The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  “Nonsense. He was drunk and fell over.”

  “That Raman should have secured things better. What kind of duffer leaves his boat free for anyone to take?”

  “Well, he died in Kashi so at least he will find peace.”

  “What fool would call that a good death, Kashi or no?”

  “Someone said the man’s ghost is already terrorizing that widow in the woodworker’s alley.”

  “Is it surprising? What to expect when the wretch dies in the middle of the river? On Magadha’s doorstep, no less.”

  Tales of what had happened, what might have happened, and what didn’t happen swelled across the city, ferried from boatmen to ghaatiye, carried by rickshaw drivers and cart pullers, festering inside shops and whispered via family matriarchs, drifting to the street sweepers and even the drunks and lechers too ashamed to show themselves in the light. In the course of the telling, the truth expanded, broke into pieces, gilded itself, tripped in a puddle of filth, swabbed itself dry, and left fragments behind, until everyone in the old city knew at least some version of the story.

  Everyone, that is, except for the one who mattered most.

  2

  The week had been busy. They were full up, whole families in each of the twelve guest rooms, some doubled up if they could manage it—space could always be found; the folding of belongings and bodies was always possible. The fitting together of personalities, however, proved more difficult. At first, the guests kept their bickering to dark looks and under-the-breath mutterings, but as the hours passed and small pockets of space became akin to acres of land—a blanket claiming an inch here, a leg stretched out farther there—tempers flared and discontent became more vocal.

  “It doesn’t matter, I suppose, who got here first.”

  “And that cements your right, does it? When we have only just arrived and you have been here with yours for days—days! And nothing, no dead to show for it. This place is for the dying, you know, not the delusional.”

  “Next thing we will need to put Ma in our laps; that will be the only space left.”

  Pramesh could not turn anyone away, and so he packed the newer arrivals into the open-air courtyard and beseeched them all to be patient. But the air grew thick with irritation and impatience, clearing only when a wail went up from room No. 5.

  Secrets could not last within Shankarbhavan’s walls; the rooms were fitted so tightly together that everyone heard everyone else, be it a cough, a whisper, or the final creaking breaths of one of the dying from the hostel’s furthest corners. And so all eyes fixed on the manager and followed him as he picked his way along the raised walkway bordering the courtyard and entered the room only recently visited by the Bearer of Death’s servants. He felt the men among the guests move to cluster behind him just outside the door, ready for a preview of the preparations they would have to shoulder when their own dying kin left this world. The women remained behind, but the manager heard their murmurings, their mutual curiosity turning enmity into friendship. With the dead man’s expansive family spread out before him, Pramesh tried to determine whose face he should focus on.

  Three grown daughters sat in a row, faces shielded from view with their sari ends, mouths open with keening cries and bodies rocking back and forth. Their husbands crouched behind them, rattling off a continuous loop of Rama-Rama like a trio of frogs. The women’s grief was loud and affected, the husbands’ mechanical. At the far side of the room, next to the concrete wall where green paint peeled away in large flakes, a youth sat with his father’s head in his lap. He was slight and had an early dusting of stubble, and he was silent and intent as he bent over his father’s body and touched his hands to the face, the chest, the fingers and then back to the forehead, his fingers trembling.

  “Rama-Rama,” Pramesh murmured as he always did when someone passed. He gripped the shoulder of the nearest man in a gesture of comfort. Pramesh had been the manager at Shankarbhavan for almost a decade, and he had seen and heard death at least weekly in the hostel, had grown accustomed to the constant spectacle of corpse-laden biers and flaming funeral pyres lining the ghats.

  But this time in room No. 5 something was different. He knelt close to the youth, placing a hand on his back, and he took a closer look at the father. The face was still and the skin felt cold. No breath emerged from the nose or mouth, and the gnarled hands did not respond when touched. The youth was like stone. He had said nothing, but now he whispered two syllables. “Bapa.”

