The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  Dev was not one of the victims of the falling fragments. He was killed on the bridge leading towards Bombay Central well after the all-clear siren, according to the police officer who came to our door the next morning. Someone had noticed him minutes earlier, singing along the middle of the road, his arms open as if raised in welcome to the stars. “What with the dark shirt he was wearing, and no streetlamps or head-lights, neither he nor the taxi driver must have seen each other,” the officer said. “You should go claim the body today from Nair Hospital. It’ll be harder once they send it on to the municipal morgue.”

  The officer left, and I stood there, too shocked to close the door. You emerged from your hiding place in the bathroom. “Did the policeman tell you where Daddy went?”

  ZAIDA PULLED ME through the morning. The war had caused a nine-hour delay for trunk calls booked to Delhi, so she sent telegrams instead. She told me to change my orange sari, reminding me gently that it was white for mourning. You sat dry-eyed in her lap in the hospital waiting room while I went to identify Dev. Given the uncertainty of wartime transport, and the fact that the remains were supposed to be cremated within a day, there seemed little point in waiting for anyone to try and make it from Delhi. She arranged for the body to be driven to the crematorium at Marine Lines, and we followed in a taxi.

  You had not cried at all since hearing the news. Each time I hugged you and you didn’t react, I felt the anguish in my chest. Would you blame me for your father’s death?—even worse, would you blame yourself?

  You stared at the fence of the Queen’s Road park going by, with the sculptures of the tortoise and the hare fable, the fox and the stork. A boy climbed to the top of the metal sputnik, as you had done so many times yourself. I caught a glimpse of him sliding down the pole in the center, heard the laughter of his parents encouraging him on. “Ashvin,” I said, but you kept looking intently out the window, your hands clasped around the edge of the glass.

  We passed by the long wall with the crudely painted signs for rat poison and table fans, the absurdly muscled torso of Dara Singh advertising a wrestling match. Behind, I knew, lay the burning ghats. As our taxi crept along, a procession of men with a corpse held aloft proceeded up the pavement next to us. The face was withered, the body shrunken and decked with flowers—people danced and beat drums to celebrate a life lived so long.

  When I had seen Dev earlier in the hospital, the sheet had draped peculiarly over his body, as if his chest was slumped in underneath. As we entered the chamber with the raised concrete platform on which he lay, I saw that the shroud and the flowers made him appear uncrushed again. You went running between the chairs and mounted the steps to the dais—for a moment, I thought you were going to throw yourself across the body. But you stood staring at the closed eyes and the cotton peeking out of the nostrils, and made no attempt to touch your father.

  “Is this your babuji?” the priest Mrs. Dugal had hired softly asked. With his black-framed glasses and untrimmed beard, he had more the air of a poet than a pundit. “Come, let’s have you wash your hands and your feet,” he said, and took you by the arm to the adjoining room. I sat down uncertainly between Zaida and Mrs. Dugal, thinking that I should have kept your socks and your shoes. About a dozen chairs in the rear were occupied by people who looked like they might have wandered into the wrong funeral—I had no idea who they were.

  When you returned, I got up to join you on the platform, but the priest motioned for me to stay where I was. “There are some things that have to be done alone in this world,” he said, “and it is to the son that this duty falls.” I sat back and watched anxiously, as if you were about to perform the leading part in a school play.

  It was the ghee that made you cry. You followed all the priest’s directives capably until then—repeating the mantras after him, sprinkling the body with sesame and dates, replacing the sprig of basil in Dev’s mouth each time it fell out. Even the ghee, you managed to squeeze out of its bag as instructed, first over one eye, then the other, then the mouth, and the remainder over the heart. But you began to shake when you stood back to look at the thick white puddles, spilling over from Dev’s eyes as if he was crying streams of molten wax. The priest pried the empty bag out of your clenched fingers as you broke into convulsive sobs.

  Zaida restrained me from flying up to the stage and sweeping you into my arms. Already the priest was moving you on to the next ritual. He set a shovel on the floor above Dev’s head and asked you to sprinkle it with water. Still gasping, you lifted the earthenware pot he gave you and brought it down on the blade.

  The pot smashed as it was supposed to, sending pieces clattering across the floor. A few spun over the edge of the platform—one of them struck me lightly on the foot. Your gasps subsided into a steady weeping as the priest’s incantations rose to fill the chamber. The only word I recognized from his stream of Sanskrit was “moksha”—I tried to form a picture in my mind of Dev’s body liberating his soul.

  After dragging the bamboo staff around the body, you sprinkled the red and vermilion powders and completed the last of the prayers. Then you fit your head in the curve between your father’s chest and chin and lay there, closing your eyes and pressing against his neck. Sesame seeds stuck to your cheek, the streams of ghee melted into your hair. I had seen you so many times in this position, balancing contently on Dev’s chest, as he read to you, sprawled out on the sofa or bed. The priest eased you up and handed you the final offering of a garland.

