Cyrus Mistry - Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

Perhaps life is like that: slippery, elusive, impossible to get a hold on. The difference between this moment and the next is only one of awareness. . Yet we drift from morn till night, from day through week through months and years distracted, inattentive, and completely unprepared for the ambush — the moment of our inevitable extinction .

How can I deny death its unfair advantage of surprise? So that finally, when it does arrive, I am awake and aware, observant and unastonished !

Ah! But to what avail, you ask? Is there something awaiting us in the beyond? Some new landscape we’ll be spirited to: Elysian fields, blue skies; or perhaps smoking sulphuric pits, rivers of lava? On the other hand, it could be mere vanity that makes one crave such an advantage over death. That prompts the immense certitude we all share through our years of being alive that the innermost being doesn’t dematerialize in an instant; nor all the years of one’s lived life simply wash away like so much flotsam on the tides of time . .

Limp as a stuffed puppet, the lifeless body stiffens very quickly; and then it’s a real pain to wash and dress, to wind and knot the kusti around its insensible stump of a torso. There have been moments when, alone with a corpse at dead of night, I have been seized with a tremendous urge to slap its face hard as I could. Never did give in to such barbaric impulses: too cowardly, tasteless, and somehow, definitely profane. Yet the desire to provoke a reaction from the dead remains for me, I’ll confess, compelling .

Because, if the dead are really and truly dead, null and void, snuffed out without a trace — then everything we grow up believing in is a lie. All religion, theology, my father’s life and beliefs and prayers, the pumped-up ‘power of faith’—everything is simply wishful fantasy .

(i)

Farida, my daughter, is nineteen already. Next year will be her final year at the Punchayet-run school she attends, if all goes well. But like me, she too is disinclined to prepare for her matriculation.

‘Even if I put in all that hard work,’ she says, ‘I’m afraid I won’t pass. How terrible I would feel. . And you, too, Daddy, you would be angry with me, no?’

I suspect the real reason she feels this way is because her mind is already on the boys, on marriage and babies. Some new recruits have been added to our corps, and one of them, Khushro, is rather good-looking. Spotted Farida with him once, rambling in the woods. She’s still too young for marriage or a serious love affair, overprotected and spoilt as she has been by her grandpa and me.

‘Didn’t I ever tell you?’ I laughed. ‘I didn’t complete my matriculation either. But then, I never had a mind for studies. I wasn’t any good at them, like you are. And besides, twenty years has made such a great difference, my dear. Today everyone needs to be educated, keep up-to-date. There’s so much competition. And if you ever want to get out of this rut I’m stuck in. .look how well Vera’s doing.’

I do admire Rustom and his wife, Silla, for the way they raised their daughter. Silla, of course, is no more. Even though like Farida, Vera too has no siblings — and since the last twelve years, no mother either — through her years of growing up her parents enforced discipline on her in just the right doses.

Not only did Vera finish her school and her post-matriculate secretarial course in record time, her shorthand and typing were of such excellent quality and speed, she landed a plum job with the solicitors Gagrat, Limbuwala & Co. But this was only the beginning of her dream run.

Gagrat’s partner, Homiar Limbuwala — who later broke away and started his own law firm — has a son called Shapoor, about the same age as Vera. This boy took a fancy to her. He was supposed to be attending college doing his masters in jurisprudence, but there he was, always at his father’s office on some pretext or other, mulling over statute books, looking through records of old cases and whatnot. Then, after office closed and most of its staff left, he would ask her out and they would spend time together at Marine Drive or the Hanging Gardens, almost every evening. On one such evening, several months later, Shapoor asked Vera to marry him.

Now Vera had been prudent enough never to bring her boyfriend home to their flat in the Doongerwaadi quarters. But on the other hand, she had never deliberately deceived him either. All he knew about her station in life was that she lived in a flat at Malabar Hill, even today universally acknowledged as the most respectable and well-heeled address to have in Bombay. The period of courtship led to love, and at the end of those few months, Vera definitely began to care for Shapoor very much; as for him, he seemed entirely smitten by the slim, tall and soft-spoken Vera. The boy must have told his parents about his feelings for the girl in Daddy’s office and the Limbuwalas began making discreet inquiries.

Imagine the poor girl’s indignation and embarrassment when early one morning, on reporting to work as usual, she wasn’t permitted by the watchman — I repeat, the watchman —to gain entry into the office. He was apologetic, but firm: ‘saheb’s orders’. Instead of taking her usual seat at the typists and secretaries pool, she was kept waiting on the pavement until the accountant came out and handed her an envelope containing one month’s salary to cover her notice period, and a pre-dated letter of dismissal. No reason or explanation was provided in the letter. She was sent packing home that very morning.

Vera had always suspected that Shapoor lacked the gumption to stand up to his father, if ever it came to defending his choice of betrothed. Sure enough, the boy didn’t even make any attempt to contact Vera again, presumably in accordance with his father’s wishes. Or perhaps he wanted to, but didn’t dare incur his wrath.

I heard all this later, from Rustom, who was completely distraught by the turn of events that had overtaken his daughter’s life. He had always taken great pride in her achievements, her strength of character, and the rapidly escalating graph of her career. Why, only recently when she had told them that Shapoor Limbuwala had asked for her hand in marriage, he and Aimai, his mother, had been ecstatic. . Finally, a narrow exit from the stifling subjugation of their lives — this was nothing short of deliverance — if not for him and his mother, at least for his daughter. And now suddenly this: in retrospect, he told me, the thought had occurred to him it was just too good to be true.

He said to Vera that he would resign his job and move out of Doongerwaadi, if that would make her more acceptable to her prospective in-laws, but Vera wouldn’t hear of it.

At first she laughed bitterly, Rusi said, and then when he persisted in his offer, and wanted her to at least communicate it to Shapoor, she became angry.

‘What do you think, Daddy? That I have no pride or self-respect?’ Vera had flared up. ‘Am I now supposed to start feeling ashamed and furtive about how my father has spent the last twenty-eight years of his life?’

‘I don’t matter in this,’ Rustom had argued. ‘You don’t understand, Vera. This is your one chance to escape forever from this trap I put all of you in.’

‘It’s your life, Daddy,’ Vera had replied. ‘Our life. And you had no choice when you were orphaned at a young age, and your uncle cheated you and turned you out. You should be proud of what you achieved despite the odds.’

‘All that’s past history,’ Rustom had replied, ‘I’m talking about now. About your life. .’

Never once in all the years of our friendship had Rusi talked to me about how he came to be a corpse bearer. I could hardly ask him to disclose details now.