  And there it was: the papery eyelids flickered, and then the man’s eyes were open, the pupils searching, and his chest resumed a halting rise and fall under Pramesh’s palms.

  As if their voices had been snatched away, the sisters ceased wailing. Their husbands straightened up from their defeated positions, their eyes resuming the exasperation that Pramesh had observed in the days since they’d entered the hostel more than a week ago. The youth only stared, eyes wide. His father sought out his hand and gave it a weak squeeze.

  The woman on the right, the dying man’s eldest, lifted her hand and gave an impatient flick of the wrist, and one of the three men coughed and stepped toward Pramesh as if pulled by an invisible thread. His face lost its irritated expression and became business-like. “Manager-ji,” he said. “You know about death. Our father has been here for days, and still he suffers. When will it end?”

  Many pairs of eyes bore into Pramesh with hopeful pressure, but the youth refused to look up. “I can only tell you my experience with these things,” Pramesh said. “It could be two days or two months. Death is not easily predicted.”

  He knew this wasn’t what they wanted to hear. The disaster of remaining alive was what all such families coming to Kashi dreaded. The bhavan had few rules, but those posted on each guest’s door were resolute. At least one member of the party must be dying, preferably of the old age or natural causes that defined a good death, and that person must be accompanied by at least one family member. Lodging was free; guests were to provide for their own needs. Meals were to be simple, with little or no spice that might awaken the senses, the goal being to nourish rather than entice. And stays were limited to two weeks.

  The last rule ensured all pilgrims had the same fair chance at ending their days in the holy city, lest the hostel become host to folk who lingered for months on end while others languished, waiting for a vacated place. But this was also the rule that the guests argued over the most. For the old man in No. 5, returning home meant he would miss this chance to die a death that was the best one could hope for on this Earth: the city promised it would be the last—the death to end all rebirths and miseries. But now, he would suffer another birth, hopefully once again as a man, but if he had been imprudent in this life he might return as an insect, a monkey, a bullock destined to pull a wooden plow until exhaustion brought upon death and pulled the soul into the misery of yet another life. Who knew what path a person’s karma could put them on? Who could be sure they had not committed a sin that would set them backward by five births? In Kashi, sinner and saint alike could achieve the same goal.

  “Ji,” another husband said. “Our father has been in this state for weeks. It has always been his wish to die in Kashi, but we cannot stay away from our farm forever.”

  “Is there something you wish me to do?” Pramesh felt his head begin to ache. He’d had a cup of chai that morning with his wife but now felt the need for another.

  The man swallowed. “Ji, we know the rules of this place, but you have seen in these past days that we are good people, devoted to this man.” He rubbed his chin, glancing at his wife and her sisters before continuing. “We would like to leave him here so he may die in peace, nah? And if you send us a note upon his death we will come running back to arrange the funeral.”

  “Absolutely not,” Pramesh said. What kind of people left their own blood in the company of strangers to die? “The rules are clear. Someone must be with him at all
times.”

  “But, ji—”

  “I am sorry,” Pramesh said. “You still have a few days. But if you choose to leave, you must take your father with you.” The husbands glanced at each other, eyebrows raised; the sisters watched Pramesh through the veils of their saris. The youth remained silent and still but for the brush of his thumb against his father’s hand.

  One of the sisters raised her hand again to summon her husband, and Pramesh braced himself for whatever excuse was coming. The man was already straightening up to deliver his wife’s message, when another voice, a welcome one, cut across the room.

  “A moment, Pramesh-ji?” The hostel assistant Mohan stood just outside the doorway. He fixed Pramesh with a smile almost as wide as his stomach and held up a short piece of wood, the carved leg of a rope bed. “Again, it happened! I don’t know what Balram told you, but it popped out as soon as I turned the bed over to tighten the ropes.” As he talked, he slowly walked to the other side of the bhavan, drawing Pramesh along with him, and the manager stifled a smile. The assistant often used this maneuver when especially vocal families were staying at the bhavan and the manager required an interruption.

