by Cyrus Mistry
It was then that Fali spoke, in the tone of a courteous and wise mediator:
‘Please sir, do not mind me if I make a suggestion. . .’
The caretaker turned to look at him. Buchia stared at him suspiciously as well, almost certain now that Fali had ignored his cautionary warning about not tippling. But he looked sober; and Buchia was secretly glad for any help he could get in finding a way out of this impasse.
‘Sir, this gentleman—the deceased—is a respectable Christian, and we want him to have a proper Christian burial. But he has no money, and no family to provide for his coffin. If you would only allow us, my friends and I can knock together a coffin in no time. Some scraps of wood, a box of nails, a hammer. . .’
The caretaker looked incredulous as he heard Fali’s inventory of his requirements. Meanwhile, Farokh whispered something urgently to Fali in Gujarati, and Fali replied in English,
‘Why, it’s only a box. We could easily—’
Now the caretaker interrupted, speaking harshly and contemptuously.
‘Don’t want you buggers messing around my workshop. . .I can see how respectable you-all are, holding a funeral at two in the morning.’
‘There were complications. . . You must believe us. The deceased is a sad, unfortunate person who has already suffered a great deal. . . Let us not make things more unpleasant for him—’ said Fali.
But Buchia cut him short. Presumably tired and exasperated, he had decided it was time to take matters in hand and adopt the one tactic he found most effective in such situations: that is, to show rage. Or perhaps he did genuinely take offence:
‘Who’re you calling buggers, eh?’ suddenly raising his voice, he shrieked. ‘You bloody pimp! You swollen-headed greedy pig of a Gomes! You’ve been leading me on from yesterday. Haggling, haggling. . . Every chance you get you want to squeeze out some more. You’re taking advantage of our difficulty. Even now at the last minute—I know what I’ll do. Give me back my money. Give me back my money! We’ll go find some other burial plot.’
‘You can have your money back at the gate,’ said the caretaker. ‘On your way out. First load the corpse back into the van.’
‘What!’ yelled Buchia, now really annoyed at being crossed. ‘I want it now, you understand? Then we’ll put the corpse back in. Right now! Hand it over, shorty!’
‘At the gate, I said. On your way out.’
‘When I say now, I mean NOW!’ screamed Buchia, like a madman, and lunged murderously at the caretaker.
Despite the brightness of the night, Buchia hadn’t noticed that the man he was attacking was standing in front of a freshly dug pit. The big-headed dwarf nimbly stepped aside at the very last moment, and Buchia would surely have crashed into Joseph Kanga’s intended grave but for a reflex split-second parrying on his part. Instead, he fell hard, sideways, against a stone; and while doing so, managed to grab the caretaker’s arm and pull him down as well. The latter wasn’t hurt, though. He quickly got back on his feet and dusted himself, while louring at the man sprawled at his feet in pure disgust.
But Buchia must have been in intense pain, for he started weeping. Not very loudly, he tried to suppress his sobs, yet he was loud enough for everyone to see that something had gone terribly wrong.
‘Be brave, sir, don’t cry,’ Fali consoled him. ‘At least you didn’t fall into the grave. Then we would have had to bury you here only. . .with or without a coffin!’
But Buchia was in no mood for jokes. He wouldn’t even let the boys help him up. From the way he held himself, and gradually manipulated himself on to his haunches, it seemed like he had broken a bone, possibly his left collarbone. The pain must have been agonizing, but Buchia kept his presence of mind. Putting his right hand in his pocket he pulled out a bunch of notes and gave them to Farokh.
‘Count out eight hundred rupees and give them to him. Let’s finish what we came here to do.’
Next morning, when the mourners started arriving for Joseph’s funeral, and his body was missing, all hell broke loose. Buchia, whose injury had not been attended to all night, was trembling, and delirious with pain and fever. Many of the senior-most trustees including Aloo Pastakia, Tehmton Anklesaria, and the Punchayet’s Chief Executive, Burzhin Hirjibehdin, had decided to attend the funeral as a mark of respect and courtesy to Nariman Kanga. Coyaji was there, too.
