Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

by Cyrus Mistry

  Already humiliated by the events of the last fortnight, the boys were not impressed by the high moral ground taken by Coyaji, nor the syrupy pap he had just dished out. We were on our best behaviour, of course—no one heckled him, or argued during his discourse. But, as soon as he had left, another meeting took place, a great deal livelier, on Rustom’s terrace. Coyaji’s polemical efforts had only made everyone more determined not to let things quietly return to the way they were.

  And yet, given the way poor people generally tend to accept their lot as unchanging, and unchangeable, it is quite likely they would have. Reverted to ‘normalcy’, that is, had the trustees handled the situation a little more sensitively.

  The next week or ten days were eventful, possibly the busiest we had known. I don’t mean just with our regular duties. Those proceeded as usual, of course—and the number of corpses had definitely gone down in recent days—but there was the matter of Jungoo Driver.

  Poor Jungoo. . . It had been only three days since he had got back behind the wheel again of a more or less functional hearse. This was of course a great boon to us corpse bearers who, otherwise, would have been trudging along for several hours every day lifting the load of corpse and bier. But our luck—and Jungoo’s—didn’t hold out. On the very fourth day after he had started driving it again, a BEST bus rammed diagonally into the driver’s end of the hearse, nearly toppling it. Jungoo suffered two minor fractures and many abrasions. His condition wasn’t serious, and luckily, Bujji and Kobaad were with him.

  Winding through the narrow streets of Girgaum to collect a corpse, the accident happened before they could reach the bereaved party’s address; so in its aftermath, they were not burdened with the responsibility of protecting a corpse. The driver of the BEST bus was arrested by the cops for drunken driving, and Bujji and Kobaad got Jungoo admitted to the Parsi General Hospital.

  Much later, that evening, on the day of the accident, I was at Rustom’s when a deeply agitated Cawas stumbled in. Cawas, or Cowsi, as we called him, was Jungoo’s elder brother, a corpse bearer of many years’ standing. That night, he looked suddenly older and somewhat stunned as if suffering the effects of concussion; as though he had himself been driving the battered hearse, not his younger brother.

  ‘He won’t get a paisa, that’s what he says. . . Imagine! Not a paisa!’

  Cawas was nearly in tears. Apparently, he had just met Buchia to ask him for an advance towards defraying Jungoo’s hospital expenses. Buchia had been impatient and ill-tempered, deliberately sadistic.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Rustom. ‘If you expect Buchia to shell out anything from his own pocket you’re sadly deluded! A bloody miser, if ever there was one.’

  ‘No, no!’ spluttered Cowsi, unable to speak clearly. ‘Buchia said he’d spoken to Coyaji. In the afternoon—after the accident— by phone. “Can’t pay for careless driving,” he tells me.’

  ‘Who? Buchia?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, listen! He was only reporting what Coyaji said. Then that Edul, that bloody chamcha, puts in his two bits: “Few hundreds will anyway go towards repairing the damage to a brand new hearse. . .” “What!” says I, “brand new? It’s been with the garage these last five weeks.” “At least the body was brand new, before your brother banged it up. . .”

  ‘Then Buchia continues, “And who’s to say he hadn’t been tippling with his good-for-nothing friends before he left for the pick-up in the afternoon? Should be happy he doesn’t have more serious injuries of his own. . .” That’s Buchia for you, the hullkutt: “Coyaji’s in no mood to pay for anything,” he says. “Don’t even ask.” Don’t even ask. . .? Now what do I do? How’ll Jungoo settle the hospital bill? His wife and kids, how they’ll manage?’

  ‘Calm down, calm down, Cowsi. . .’ Rustom urged. ‘They can’t refuse to pay. There’s a police record to show it was the bus driver who was drunk. . . Other trustees will make Coyaji see sense. Only, it may take a little time.’

  ‘If necessary, we’ll come with you to talk to the trustees,’ I, too, reassured Cawas.