  Pramesh took the bed leg from Mohan. “Guaranteed to last until I am a grandfather, he assured me.”

  “He’s always done things by halves.” Mohan’s fingers pulled at his short beard in a nervous twitch. “Shall I fetch him, demand he come himself to fix it?” Pramesh hardly had time to tilt his head before Mohan took off, thin legs moving with a speed that threatened to leave his large body behind.

  The door to No. 5 was now closed, a rare sight in the bhavan as folk tended to pass back and forth between the rooms freely, and Pramesh felt the briefest relief. A breeze wafted through the courtyard and ruffled the potted plants of tulsi and fragrant white jasmine squatting in each corner. Men chatted in low voices or paced across what little space they could find; a steady drip sounded from an errant tap in the corner washroom. Narinder, Shankarbhavan’s most senior priest, sat in one corner of the courtyard with his legs tucked beneath him and a large volume open before him, his strong nasal voice carrying the sacred verses into each of the rooms. Pramesh stepped along the walkway and stopped at each open doorway to check on the other guests and listen to those who sought him out.

  “Manager-ji, my grandfather refuses to eat; should we persuade him to take some rice in milk or do we leave him be?”

  “She is quiet now, but is she in pain? And the death—will the death be painful?”

  “Mother has not spoken for months. Is it still a good death if she does not say the great God’s name aloud?”

  None of these questions were new to Pramesh, but he forced himself to don a pilgrim’s eyes with every guest. Potters, weavers, landowners, farmers, teachers; the moment they entered the bhavan they became part of a common mindset, together thinking and worrying over the same details, though they imagined themselves unique. “Try to give him something to eat, but do not force him,” he said to the first man. “The words on your mother’s lips are important, but what the soul holds matters most,” he advised another. He counseled and consoled, all while Narinder’s strong voice echoed with mantras, until the last of the men drifted away to join their families, and Pramesh headed to the respite of his office.

  But even here, he was not alone. The youth from No. 5 sat in the chair opposite his desk. He was slim and boney with dark shadows blurring the skin beneath his eyes. Yet he seemed different in the absence of his family: his shoulders were squared, his back straight, his gaze at Pramesh unyielding.

  “My family is determined to leave, Manager-ji,” he said.

  Pramesh sighed. He sat opposite the youth. “It is a hard thing,” he said slowly, willing the blow to land as lightly as possible. “To come here from a great distance, and then to leave without fulfilling the purpose of that journey.”

  “What if we didn’t leave, ji? What if we stayed?”

  Pramesh shook his head. As much as he preferred this boy to the rest of his family, he could not change his answer. “I cannot have your father remain here alone. This is the rule for everyone.”

  The youth waved his hands in a helpless gesture, as if to ward off an insect. “Ji, I meant what if I stayed with my father? Would that be enough?” Here was a proposition that had never occurred to Pramesh. The youth continued to talk, confidence blooming in his speech with every word. “I understand if you must ask us to leave once our two weeks are complete if other guests arrive and there is no other space. But if the room remains free, and I were always there with Bapa, may we stay?”

  “Will your family not miss you? Will they trust you to look after yourself here without anyone to help you?”

  “They have the farm, Manager-ji,” the youth answered carefully. “None of this matters very much to them: Kashi, a good death, a bad death—they don’t believe in it. But Bapa …”

  Pramesh understood. The family saw their patriarch as already dead, but the son still saw a living and breathing father. How easy to refuse those husbands, but how difficult to refuse this skinny young man! The rules were clear: No dying person may be left alone without an accompanying family member. Yet, there was no rule specifying the age or circumstances of that family member. “Your name?” Pramesh asked.

  “Sheetal, ji.”

  “Well, Sheetal,” Pramesh said, concentrating on a spot darkening the wall behind the boy’s head. “You may stay with your father. And it will be as Rama wishes.” The boy sat thinking before he looked up, tilted his chin in thanks, and left the room.

