Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Mrs Verma cast a quick, uncertain glance at the corpse and wiped her forehead with the fall of her sari. I don’t know, she said.

You see, said Dr Mishra, it’s not as easy as you think.

Then Zindi rose to her feet and plodded slowly to Mrs Verma’s chair. She put her hand on her shoulder and glowered across the table at Dr Mishra. Don’t worry, she said, her tongue tripping indignantly over the Hindi syllables. I’ll help you. We’ll do it together. I’ve often done it: we clean out the bodies of our dead, too.

Dr Mishra lowered his head, momentarily embarrassed. Wonderful, he said, under his breath. Now we can have an international feast of love over our adulterous corpse.

Mrs Verma stood up and took Zindi’s arm. Come on, she said, we’d better start now.

Not so soon, Mrs Verma, Dr Mishra called out. You can’t do anything to the corpse yet. You have to contact the authorities first. They may want an autopsy.

Mrs Verma stopped abruptly. That’s right, Dr Mishra smiled. In the meanwhile all you can do is lay the body out properly. I don’t suppose you know how to do that, either, Mrs Verma? Well, let me tell you. First, you have to find a clean place on the floor somewhere and you have to purify it with Ganga-jal. If I remember correctly, you’re meant to cover it with cow dung, too. But since you’re not going to find much cow dung on the sand-dunes, I suppose you could always use camel dung instead and do a few penances when you get back. However, personally I feel compelled to advise you strongly to leave that step out altogether. After that you have to lay the body out straight, with the head pointing south and the feet north.

Mrs Verma dusted her hands briskly. We can lay her out on the veranda, she said to Zindi. That’ll be the best place. But first we have to clean it out properly.

They went into a bathroom and came back carrying buckets and mugs. When the first few mugfuls had splashed over the veranda Dr Mishra began to sniff the air suspiciously. Then, throwing back his head, he burst into laughter. Mrs Verma, he gasped, tell me, is that carbolic acid in those buckets?

Yes, of course, Mrs Verma said.

He nodded weakly. The world has come full circle, he groaned. Carbolic acid has become holy water.

Mrs Verma dropped her bucket, went up to his chair, and stood over him, arms folded. What does it matter? she cried. What does it matter whether it’s Ganga-jal or carbolic acid? It’s just a question of cleaning the place, isn’t it? People thought something was clean once, now they think something else is clean. What difference does it make to the dead, Dr Mishra?

For a microbiologist, Dr Mishra said, wiping his eyes, you’re not very rational, Mrs Verma.

Mrs Verma pulled her sari tight around her waist. Shall I tell you something? she said. I hate microbiology, I hate it.

Is a microbiologist who takes a bit of someone’s piss or pus and runs tests on it really so different from a mechanic who takes a crankshaft or a spark-plug out of a car and checks it to see whether anything’s gone wrong: whether the steel’s rusted or the porcelain’s cracked; whether there’s grime or dust somewhere in the machinery?

The specimens even come to you in bottles, labelled with names or numbers, like so many dirty spark-plugs. It’s not even like being a surgeon: at least the surgeon sees the whole machine, even though it’s all shrouded and chloroformed, face covered and weeping mothers hidden away, every trace of its humanity blanketed. The microbiologist has only her test-tubes. At least the surgeon can see how the parts mesh, how the crankshaft connects to the gear-box. And at the end of it, after he’s done all his oiling and his tightening and his replacing, he can, if he wants to (though he doesn’t, of course) go and take a look at the entire contraption lying dead in the morgue, or ticking away in its room. What does the microbiologist do? Where does she go to see whether all her shelf-fuls of piss are clearing up or dripping blood?

And when you do find something in a specimen can you really help wondering sometimes where all those microbes and bacteria and viruses come from? Whether they can really, all of them, be wholly external to our minds?

And just as you let yourself wonder whether sometimes they are anything other than a bodily metaphor for human pain and unhappiness and perhaps joy as well you cut yourself short, for it dawns on you yet again that ever since Pasteur that is the one question you can never ask.

Then you feel exactly as you did when you once helped in a general practice and found people straying in, all through the day, with nothing wrong with them — nothing that a mechanic could have repaired at any rate — complaining: I have this pain, Doctor, and that pain, Doctor, and I think this or that has gone wrong here or somewhere else. Then, too, you almost began to speak till you realized yet again that the tyranny of your despotic science forbade you to tell them the one thing that was worth saying; the one thing that was true. And that was: There’s nothing wrong with your body — all you have to do to cure yourself is try to be a better human being.

The phone rang an hour after the police had come and gone, when Mrs Verma and Zindi had almost finished with the cleaning of the corpse.

Dr Mishra managed to get to it first. It’s the police, he hissed at Mrs Verma with his hand on the mouthpiece. You’ll see, they’ll never allow your cremation. I told you, there was no point wasting your time explaining to them. Why should they allow it? Why should it make any difference to them whether some passing Indian tourist happens to die here? Why should they agree to bend the rules?

Mrs Verma smiled: Why don’t you hear what they have to say first?

They all gathered around to watch as Dr Mishra listened to the voice at the other end. He said nothing beyond an occasional oui and startled mais peut-être . Gradually his face fell and when he put the phone down it was with a grimace, half-rueful, half-angry.

What did they say? Mrs Verma demanded.

I don’t believe it, he said, shaking his head. They’re not in their right minds. They’ve made a mistake.

Tell us what they said , Mrs Verma cried.

They said it’s all right; they’re willing to look the other way. Only, we have to cremate her quietly, somewhere in the dunes, and quickly.

Mrs Verma bit back a cry of delight. You see, she said, they know how important it is to die properly. Haven’t you heard how during their war of independence the French used to blow up the bodies of the Algerian dead to demoralize the guerillas, because they knew how important it is to Muslims to be buried with their bodies whole and undesecrated? I knew the Algerians would understand: if there’s one thing people learn from the past, it is that every consummated death is another beginning.

And wood? Dr Mishra cried suddenly, when Mr Verma was about to leave the house to fetch a land-rover from the hospital.

Where are you going to get wood from? You have to have wood if you’re going to cremate her. Or do you think her body’s so pure now that it’ll go up like a lump of phlogiston when you put a matchstick to it?

Mrs Verma fell into a chair. That’s true, she said, biting her lip. That’s going to be a problem.

Delightedly, Dr Mishra called out after her husband: Stop, you don’t have to go now. It’s all called off.

But Mrs Verma waved him on. Nonsense, she said. Of course we can find the wood if we try. Go on, get the land-rover; we’ll arrange for wood somehow.

All right, so what’s your plan now, Mrs Verma? Dr Mishra said. Are you going to send us out to chop down date palms?

Mrs Verma laughed: No, no, Dr Mishra, you won’t have to do anything. Mr Das and Mr Bose can do it. It’s quite simple: there’s that old table in the kitchen — the top’s plywood, but the legs are good, solid wood. Then there’s that huge crate-like thing the refrigerator was packed in. I’ll ring up Manda-bahen, too; there’s bound to be lots of wooden boxes and things lying about your house, considering all those expensive things you’re always buying. I know old Miss K. has some termite-ridden old boxes she wants to get rid of.