The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  Every night Mohan watched Pramesh drag himself to the washroom, the only man able to silence the ghost. He looked like the brick haulers who trundled the lanes, backs hunched over rusted wheelbarrows filled with stone, remaining hunched even when they had no load to push before them. Each day, the manager drooped further. How could Mohan tell him that he’d missed his cousin by mere minutes? The truth would only make the man curve inward even more. He would tell the tale after the ghost successfully exited and life in the bhavan went back to what it had been.

  He looked up at the sky, then back down at the lane. Something didn’t feel right about the air, which slid in a thick heavy stream into his lungs, making him feel heavier.

  “What are you doing, looking back and forth like that?”

  Mohan turned red under Bhut’s gaze, as if the circle officer could see straight into his heart. “Thinking,” he said. “I was meant to go on an errand, but the air is strange.”

  “It won’t rain for a week,” Bhut said. “It does this every year, squeezes the city until you can’t even go two paces. But there’s a scent in the air you must be alert for. It isn’t here.”

  Mohan sniffed.

  “See?” Bhut said. “No rain today.” He looked like he was about to say more, but he turned, eyes scanning the street and tilting upward toward Mrs. Chalwah’s. Abruptly, Bhut turned and sped away, calling over his shoulder that he would buy the assistant a bowl of chaat if he was wrong. “But I’m not wrong. I never am about these things.”

  Mohan raised a hand in farewell. He no longer felt inclined to walk through the lanes, whether for chaat or for some other snack to appease his burbling stomach. Back to the bhavan he went, the dirt crunching beneath his sandals.

  14

  Clouds moved overhead, first thin veils that allowed the sun to pierce through, then thicker and darker shrouds that blocked the light and sent an expectant hush over the hot city. Thunder murmured, low and grinding, the volume rising to deep grumbles, like boulders rolling across the sky.

  “Is Sheetal back?” Shobha felt the air in the kitchen change, a faint metallic smell rising to her nose. Pramesh sat on the floor next to Rani.

  “I can go and look for him,” he offered.

  “You’ll want to be quick,” she said. “It’s coming any moment.”

  As he reached the open courtyard, the bloated clouds gave way, bursting like an overfilled paper bag, sending the rain down so rapidly that the individual droplets formed streams in the air. A thin mist rose from the ground where the cool water hit the hot earth, and outside, water quickly pooled in the dips in the lane and the gulches alongside buildings.

  Mohan ran to help the family who had set up residence in the courtyard despite his earlier pleas that they share a room to prevent the soaking that everyone knew would be coming. The guests ran for the cover of the walkway, while Pramesh helped the eldest son lift his father, a tall man who weighed much more than his bony frame suggested. They ran as best as they could with their unwieldy burden into the room, where the family who had been there all along exchanged sour looks and made a point to keep their dry belongings far away from the damp party that joined them now. As Pramesh followed Mohan out, Sheetal burst through the gate, wet and out of breath.

  He was soaked through, his thin shirt showing the contours of his skinny body, sopping hair dripping rivulets of water into his eyes, his too-long pants leaving a slick trail behind him. Mohan ran to get him a dry shirt and Shobha fetched a towel, while Sheetal walked straight to Pramesh, reached into the cuff of his shirt, and pulled something out.

  “I tried to keep it dry,” he said, “but it started so suddenly, and I was much farther from here than I realized, ji.”

  It was here. Finally, the letter was in the manager’s hands, sodden though it was. Shobha handed the towel to Sheetal and touched her husband’s elbow. “It’s too wet to open,” she said, taking the letter from him with gentle fingers.

  He followed her closely as she went to the kitchen, where Rani sat drawing on a slate with a piece of colored chalk. Shobha set the missive between two pieces of cloth and ran her rolling pin over that sandwich, squeezing the moisture out. Then she set her tava on the hearth where the flame burned lowest, placed the letter on the black metal, and waited for the pan to gently warm the paper, flipping it from time to time with her bare fingers as if she were making roti. Pramesh squeezed his hands together, waiting. She plucked the letter off the tava and felt it, pinching it in places with her fingertips. The paper crackled, and when she flicked it with her fingernail it made a satisfying snap, with no soft damp spots. She handed it over without a word.