  One by one, the audience members got up to also lay flowers—the Dugals, the Hussains, Zaida, and the two musician friends of Dev she had managed to contact. The people at the back of the room remained seated—an old man, I noticed, had fallen asleep with his mouth open. I stood on the dais, holding a string of marigolds. Should I fall at Dev’s feet, weeping and refusing to let go, the way widows in movies behaved? I remembered the stories of wifely devotion that Biji used to relate—Savitri arguing with Yama, Sati immolating herself when her husband Shiva was insulted. How many women had actually followed Sati through the ages?—thrown screaming into the pyre, or love ushering them voluntarily into the flames?

  But I was unable to even bring myself to touch Dev. I tried to recall him from the first time we had met, the allure in his smile, the chest hair curling provocatively into a snake. But it was difficult to look past the rivulets of ghee now, the basil in his mouth, the smears of vermilion and red, the sesame dotting his face. It was as if death had transformed him from a living, breathing person into a temple shrine at which offerings were made.

  And now the bamboo mat on which Dev lay had been carried into the furnace chamber. The furnace door opened to paint Dev’s forehead gold and give the flowers on his chest the same tint. Two attendants heaved at a lever to push the pallet on which Dev’s mat had been laid. As I bent forward, the pallet hit the ridge of the furnace opening and came to an abrupt stop. The impact sent Dev sliding on his bamboo mat headfirst onto the slab inside the furnace. He lay there unmoving, his face upturned, his arms by his sides, as if holding his breath in an X-ray machine. Then the furnace door began closing and I heard the whoosh of flame. I bent down lower, to catch one last glimpse of Dev, to see the inside of the womb that had swallowed him. The walls were a brilliant orange, the air was beginning to scintillate, and for an instant, I saw myself inside, reclining in the fire next to him.

  WE COLLECTED THE ASHES the next morning. The attendant who took my receipt referred to them as “flowers.” My first thought was to open the iron box and look inside for some sign to confirm they were Dev’s. But I kept the thin white gauze cover on and gave you the box when you asked to carry it.

  Mrs. Dugal had declared that one must travel to Nasik or some other holy spot for the final immersion. “You can take Ashvin with you and stop at all the temples to make a pilgrimage of it.” When I pointed out that it was Chowpatty where Dev was fond of immersing his weekly pooja offerings, she laughed. “The water around Bombay is so impure that even fish, before
they expire, try to slither away.”

  The priest said that water was water, and anything that connected to the ocean was equally holy. “If you think it would have made him happy, then feed a cow an apple or a banana every day for a week afterwards. Otherwise, simply send him to his next life with joy in your heart.”

  I suppose I should have waited to hear what rituals Dev’s family wanted to have performed. Both Arya and Hema were arriving the next day on the Frontier Mail—the telegram had been delivered before we left. But something within me insisted that the ceremony be more personal, that the two of us immerse the ashes at Chowpatty ourselves.

  The Americans had just condemned India at the UN for instigating the war, and there were thousands of people rallying at Chowpatty against them. I had the taxi take us to Nariman Point instead, at the other end of Marine Drive. The first time I had come here was fifteen years ago with Dev, right after we moved to Bombay. I remembered how we had walked past the point where the buildings ended, until we stood at the very edge of the newly reclaimed land. Since then, the reclamation had encroached a lot further into the sea, with several construction sites strewn with trucks and cranes. We walked past the newly completed Air India building, and next to it, the five-star Oberoi hotel still being built.

  The day was warm and sunny, the sky untroubled by enemy planes. The bay stretched out on our right, the waves lapping against the shore tastefully, as if in a watercolor. The road ended as abruptly as it had fifteen years ago, the pavement suddenly giving way to a mass of the ubiquitous tetrapods tumbling down to the water. Where was the spot where Dev and I had paused, to listen for the sea thundering below, to imagine the first Portuguese ships sailing in?

  “There are so many seagulls here,” you said worriedly. “Will it be safe to empty the box?” We were standing at the base of a set of rocky slabs that led to the water’s edge. I had taken the box from you so that you could better keep your balance. Every once in a while a wave bobbed gently over the lowermost step.

  “They won’t bother us. The important thing is that the water should carry Daddy away.” I bent down with the box. “Here, take the gauze off and let it go.” The wind plucked the covering from your hand the instant you released it.

  You hadn’t spoken much since the cremation. At night, you had insisted on sleeping on your father’s favorite sofa, burying your face in the pillows as if trying to breathe him in. I crept in several times to carry you to the empty space next to me in bed, but you were always awake. Finally, I sat on the sofa myself and spent the night cradling your head. At dawn, you raised your head from my lap, suddenly alert. “You weren’t crying like Dugal auntie was. Aren’t you sad that Daddy is dead?”

  “Of course I am,” I managed to reply. “But sometimes grown-ups get so sad that they can’t even cry.”

  I tried now to muster the tears that would comfort you, but they did not come. The vow to never cry again, from the day I married Dev, still held me in control. You uncovered the box to reveal the fine gray ash inside. Mixed in were long black filaments of carbon and bone fragments bleached white. All I could think of, even with the streams flowing down your face, was how comfortably the contents filled the contours of the box. To be purified this way, to end up so compact—it was what I would want for myself when I was dead.