Buchia was in no position to answer any questions. At night, he had stubbornly refused to seek admittance to any hospital after the last shovel of earth was heaped on Joseph’s coffin, saying he wanted to spend what remained of the night in his own quarters. But it had turned out to be the worst night of his life; for he could neither sleep nor ward off the fanciful torments his wakeful brain fabricated in anticipation of what the morning would bring. The pain must have been bad, too. Mercifully, during the outbreak of all the commotion over the missing body, Farokh and Jungoo quietly bundled him off to the Parsi General.
The redoubtable Nariman Kanga was completely distraught when he heard that his son’s body was missing—but only for a few minutes. He recovered quickly and phoned his friend Ignatius Strickham, now Commissioner of Police, who promised to immediately visit the Parsi General Hospital to cross-examine Buchia, and launch a probe into this devilish piece of trickery enacted no doubt by some extremist splinter group of the orthodoxy.
In the condition he was in, for Buchia to see the red-faced Englishman towering over his hospital bed firing questions at him must have put the fear of God in him, possibly precipitating his untimely end. He didn’t die of a broken collarbone, of course, but during that cold night when he had wrestled—or tried to wrestle—a dwarf to the ground, he had apparently caught a severe chill, that swiftly progressed into double pneumonia from which he never recovered.
On his deathbed, under the gimlet eye of Ignatius Strickham, Buchia confessed to kidnapping the corpse of Joseph Kanga and revealed the place of his interment. Shortly after, he died. Nariman Kanga dropped all charges against the miscreants who had kidnapped Joseph’s body. Nor did he desire that his son’s body be exhumed, or renew his efforts to arrange for him the Zoroastrian funeral he had so desired while still alive. Instead, he decided to let him lie in the selfsame grave undisturbed, and built a modest monument of flawless white marble in remembrance of his son at the site. It can still be seen at the Sewree Christian cemetery, smeared with dust and bird droppings, with its slightly cryptic but finely etched inscription still very legible:
Gentlest of souls,
Savant and scholar extraordinaire,
Who sought in death as in life to be
A morsel of tasteful
Charity.
Here lies Joseph Nariman (Maloney) Kanga (1902-1947)
Fourteen
For years, the forest on the hill had been my refuge.
Thick woods might more precisely describe the tangled profusion of fruit and flowering trees that covered the hill. Thickest near the summit where the crude path that led to the rusty iron gate of a small white fire temple was almost lost in tall grass and bramble; here grew casuarinas, banyans, date palms, mango, pear and so many flowering bushes and trees whose names I do not know. On occasion, I would spot a hare or a snake here; sometimes peahens, once, even a deer. In this strangely enchanting Eden, I felt completely at home.
Then, one day I saw a forest nymph, lying cradled in the low branch of a tree. After that, everything changed for me. . .
Difficult to say when exactly my interest in the world began to wane. It didn’t happen in an instant, or a day.
Yet, if compelled to choose a moment, I would have to pinpoint the day Sepideh died. Remember this, though: the entire strike, Farida’s prolonged schooling, my brief intimacy with Buchia, my evening with Rohinton at the Taj, the abduction and forced interment of Joseph Kanga, India’s independence, the departure of the British, all these happened long after Seppy died and I can’t remember feeling so completely uninvolved in any of these events while they were happening, as I now feel from m
ost public affairs. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve grown too old to care.
The British left India, Indians took over, but nothing really changed. When India achieved Independence from its British rulers, if I remember rightly, Gandhi was in favour of disbanding the Congress party. He wanted to abandon Western-style confrontational politics, and concentrate on reaffirming basic values of self-help, service and upliftment of all; on rebuilding a community-based consensus at the village level. But Gandhi fell to the bullets of a Hindu fundamentalist who believed he had betrayed the nation. After him, many leaders rose to power who strove to create a nation out of fragmented regional interests, but not one of them shared his vision. Nor did any of them care to pause and look back, reassess where, along the high road of history, he or she may have taken a wrong turn.