  Narinder had come to the door, watching, and soon Mohan peered over the priest’s shoulder. “Chai?” Shobha asked, and without waiting for an answer she began to grate ginger into a pot, adding extra spice to combat the damp the rains would bring. Her heart was pounding, waiting to hear the words, but she also felt strangely calm. The low roar of water filled their ears, the sound of it hitting the ground, as well as the occasional rumble of thunder. Already, the room felt cooler. She loved the monsoon, and as she watched the water bubble and boil, her mind wandered, thinking of rainy day foods, the things Rani loved to eat during the season, crunchy fried pakoras with their soft insides, or roasted corn from the street vendor who always doused Rani’s with extra lime juice. She sighed. What a gift it was to be thinking normal thoughts instead of the constant fears that reigned when you shared your residence with a ghost.

  Pramesh slit the envelope. She watched him unfold the single sheet of paper, rippled but perfectly dry. The paper creaked like an old door. Her whole body tensed as he read it aloud.

  We are in receipt of your letter and the signed deed.

  We thank you.

  That was it. There was no signature, no indication of who the writer was, though when she looked over his shoulder the hand looked like a masculine one. Likely Sagar’s father-in-law. No mention of Sagar, no thanks for that hurried transfer of land. No mention, either, of Pramesh’s earlier note, notifying them of Sagar’s death. And no mention of Sagar’s wife. She tried to ignore the trembling in her hands. Pramesh handed the letter over to Narinder.

  “So it is done, then.”

  “Are they happy?” Mohan asked. “It’s what Govind-ji said was needed. It should stop now, shouldn’t it?”

  Narinder made a sound of agreement, Shobha watched the chai, and Rani continued to draw on the slate.

  ***

  Here was the final sign of approval, proof to the ghost of the thing it most wanted done. Everyone around the manager looked relieved, their backs straighter, as if the weight in their minds had flown to bother someone else. Pramesh wanted to feel the same way. Deep within himself, he’d held a dimly lit hope: surely, the news of the death—so unexpected, so great a loss—would bring out something from these people for whom Sagar had sacrificed his future. A distraught telegram, a stream of kind words, a letter of reminiscence describing the man Sagar had been, the reasons he’d been in Kashi—any of these could have stoked a flame of hope within Pramesh’s heart that one day might burn away his distrust.

  But this letter did none of those things.

  He took the chai his wife held out to him. Narinder declined and took his prayer beads out to the walkway; Mohan drank his quickly. “Govind said to fetch him once it arrived Pramesh-ji,” he said brightly, and he bustled out to ask Narinder how to get to the man’s dwelling.

  “Take something to cover yourself—don’t come back soaked like Sheetal,” Shobha called after him.

  Pramesh knew he should return to the guests. But instead he stared out the window at the water as it plummeted from sky to street, unable to see anything after a time but the constant liquid blur that never ceased.

  Despite Shobha’s warning, Mohan was completely soaked when he returned with an equally wet Govind, but his spirits seemed so lifted
—by the rains, by the prospect of the bhavan returning to normal—that he remained in his wet clothes, eager to help.

  Govind read through the letter and swiveled his chin from side to side, satisfied that the ghost would be satisfied, and strode into the washroom, Pramesh and Narinder following. He thrust the paper at the manager. “Read it aloud.”

  Pramesh swallowed and did so, feeling odd speaking to a room full of static brass. Shobha had prepared another tray according to Govind’s instructions, and he repeated the actions of the previous ceremony in an abbreviated form. The mantras were rushed and garbled, the hand slicing the lemon was swift. “Listen,” he said loudly, his voice echoing against the washroom walls. “He’s done exactly what you asked. You have nothing left here in this world. This is not the place for you. Leave, leave and be happy knowing that what you wanted is now done.”