  Initially, though, we khandhias had to take a collection to help Jungoo’s wife and kids get by. Buchia himself, in a rare gesture of generosity, conceded fifty rupees, twenty of which were meant to go into the collection for the family, and the remaining thirty to be deposited at the hospital as an advance payment on Jungoo’s bills. No doubt, Buchia would claim it later from his bosses, or find a way to compensate himself for the expense. If, that is, the suggestion to placate us with a small contribution hadn’t come in the first place from Coyaji himself.

  Usually one of the women—Dolly or Khorshed or Perin— carried a simple tiffin of home-cooked food to the hospital for Jungoo; the hospital provided a free tea and breakfast, but meals had to be paid for separately.

  He was recovering nicely, and would be discharged in a day or two, the doctors had confided in him.

  ‘Don’t feel like leaving this place at all,’ he would lament to whoever carried him his lunch. ‘So much peace, so much rest. . . It’s like being in heaven. . .’

  To make his discharge from hospital a little less regrettable, we had planned a small get-together on the occasion of his return. In the end, a sort of meeting did take place, but with only a few of us present. Nor were we clinking glasses or passing around the bottle. A grim affair it was, all told, at which we could only review our options. And we felt emboldened enough not to find it necessary to repair secretively to the grotto.

  For that very morning of the day on which Jungoo was to return home, we received another visit from Edul. This time, he was carrying only two letters: one for Rustom, and the other one for me.

  It was clear from the contents of these letters that both of us had been identified as ‘ringleaders’ or motivators behind the charter of demands, and the person or persons who had thought it fit to send us these letters wanted to snuff out any nascent trouble seen to be brewing at the Towers of Silence. Without a doubt, you could say, it was the trustees’ own obtuseness that forced our hand, and led us all to the edge of a precipice.

  The most depressed sub-caste of the relatively affluent Parsis of Bombay—its khandhias and nussesalars—had never before struck work. Not that they didn’t have enough cause or provocation for such direct action, or that there was any substance to Coyaji’s claim that the trustees cared for them as though they were ‘their own children’.

  I suppose the truth was that centuries of oppression and indoctrination had effectively robbed them of the imagination required to conceive of a different order of life, or to question a creed according to which the Almighty Creator had relegated them to such a lowly, depraved existence, while hypocritically promising them (at least us nussesalars) liberation from rebirth for faithfully carrying out their laborious duties in this lifetime. The argument smacked so completely of human rather than divine machination; I could see this more clearly, I suppose, because I didn’t actually belong by heredity to the sub-caste of corpse bearers.

  Yet, ensnared in manacles of obfuscation, the vice-like grip of fear was unyielding. Even to convince Rustom that what I was proposing wasn’t utterly rash and suicidal took almost two hours of argument and debate. Finally it was belligerent Farokh who said something that tilted the balance.

  ‘If we let them get away with intimidation this once,’ he observed aloud, while sitting with us, ‘they will espouse this method as an all-time effective strategy for controlling us—hiring and firing at will.’

  I should explain: the two fresh letters that Edul had delivered to us that morning stated that my services as nussesalar were terminated forthwith, and that I should vacate my quarters in fifteen days’ time, for indulging in subversive activities against the interests of the community even while ‘on probation’. And Rustom’s letter actually referred to the dire fate of ‘other troublemakers’, warning him of a similar end to his ‘long and hitherto successful career’ as corpse bearer, should he continue his association with mischief-mongers who w
ere raking up trouble in the peaceful environs of the Towers of Silence.

  On reading his letter, Rusi maintained a stunned silence for a whole minute, his large body heaving, as he breathed in deeply. Can’t remember if I mentioned this earlier, but Rustom is a pretty senior person who had already completed twenty-five years of service. In our community of khandhias, he is regarded as a sort of father figure, a particularly kind and well-meaning soul who could always be relied on for advice and support. By involving him in the disciplinary action taken against me, the trustees had made their worst faux pas.

  As for the termination letter issued to me, I could not but believe that it was Buchia once again who had wrongly advised Coyaji to take this action. His cloying interest in me had grown to a point of obsession, at around this time, as also his unbridled sense of power. Knowing I had a small baby to feed and shelter, he would have liked nothing better than for me to turn up at his doorstep, begging for a reprieve.