As in the usual course of things, earthquakes, floods, droughts, riots, wars, exploitation of the helpless, accidents, calamities of every sort continue to take their toll—the meaningless, mindless decimation of millions of human ants, or should I say, vermin? I’m not talking merely about the misery of the poor, or the disingenuousness of the powerful, but of that unstoppable merry-go-round of human suffering, of the abominable lack of any higher meaning or significance to life, entirely at the mercy as it is of random death. I have lived through almost sixty years of what was probably a historically significant century, and sometimes I do wish I had taken better notes, paid greater heed to Temoo’s radio for the news of the world it gave me. But I never cared to: the torrent of human suffering ran unabated, shutting out every glimmer of hope.
Politicians failed to act, reneged on promises; betrayed the people who elected them to office. Everywhere, everyone in public life, whoever he or she might be, is on the make, feathering a private nest. And so it has continued for decades. The only change I can make out in this compulsive industry is that incidents of fraudulence, cheating and theft of public money have accelerated both in frequency and volume beyond the wildest dreams of even those who first concocted them; until the very concept of probity in public life has become laughable.
Out here in my narrow microcosm of the Towers of Silence, too, so much has changed. For one thing, the roll call of the dead has been relentless. I don’t mean just the dead we attend to, but from among our own.
Poor Bujji was the first to go. His son had found a job, his daughter a husband. Living alone, without any visitors ever coming up to his flat, his body withered and dried like a twig. His front door had to be forced in when he didn’t appear for several days, and the smell from his flat became unmistakable. . . A man, once proud of his looks, slunk into himself, and faced death alone in an attic room.
Aimai, much older than he, died shortly after. . . And within six months, after a very brief illness, my friend Rustom, too. It was as if the bond between him and his mother was more essential than any of us had realized. Surprisingly, Vera didn’t take it so badly.
For a while, poor Temoo continued to potter about trying to help me in the kitchen. But the innocuous lump in his stomach had grown into a sepulchral mound that nagged him to tears; until one day, it burst and killed him of internal haemorrhaging. It was a bad blow for Farida, as I had always feared it would be.
But not as bad as the one that followed some three years later. Her childhood boyfriend, Khushro, had found a decent, well-paying job and moved out. He promised Farida he would come back and marry her once he had set up a home and saved some money. But he never did. The worst of it was that she didn’t know how to contact him, because he had changed jobs and moved on.
Like her spiritual sister, Vera, who has also remained single, Farida too may be headed for spinsterhood. But Vera at least has her work at the law firm, which is prized highly. Farida’s job is much more low-profile, on the shop floor of a workshop which manufactures nuts and bolts in Parel. Her Uncle Vispy helped her secure it. She enjoys travelling to work and back on a BEST bus everyday, but complains that traffic in the city is growing at an alarming rate.
Hardly anyone is still around who took part in the strike thirty-five years ago. But many of the advantages we wrested from our tussle with the trustees have resulted in positive change. Right now, for instance, there’s some replastering of my building going on. Whitewashing of all quarters every three or four years is a regular feature now. Children of khandhias and nussesalars are given free education up to high school, and easy loans or scholarships are available to those who show promise, or desire a university education. A new community room has been set up near the Albless pavilion, where there’s a carom board, table tennis and a television set.
But even here, at the Towers of Silence, commercial exploitation of properties has begun. Four acres of sylvan land were recently sold to a well-known Bombay builder for vast sums of money, and trees have been cut. Construction of a deluxe block of apartments has commenced; it will be called Ahura Apartments. Apparently, only bonafide Zoroastrians who can afford these exclusive flats, and who have booked them early enough, will move in. I fear for the wild garden of my youth. The teeming city nibbles at its edges. The turn of the wheel may well have become irreversible.
A few days before he died, Temoo begged forgiveness of me.
At the time I speak of, he was seventy-four, and rather obese. His fleshy brown skin hung loose, patchy and discoloured; unhealthy eruptions covered his forehead and other parts of his body. A large mole on his right cheek, which had been dry for some years, had begun to ooze. The protuberance in his abdomen had become more pronounced. When he left his bed to walk to the toilet, he needed to support it with his right hand; in his left, he gripped a stout walking stick.