  The wind picked up and some of the ash blew out. Perhaps it was Dev, trying to pull my attention to him. Remember the time when I first held your gaze? Think, Meera, think, was I really so bad? Did you wish me to die, is this the way you wanted it to end? I tried to match the voice to an image in my head. My eyes remained dry, my tears unshed. There was never a time when I had wished this, I could honestly reply. Think, Meera, think, the life that you led.

  I still held the box, but now your hand pulled urgently on my wrist. “Mummy,” you said, and I could see you wanted to immerse the ashes yourself. For an instant, I hesitated—wasn’t this the duty of the wife as well? But then I relinquished my claim. You clambered across the rocks, the box pressed to your chest. I saw you close your eyes and fold your palms in prayer. The words were too far away to hear. I knew you wanted your privacy, so I forced myself to look away.

  How many times must Dev have performed his Thursday afternoon immersions? The shriveled sweet limes from his cupboard temple, the dried flowers, the ash from his incense. Sometimes a piece of fruit or stale chappatis we weren’t going to eat also added to the brown bag. Once, even an idol of Sai Baba that broke in half, an expensive wristwatch which failed to work after the first month. “It all goes back to the ocean, just like Ganesh,” he would tell you. “The sea goddess knows how to fix the things we return this way.” He would touch the bag to your head and mine in blessing, and sometimes take you to Chowpatty with him. I never saw him actually throw the bag in. Would he do it from the edge of the waves, or toss it down from the road rising up to Walkeshwar? It wasn’t that I never took you, Meera—you never came.

  When I turned around finally, you were standing at the lowest level of the rock, the box held poised. A wave skimmed over your shoes, leaving a gray line of wetness on your socks. You tipped the box halfway, and a cloud of ash fell out, swirling back to encircle you in its embrace. A few of the filaments wafted all the way to where I stood, spinning like seed husks through the air.

  You stood there for a few moments, watching the ash settle over the ripples and be carried away by the current. Then, in one movement, you turned the container upside down. A cascade of ash came billowing out. And with it the fragments of bone, white and gleaming, that tumbled towards the water like seashells returned to the ocean.

  THAT NIGHT, YOU SLEPT next to me. For a while, you felt guilty about not being able to doze off on the sofa, like your father used to on so many nights. “Do you think Daddy will mind?” I assured you that your sleeplessness was only because it was a little chilly outside.

  You had shown little reaction to anything since we had come back from Nariman Point. I tried to interest you in your aunt and uncle arriving the next day, but you didn’t brighten up. Zaida brought over a bowl of your favorite dessert, rice kheer, but you hardly touched it. Even Pinky appeared at the door (bearing, of all things, a kite), but you refused to see her. You sat on the balcony all evening, your chin resting on the railing, and stared outside.

  You know how much I loved him. You know I would have died for him. Is that why you tried so hard to keep us apart? Is this what you wanted, Meera, are you satisfied?

  I hadn’t been able to turn off Dev’s voice. He had whispered to me all day, in tones alternately reproachful and benevolent, sometimes telling me how much I had misunderstood him, sometimes reminding me how dependable he had been as a father. It was as if the phantom within me had departed, appeased, and Dev had taken over instead, determined to revamp my feelings towards him. Did you know how much you meant to me? Do you miss me now that I’m gone? Don’t be sad, Meera, I don’t want you to feel regret at all.

  Already Dev’s image was starting to acquire a dignified sepia tone, the edges all smoothed, the blemishes airbrushed out. Was this what happened when people died? What would the picture look like after a few weeks, or a few months? People coming around to tell me what a martyr he was, no one aware of the injustice I had borne? Who was to say that in time even I would remember any of the wrong? The memories of our better moments together welling over everything else?

  It’s the best way, Meera, believe me. Not only for you, but for Ashvin as well. Something for him to cling on to, something for his memory. You emitted a soft sound from your throat as if sympathizing with your father in your sleep.

  It wasn’t as if I was glad that my husband had passed, I felt like protesting. I would bring him back in an instant if I could, if not for myself, then certainly for my son. Everything was still too raw, too new; there would be time enough for grief to come. Understand, Meera, I’m not blaming you. All the years for Munna to grow—I just wish I could have remained around.

  Somewhere, the empty p
ages of an album flapped open. There were entire sections that would have to be filled now by the two of us alone. How would I pull us through, playing the role of both a mother and father? To whom would I turn if I couldn’t do it all? It’s not going to be easy, Meera, you being the only one.

  But then, I came upon an unexpected clearing in my mind. What if I were to accept what had happened as an opportunity bestowed upon me? To view Dev’s death not as a tragedy, but as a bequest. The bequest of freedom, of liberation, to bring you up exactly as I thought you should be. Without the pressure or influence that would constrain you into following in his footsteps.

  I remembered the first time Dev had related the Ganesh story to you. About how Shiva kept refusing Parvati’s pleas to give her a child, how lonely she felt each time he became an ascetic and escaped married life. Hadn’t she gone into the forest and created a baby herself? Mixed together sandalwood paste and bath oil and flakes from her own body, fashioned the son she was molding just the way she wanted him to be? So enchanting was her creation, so perfect for her needs, that she soon forgot all about Shiva, as she frolicked through the days in her son’s company.