  Never before, and never since, have the corpse bearers of Doongerwaadi, the Towers of Silence, gone on strike.

  In August 1942, when British towns and cities were reeling under attack from the German Luftwaffe, and Hitler’s army had undertaken major offensives in Europe, Africa and Russia (Temoo’s radio, as you see, kept us informed), we corpse bearers were completely united amongst ourselves in launching a hartaal—a complete stoppage of work. Our decision to ‘down tools’, as it were—or rather, not lift corpses—took Buchia, Coyaji, and the entire Parsi Punchayet completely by surprise. They were so flummoxed that for the first twenty-four hours, they did not react, as if hoping against all evidence to the contrary that the next morning they would find things had returned to normal.

  Fortunately for us, in our line of work, no lockout or closure can be imposed by the management. For the assembly line of corpses keeps moving, regardless of whether the latter are disposed of or not. Calls to Buchia’s office, reporting deaths and asking for the corpse to be carried away continued as usual, followed by persistent and progressively impatient reminders. But no corpses were removed from the homes of the bereaved on that day, or for the next three days.

  I had persuaded Rustom that there was no chance of our being summarily dismissed for dereliction of duty, and blacklegs being hired to do the work. It wouldn’t be easy to find replacements from within the Parsi community in a hurry; nor would any self-respecting Parsi allow his near-and-dear ones to be handled by an untouchable Hindu or Muslim beggar.

  Within twenty-four hours, there was a great furore in the community. Letters to the editor in the local and vernacular papers came in, fast and furious. Only the most colourfully worded were printed.

  Many of them condemned the Parsi Punchayet for being ‘a bunch of lazy and corrupt self-seekers’, ‘puffed up on privilege’, for allowing the situation to get so out of hand, for treating the corpse bearing caste with so much contumely and contempt that they had no option but to fight for their rights by refusing to work. This line of thought represented the reformist minority in the community, who felt that mindless adherence to age-old practices and conventions had alienated its weakest section; that bigoted and inflexible views were endangering the entire community and, in fact, the very traditions which our forefathers had sought to uphold and protect.

  But the voice of orthodoxy was overwhelmingly represented, too, people who felt enraged that khandhias had actually dared to ‘hold the community to ransom’, that we should be ‘summarily sacked’ and punished ‘in the harshest possible way’. This faction even took out a small procession that marched through the streets demanding the strictest reprisals against us, carrying placards that made unpleasant broadsides such as:

  BLACKMAIL IS THE LAST RESORT OF SCOUNDRELS

  and

  THOSE WHO FEED THE VULTURES HAVE BECOME OMNIVORES THEMSELVES!

  They staged a sit-down protest on the pavement outside the Punchayet building’s entrance for ten minutes or so but, not having applied for police permission to do so, the cops soon shooed them off for obstructing pedestrian movement.

  A feeble attempt was also made to engineer a split in our ranks in the hope, I suppose, of its leading to more defections. The target of this insidious potshot was poor Fardoonji, who was issued a veiled threat by Edul that he could lose his quarters and be out in the streets if he didn’t cooperate. I don’t know exactly how old he was at the time, but he was certainly very old. He might have appeared to be the most suitable candidate for this ugly gambit, because of his strong sense of duty and propriety, and the great reverence he showed towards all forms of authority—be it Punchayet trustees, or the Almighty himself.

  I still remember what Fardoonji said when he came to condole after Seppy’s death: ‘Don’t judge Him, son. Don’t be angry. . . We don’t understand everything that happens to us. How could we. . .how could anyone? So vast the world is, the heavens so much vaster, and so much going on all the time, continuously. We can only bow our heads and pray. . . I’m very sorry, Phiroze. If there’s anything you need. . .’

  But, though docile, he was a good man, and held out.

  Despite the mixed public reaction, we corpse bearers stuck to our guns, so to speak. The strike lasted only three-and-a- half days before the trustees climbed down and granted all our demands, including the provisions for overtime, casual leave and my unconditional reinstatement. It was a tense period for us. During those three days the price of ice in Bombay skyrocketed from eight annas per kilo to six rupees per kilo.