‘What for?’ I asked him, puzzled, but immediately suspicious.
‘Ah,’ he groaned. ‘You ask me for what. . .?’ Tears started rolling down his cheeks, and his voice choked in sniffles and sobs. I was not impressed. In the past, I had seen him produce tears at will.
‘Can you see my suffering?’ he asked. ‘If I were able to, I would go to Framroze and throw myself at his feet. . . My Sepideh was taken from me so young. . .it was punishment for my sins! Look at me now. . .’
And for a few minutes once again he was crying piteously. The notion crossed my mind that what he was about to tell me was something along the lines of what my mother had declared after my first encounters with Sepideh, that it was all a conspiracy hatched by Temoorus to have her seduce me.
‘Hatred was in my heart, Phiroze. . . The desire to avenge Rudabeh had consumed me. . . But I had no idea that my daughter would fall so completely in love with you, or you with her. . .I never thought that you would marry her, and renounce the world. . .’
‘But that’s what you asked of me. . . That was the condition you made. . .’
‘Yes, yes, I know. . .but I never thought you would actually agree. That your parents would permit you to follow such a course.’
‘They didn’t have a choice. . . Well, while it lasted we were very happy, Seppy and me. I certainly don’t think you need to ask my forgiveness. I’m sure she doesn’t either.’
‘But it didn’t last very long. . . That’s my point. My intention was evil. . .to harm Framroze. . . Instead, it was I who was punished, and my Sepideh taken from me so young. . .I miss her so much, Phiroze. . .I miss her. . .’
Once again, the tears rolled, streaking his pitted brown cheeks with a film of gloss. I had not understood yet what he was on about. I waited patiently for him to come to the point, but my mind had wandered back to the days and weeks that followed Seppy’s sudden demise. . .
I was devastated and, I have no doubt, Temoo was, too. But even more unbearable and frightening to witness was the enormity of Farida’s pain; my poor three-year-old cried inconsolably every night after her mother’s passing; and her tears wouldn’t cease until they were snuffed out by sheer exhaustion, or crushed under masses of accumulated sleep.
Initially, a panic-stricken concern for finding ways to distract the child from her overwhelming grief bonded u
s: two adults, relatively inexperienced in the ways of parenting, we urgently sought means to help her cope. But independently of our efforts, Farida displayed a gracious willingness to not dwell on sorrow and, as if to compensate herself, grew exceedingly attached to her grandpa.
We needed each other, Temoo and I—I, more than he. I had to keep working, and was often away from home for long hours, while he kept my daughter company. A smug awareness of this imbalance in our respective compulsions gradually became evident. It took the form of a sublime indifference on his part towards my own disquiet, which I had expressed on numerous occasions: that between us we might end up spoiling the little princess at the centre of our lives if we indulged her every whim.
At this time, Temoo was still drinking. The rowdiness of his younger days, which I’d heard something about while Seppy was still around, would erupt, suddenly, late in the night and, within moments, his outpourings of grief turn abusive. But, such imprecation and insult as were spewed out during these nocturnal displays of rancour were not directed so much at me as at my father, who Temoo claimed had ‘robbed and ruined’ his family. Somewhat incoherently, his ranting ran on late into the night; long after I had stopped listening, after I realized it was impossible to tell whether he was mourning his recently deceased daughter, Sepideh, or her long-departed mother, Rudabeh, for whose tragic end Temoo squarely placed the blame on Framroze’s head.
During one such particularly rowdy and rage-filled spectacle one night, Farida woke up. Aghast at seeing her usually kind and affectionate grandpa in the wild state he was in, she burst into tears. To his credit, I should say, after that traumatic night, which must have been harrowing for Temoo, too, he gave up drinking. Yet his tearful incoherence on this occasion brought back to mind those drunken tirades. I had almost switched off listening when I realized he was saying something quite different.