  He grasped a clove. “We’ve dealt with you fairly,” Govind bellowed. “You have a debt to us now, to move on.” He waited a moment and squinted at the spice in his fingers. He waved his hand above the cloves remaining on the tray and sniffed loudly. Then he dropped the clove he was holding, surprised. “Nothing there,” he said.

  “He refuses to leave?”

  “No, ji. There is no ghost here. Nothing on the cloves, because there is nothing here to catch. And the room feels different since I entered it. Before the feeling was that the spirit was trying to enter every crevice of my mind—was it not that way for you? Now, nothing. I feel nothing.”

  Pramesh glanced at Narinder, then looked around the room. He wasn’t sure what he felt. And even if he did feel something, he would have a hard time trusting that feeling. “What do we do?”

  Govind laughed. “Nothing to do! I tell you, ji, it is gone. Your problem is solved. The land—didn’t I say? Always, always, these things might manifest differently, but the reason is always the same.” He was jovial as he picked up the tray and walked out. Pramesh glanced at the pots before following him. Perhaps they did seem more like what they were—mere objects, no more capable of feeling than the pot that Shobha brewed the chai in. Had such things—the inescapable noise, the feeling of being surrounded by sorrow and desperation—really happened? And how had he, and the rest of the bhavan, endured for an entire month? He shook his head, knowing what his wife would say. He needed to accept the entire thing as an odd wrinkle in the tapestry of his life and move on. If Sagar had moved on, it could only mean that, whatever his life had been, he was now content, ready to begin his journey to the end of all ends—and Pramesh would have to be content with that, too.

  Govind stood at the corner of the walkway, watching the rain pour down in sheets through the open center of the courtyard and run in neat streams to the drains set in the corners. “You’re lucky,” he said. “The rains are never a good time to do these things. Don’t mistake me—I knew it would have to go. Once you gave it what it wanted, it had no more grip on this world than a grown man on his mother’s sari. But the rains can make a thing like this more difficult than it needs to be.”

  “As long as he—he is where he should be,” Pramesh said. “On his way, I mean.”

  “Yes, yes, where else would he be?”

  Walking Govind to the gate, Pramesh felt lighter, but the deep ache lingered. The same ache he’d felt after the burning of the pyre, and after the twelve days of mourning.

  Only after the sky grew dark and the evening meal was finished, after Pramesh did his final evening round of the rooms, did the manager realize what that ache was. It was the place that the living Sagar once occupied in his heart, and that the ghost had recently vacated. It would never entirely leave him. And along with the memories he was determined to keep at bay, it was the only thing left to him of his cousin.

  ***

  Alone in his room late that night, Mohan felt his stomach burble. He was hungry again, and his hands twitched in the direction of the steel cabinet at his bedside, where he kept a small number of his possessions, including the packets of glucose biscuits that Dev had grudgingly said were allowed, given that many families soaked them in milk and fed the sweet mush to their dying. He turned on his side and tried to concentrate on the priest reading aloud, but it was Loknath’s turn, and his voice barely penetrated the door.

  His stomach emitted a louder groan, and he curled his knees upward and tried to slow his mind. The ghost was gone, the soul of the man he’d turned away was at peace, and Mohan owed Pramesh a story about what had happened that afternoon, when he’d seen the live version of the man who would next arrive at the bhavan dead. He simply could not figure out what to say, or when to say it. His anxiety crept downward. What mattered was that the manager’s cousin had reaped the benefits of a death in Kashi, not what Mohan did or didn’t do.

  Again, his stomach rumbled, and he sighed, rolled to the other side of the narrow bed, and reached down to open the steel cabinet. The biscuits filled his mouth with cloying sweetness, and he wiped the crumbs from the corners of his lips, the butter-paper wrapper crackling on his chest. His stomach quieted and his eyes drooped.

  Two hours after midnight, nothing happened. Loknath’s voice unspooled mantras in a smooth uninterrupted tone, like a sari seller unfurling a bolt of silk. The minutes ticked by, someone coughed, a child whimpered and fussed and fell back asleep. Narinder snored with his prayer beads in his hand; Sheetal slept with his fingers on his father’s arm. The entire bhavan had been clenched like a fist, braced and ready, but now it relaxed, chests rising up and down, breaths expelled softly or with roaring snores, dreams stretching out in no logical sequence.