  Remarkably, the vultures themselves seemed to know in advance that no funerals were scheduled. Instead of the scores of scavengers who collect at the Towers regularly, in time for their repast, that first morning of the strike saw only three or four circling the sky vapidly; and within a minute or two even those were gone. After that, for the next three days until the strike was over, not a single vulture was seen anywhere near the Towers of Silence.

  Once an agreement was reached between trustees and corpse bearers, there was a large backlog of funerals to be cleared. For those next three days, a fair amount accrued to us khandhias and nussesalars by way of overtime. And the vultures, too, clocked in with precision once the strike was over. Though instinctually constrained from gorging, they, too, I presume, enjoyed a continual and unlimited feast.

  Initially, the mood amongst us was jubilant and celebratory. Most of us were working fewer hours, and our monthly incomes had gone up. When I resumed work, along with all the others, nobody said a thing to me; I was pleased to have come out of this sorry and slightly desperate chapter of my life cleanly.

  One night when, out of sheer boredom, Temoo rigged the power line from the lamp post outside his tenement to his radio (Yezdi ‘Electrician’ had done it for him several times before, and showed him how), through much static and radio noise, while randomly fiddling with the tuner on his set, he caught once again that woman’s voice we had first heard by chance about a month ago.

  ‘This is the Congress Radio calling on 42.34 metres from somewhere in India. Bapu’s message to all Indian people is very clear. These are his words: “Now we have given the call to our rulers to Quit India, every one of you should from this moment on consider yourself a free man or woman, and even act as if you are free and no longer under the heel of this imperialism. This is no make-believe. . . You have to cultivate the spirit of freedom before it comes physically. . . The chains of a slave are broken the moment he considers himself a free man.”’

  For some reason, we all remembered Udham Singh, the martyr. It was perhaps two years ago All India Radio had informed us of a man who had shot Brigadier Michael O’Dwyer at a public meeting in London. The news was exhilarating. When given a chance to speak his final words before he was hanged, Udham Singh had simply said, ‘I have no regrets. I feel proud to be the one who executed the butcher of Jallianwalla. . .’ To the memory of that Sardar’s raw courage, we drank that night what was probably an unreasonable quantity of hooch.

  Ten

  It star
tles me that in all these preceding pages not once have I attempted a detailed description, physical or otherwise, of my Sepideh; even though she was the centre of my life—still is, she remains there—as also, she must inevitably be of these copious, rambling notes. Having realized this, I ought at least to try. Though the very thought of such an effort makes me clammy, sinks my stomach into queasy disequilibrium—but why?

  The answer is obvious. Seppy’s gone; and because she’s no more, I must rely solely on recollection to evoke what would surely have overblown into an impersonation larger than life. Do I need to fear this? How indeed could exaggeration creep into a description of someone who constituted my world, my whole life? Or am I being dishonest to persist in believing so?

  How quickly it becomes difficult to remember a person who is dead with any sort of clarity. No matter how I may long to believe otherwise, there are no signs or messages from her, from the beyond, that she’s still there. Or, if she is, that she has any interest at all in the fate of us living. . . The details are fading faster than I can hold on to them.

  Though we enjoyed being together at all times, Seppy and I never did have much to talk about, or discuss. By way of shared experience, we began with little in common. And as far as the world outside was concerned, by no stretch of imagination or experience, was that our domain. Cut off, completely and irrevocably from it, all the news that ever filtered in from that world came by word of mouth, or emanated from the large wooden cabinet of a box-like radio that Temoo owned.

  In his own estimation, ‘a priceless instrument’, the radio was manufactured in Germany, and had been acquired somehow by his late wife, Rudabeh, from some well-wisher in earlier days. No, in those early days, our living quarters were not electrified—no electric lights, no fans, no radios. We lived by candlelight and, if we ran out of those, or oil for the lamps, or kerosene, as was so often the case, natural light alone defined the shape of our waking hours.