  Only later did Pramesh realize he should have answered Sheetal with more questions. Would he be able to care for his father, bathe him, keep him comfortable? When the death occurred, would he keep his emotions in check and procure enough money to buy the necessary materials for the last rites that every soul required to be entirely free of this world? Alone, could he muster the courage to light his father’s pyre, crack the skull so that the life essence could escape? Most importantly, could he walk away from the final remains of the man who had once hoisted him on his shoulders, and above all else resist the temptation to look back, because such a show of attachment would prevent the old man’s soul from fully reaching moksha? Could he marshal his thoughts into a single-minded discipline during the twelve-day mourning period, thinking not of his grief and his father, but of the great God?

  His thinking felt sluggish. The dull ache shadowing his thoughts had turned into a slow but persistent pounding, the blood thumping behind his right eyebrow. He concentrated on the space between the pain, willing himself to exist in that pocket that lasted seconds, less than seconds, before the next wave squeezed his brain, like a child rolling an overripe mango between her palms. He needed chai and a chat with his wife, but once in the empty kitchen he remembered that Shobha had taken Rani for a visit to Mrs. Mistry’s next door. He sat on the rope bed, picked up his mother’s tattered copy of the Gita and flipped through the pages, but he was unable to concentrate on the words for the pain, suddenly feeling the loneliness of the space without his daughter’s smile, his wife’s chatter.

  “Pramesh-ji?” Dev poked his head through the partition curtain. “A moment?”

  The manager steeled himself and slowly pushed off the bed. “Coming.”

  ***

  Mohan never meant to dawdle. Despite his unwieldy frame, he walked with a speed that often left Pramesh lagging. But no sooner would he turn into a lane than his eyes would meet a familiar pair, and he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

  “Ah, Dhani-ji! How is your nephew? Did he pass his exams?”

  “Raju-bhai, just the man I was thinking of. I heard about a remedy for your mother-in-law’s constipation; how is she faring?

  “Sonam-maasi, you must let me carry those bags for you, I insist. And your grandchildren—you haven’t told me about them in some time.”

  Striding thro
ugh the lanes with the easy confidence of one who could converse with anyone, about anything, at any time, Mohan stopped and listened and asked and commiserated with those who turned to him and those who tried to hurry past. Today, by the time he made it to Balram’s shop, a dark and cavernous space piled high with wood and half-made furniture, the stool that the woodworker usually occupied was vacant.

  “Missed him,” Arjuna the tailor offered when he saw Mohan waiting. “And he won’t be back again today.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He had the newspaper with him,” Arjuna said. Everyone knew that once worked up over this or that politician’s latest debacle in the paper, the woodworker was useless, spending the rest of the day at home drinking his wife’s chai and loudly haranguing the air over the idiocy of the ones who sought to lead, continuing even when his wife vacated the kitchen to take a nap.

  Thus disappointed, Mohan headed back, though he stopped to buy a newspaper cone of fried mung dal, parsing it out to the children who appeared by his side as if conjured, and was quick to finish munching the remains before passing through the hostel gates.

  He found Pramesh walking from room to room with the slow questioning gait of an old man. “Another headache?” he asked, hurrying up to the manager. “Shall I fetch you some water?”

  The manager winced, but smiled weakly.

  “Bed, Pramesh-ji,” Mohan insisted. He knew the signs, from the way the manager slightly moved his head every few seconds, that he should not be up and about, much less dealing with the inquisitive families of the dying. “The day is already half finished,” he added, in case Pramesh wished to argue. “Nothing shall disturb you—even a death. I will take care of it.” When Pramesh only blinked and moved slowly to his family quarters, Mohan knew he had been right.

  He turned to the families that had settled in the courtyard, the men who had clustered around the manager moments before, but those guests scattered or turned back to their dying kin, uninterested in the assistant’s guidance. Mohan did not mind. Only Narinder shined brighter than Pramesh in their eyes, but being a priest, that man was approachable only for questions of the soul, and until death visited their doors, these families had only questions of the body.