  All the while, the rain pounded down through the open courtyard, drumming on the roof above the rooms, filling the air with a hint of earth and sweetness and a metallic bite, the noise loud enough to shield the guests from the sounds of their neighbors. Loud enough to mask the sound of Loknath’s flagging voice, heavy with sleep. Loud enough to dampen Dev’s steps as he walked over to take his turn at reading.

  And loud enough—at first—to mask the sound coming from a corner of the bhavan, the slow tapping, the faster rolling, building in fury, until an intense and stricken howl broke through even the deluge of rain and awakened all of them at the same time.

  15

  The rain poured all night and the rain poured all day. At first, the dusty lanes and sparse patches of parched earth greeted the monsoon clouds with the eagerness of a suckling calf nuzzling his mother. Monkeys took their places in the alcoves of temple roofs, eating the blessed prasad with polite restraint. Boys ran laughing and shirtless through the torrents, their scant bare chests a promise of the wiry men they would become. The ghaatiye packed their things and moved indoors to pray and fast. The boatmen welcomed the respite and retired to their houses, coating the walls with beedi smoke as they shuffled through packs of cards and shouted to their wives to replenish the chai. To the Doms the rain made no difference. “People still die, nah? They still need wood and holy fire, yes? And where will they get it without us?”

  But after these first days the rain continued to fall and folk tired of indoor life. Rickshaws struggled through the flooded streets. Umbrellas collapsed beneath the constant barrage. The swollen river expanded, swallowing most of Magadha and rising up the ghats step by step, creeping toward the city. Beggars wrapped themselves in plastic bags and took shelter beneath cardboard and corrugated tin shanties or squatted beneath worn striped awnings until shop owners sent peons to drive them away. The women cradling wide-eyed babies and defeated children scattered, but in the night they crept back to the few sheltered places in the city, moving upward as the water levels rose to their knees, and here they curled up on the concrete or the slick mud and tried to forget the rain in their dreams.

  Pramesh wanted to visit Govind immediately after his failure became apparent. Narinder demurred, his faith in his friend stronger even than the terror he must have felt each night, hunched and frozen on his bed when Pramesh pass
ed on his way to the washroom. But the manager could wait no longer. One morning, when the rains stopped for a moment that he knew would not last, he lingered outside Narinder’s door and announced that he would be visiting Govind today. The older man sat thinking for a moment before offering a terse nod.

  Out of the gates, Pramesh felt odd, as if he’d entered this world and this life for the very first time and did not know where or who he was. He looked up and saw Mrs. Chalwah across the street gazing at him from her upstairs window, her fingers worrying her prayer beads. He’d grown accustomed to her constant watching over the years, and most days he smiled up at her and waved, a greeting that she never returned, but now her unfettered stare unsettled him.

  He and Narinder walked in silence. Why did the rites fail? And how had he failed this time? Some days, Pramesh passed whole hours in his office trying to understand what he had done wrong, drowning in guilt as he thought about Sagar locked in that state between death and moksha, a desperate afterlife that capped off a bad death and a life that had not been much better.

  Despite the water pooling everywhere, the lanes and alleys teemed with people. Men with rolled shirt sleeves and women with hitched-up skirts passed with slow and bandy-legged steps, as if learning to walk anew. Growing up in the country, Pramesh had never paid much attention to the monsoons. The rains came and fed the fields and orchards; the earth absorbed the water like a sponge. His first year in Kashi, he’d been afraid that the rain would wash the city away. How could so much water find space amongst these tightly packed buildings? How could the people forge on as if nothing could slow their progress?

  He breathed in deep, exhaled just as deeply, and tried to focus on the fresh rain-stirred air he inhaled, the warmth of blood moving through his limbs. After sitting still and silent for these long days, he felt mobile, alive—but then guilt followed closely behind, inseparable from that good feeling, because every breath and step were ones that Sagar would never again take.