parts of town where I was likely to be spotted. I chose instead to discover seedier segments of the inner city, and its outskirts. Places where no self-respecting Parsi would care to be seen: slums, shanty towns, areas in which low life and sin and poverty flourished; dens of vice and iniquity, where gambling, boozing and whoring thrived. On the other hand, it may have been no accident given the daily overdose of morality and righteous living I was force-fed at home that I deliberately sought out these very areas and activities — if only to find out to what extent indulgence in vice was truly pleasurable, and if it really resulted in the dreadful aftermath so often predicted.