Cyrus Mistry - Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

Now Buchia himself, a very traditional-minded person when it came to religious matters, was horrified that the body of a half-caste ‘Parsi’ who had never had a navjote, was to be allowed into the sacrosanct space of the Towers. For the first time in his long tenure, he felt completely at cross-purposes with his bosses, whose feeble judgment he felt had undermined his own authority and competence. In other words, he felt that left to his own devices, he would have found a better solution to the entire complicated dilemma, neither offending orthodox Zoroastrian sentiment, nor repudiating Kanga’s generous donation.

It seemed amazing to me that Buchia, who had been in cohorts with the trustees so slyly during the khandhia’s strike, and did everything he could to subvert it, should now mutinously, albeit covertly, be militating against their decision in the matter of Joseph Kanga’s funeral. Even more amazing, perhaps, was the decision of a group of khandhias to approach Buchia to ventilate their disquiet, and seek his views on finding some last-minute redress for it.

‘Over my dead body,’ Buchia is reported to have declaimed when the group of five approached him: it was Farokh, Fali, Jungoo, Shiavux and Homiar, I believe.

I realize I’ve hardly mentioned these last two in my narrative so far. From among the newer lot recruited after the strike, I took an instant dislike to Shiavux, whose foppish, effeminate and craven manner put me off the very first time I met him, and as for Homiar, I found him decidedly dull; so never really got to know either of them. Nor was I present at that meeting where Buchia made that emphatic response — and as it turned out, prophetic as well — to their discontent about the funeral which was to take place the following morning.

The kidnapping of Joseph Maloney body, pre-planned, and meticulously executed in the small hours of the morning, was the concluding act in a sordid and farcical morality play which no one got wind of, until the very end. But there was a completely unexpected fall-out to it, an unscripted final scene, which was irreversibly played out as well. The following description of that night’s events is a reconstruction based on my subsequent conversations with Farokh and Jungoo.

Nettled that the wishy-washy submissiveness shown by his superiors in a matter which, in his opinion, constituted a serious threat to the tradition and conventions of an ancient religion— which customary practices, after all, had been its mainstay, and the very reason for its having survived the depredations of the centuries — Buchia decided to take matters into his own hands.

It was of crucial importance of course, he realized, that this be a top secret operation. If he was at all apprehensive about it, it was only because he knew he could not pull it off on his own, and would be compelled to depend on his accomplices. That afternoon, in his office, he tried to impress on the gang of five the utmost need for secrecy. He told them that the police would definitely press charges against all of them if they were found out. The other matter which he stressed as being of greatest importance was that they should remain sober, and not under any circumstances, touch alcohol during that entire night.

As far as the first imperative went, all five kept their word, not disclosing their plans to anyone outside the gang, not even their closest friends or their wives. Of course, Buchia had been careful to reveal even to his co-conspirators no more than a small fragment of his plan at the time, only as much as was absolutely necessary to carry it forward. Somehow, it seemed, the boys had unexpectedly developed great confidence in their leader’s ability and acumen. As far as the second condition went, however — that of abjuring alcohol — there may have been some difficulty. For one thing, the operation was scheduled to commence at 1 a.m. Now, for confirmed boozards to be able to stay awake and alert at that hour without recourse to a swig or two of the warmth-giving beverage seems unlikely. Some of their actions and conversations during the long night that followed also indicate that one or two of them may have consumed more than just a swig or two.

Buchia himself had padlocked the door of Wadiaji’s funeral cottage, after Joseph’s body was deposited there. The key was in his office but cleverly, to ensure he himself wasn’t directly implicated, at a quarter to one that night he got one of the boys to break the lock using an iron rod as a wrench. Jungoo had been told to bring the hearse up to the cottage. Within minutes, Joseph’s body was shifted into the hearse. At precisely one o’clock, Buchia got into the front cabin next to Jungoo, and the four others, Farokh, Fali, Homiar and Shiavux squeezed into the back of the hearse with the corpse.

‘Let’s go,’ Buchia whispered to Jungoo. It was a cold night; and a full moon bathed everything in ghostly white. The engine of the vehicle wouldn’t restart until the boys in the back got out and pushed it for a hundred feet or so to a point where the declension in the hill was marked. Then it just took a nudge, and the hearse rolled down, firing the cylinders of its engine spontaneously. The boys cheered, and Jungoo raced the engine for a few seconds until Buchia shushed them harshly.

‘Do you donkeys have any sense at all?’ he asked in an urgent whisper. ‘The watchman will be up here in a minute to investigate what the ruckus is all about. .’

Everyone quietened down.

‘Where to now?’ Jungoo whispered back at Buchia.

‘Sewree,’ he answered. ‘The cemetery — do you know it? — where we can give our friend a decent Christian burial. .’

As it was the watchman at the gate of the Towers of Silence was completely dead to the world, smothered in a muffler and a monkey cap. He didn’t stir even when the hearse approached.

‘See,’ said Buchia. ‘Just look at the scoundrel! Paid to stay awake, but already adrift in the land of Nod. Anyone who had a mind to could easily enter, steal a corpse, and walk away with it. .’ It was meant to be a sort of self-deprecating joke, for that’s exactly what he and his cronies were up to. But nobody laughed. Instead, Fali asked in all seriousness:

‘Now who would want to steal a corpse? Death has already robbed him of everything he ever owned. Why pillage a pauper?’

Nobody had an answer to that philosophical aside either. Then Shiavux intoned with the sanctimonious propriety of a school’s head-boy:

‘Please understand: we’re not stealing a corpse; no, actually we’re only relocating it. And that, too, for a very good cause: to protect the purity of our religion and race.’

If he had expected their leader, Buchia, to applaud his sentiments, he must have been disappointed, for Buchia only frowned, then growled at Shiavux:

‘Okay, okay, then. Less said the better. .’

Meanwhile Homiar, who had stepped out to open the gate for the hearse, shut it again and climbed back in.

‘Snoring away like an ox,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t have woken up if I had kicked the chair out from under him. .’

‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Buchia. ‘Try to think straight, boys. One witness is all it’ll take to identify the lot of us tomorrow, when the shit hits the fan. .’

Then they were off to Sewree. Streets deserted, not even a stray dog in sight. Poor people who might normally have been sleeping in the open on the pavements had found shelter under the awnings of shop fronts, or in the forecourts of residential buildings. It was the 23 rdof December. The boys in the back were glad to be huddled together, despite having an icy corpse in their midst. Jungoo was the only one who had come prepared for the chill, wearing a long-sleeved pullover. Buchia wore a thick linen vest whose deacon-like choker protruded from under the collar of his shirt. Occasionally at junctions and turnings, he gave directions to Jungoo, who wasn’t as confident as he was, of the shortest route to Sewree.