The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  “But I heard—”

  “Pramesh-ji, Pramesh-ji!” Mohan was running as fast as his thin legs and nervous stomach would allow, choking on his breath as he fought his way through the lane. Maharaj ceased his begging and turned to stare; other folk stood and followed the assistant with their eyes.

  “What is it?” Pramesh responded, relieved that he did not have to hear what Kishore thought was ‘perhaps’ happening.

  “Not dead,” Mohan panted.

  For a second—less than a second, less than the thought of a second—Pramesh believed the assistant was referring to Sagar. “No,” he said. “Talk reasonable, Mohan.”

  “No Pramesh-ji, it is true. I saw with my own eyes. He is not dead.”

  “Who?” Kishore asked with impatience. “Don’t bray like a donkey when Rama has given you lips to speak with! Who is not dead?”

  Mohan shook his head and bent down, struggling to regain his breath; tears had sprung in the corners of his eyes from his exertions. “The weaver,” he huffed. “The weaver is not dead. He is as good as you or me or Kishore-ji here. Moving, talking, breathing. Pramesh-ji, he is alive.”

  For some folk, those with skin as weathered as their memories, there was no Green Parrot Girl, no Weeping Woman. People of a certain age knew the ghost by a different name.

  Menaka.

  They remembered the place where she’d grown up, the people who were her family. They knew her not only by her death, but by her life. And if later they forgot these things, it was because such a life is dull next to scandals, to ghosts, to demons and curses and hauntings. Like a torn bit of roti sitting next to a delicate confection—necessary, but lackluster. For those who remember, who were there when it happened, Menaka’s story went like this:

  Like all women, she lived her life within two families: the one she was born into, and the one she joined by marriage. The first family was large and bustling. She was the eldest of four, three girls and a boy. Her father was a lawyer, her mother a beauty. Her two younger sisters were mischief-makers who raided her makeup tin. Her father was a silent man who brought home new dresses and a full set of bangles for each girl every holiday. Her mother scolded her for sitting at the window and dreaming. Her brother was the baby, and he followed her around like a living doll.

  From this family, this happy first life, she entered a new one. The family she married into was smaller: her husband, his younger brother who was away at boarding school, and his mother. The wedding was large, and loud, and filled with happiness and hope. In the afternoon sun, her red sari shot through with gold, her hennaed hands clasped firmly in her husband’s as they circled the sacred fire, she looked almost divine. A golden couple. The guests dispersed, bellies bursting with the wedding meal, sated with the good feeling that comes with witnessing the beginning of a happy story.

  After that, Menaka disappeared.

  There might be the odd sighting in the street, or a glimpse of her from her perch at an upper-story window. She might be walking with her mother-in-law, the woman’s hand firmly on her elbow, going to the market and back again, stopping to talk to no one. It was like she was not there: the girl walked with her head down, her sari end pulled tightly over her face and arms.

  Those who remembered the mother-in-law were not surprised. Likely, the woman had expectations that Menaka’s mother never had—strict timetables for the preparation of all meals, rules about the clothes she might wear, endless lists of chores.

  Nor were those who remembered the son surprised. He also had his expectations. She had her duties as a wife.

  Soon enough, a child grew within her belly. For a time, Menaka reappeared. Her mother-in-law assumed some of the chores and paraded the girl in the streets, a proud hand on Menaka’s belly as that old woman stopped to talk to friends. Menaka spent the last month of her pregnancy confined to her bed—not in her childhood home, as was tradition, but in her mother-in-law’s room, as decreed by that woman and her son. Days passed, until the moment arrived—she gave birth to a girl who screamed so loud and long that the entire street could hear her arrival.

  But the silence of the day’s end told a new truth: the child was dead. Two months later, the mother followed, body sprawled in tangled heap on the last steps of Mir ghat.

  Must a ghost always be as extraordinary in life as it becomes in death? Many folk simply float through life unnoticed, until one day they are gone, and the hole they create with their absence is like a pinprick in fabric: hard to see, and easy to pull the fibers back into place. They live, they die, and one day they are forgotten.

  Except.… When Menaka died, she didn’t leave. She stayed, tied to the place she had last set foot while living. And because her spirit remained, albeit as a ghost, her story remained as well. Folk from the outskirts or from far-off neighborhoods had their own theories. But the people who had known Menaka—who remembered the life of the maiden girl and the married woman—had no doubts. They decided that they knew exactly what had happened, and who had done it. How easy, they said, to move from pushing a girl around in the home to pushing her down some steps at the river’s edge? And how convenient, they said, that it took place in the middle of the night, when there was no one to see? They were so certain that, before long, what they believed became what they said. What they said became what they remembered. And what they remembered became the truth.

  Part III

  24

  In every town there are people who, despite bad weather and ill omens, cannot sit still within the comfort of their own thoughts. Even when monsoon downpours force others into dry spaces, this other breed of folk moves about the deserted lanes and empty alleys, ears alert, happy just to be outside in the world, wanting only to be able to say later in proud tones, “I was there when it happened, Bhaiya! No one knows the story better than I!”

  On the day that Mohan let loose the news of the weaver who had died only to return to life, more than a dozen such curious bystanders loitered outside the bhavan gates, eager for the chance to witness key pieces of what would doubtless become an oft-repeated story. They had seen the urgency with which the manager, his assistant, and Kishore hastened to the bhavan, and they followed after, drawn by the excitement in the air. Because business always trails a crowd, a paan-, a chai-, and a snack-wallah all set up temporary shop in the narrow lane. In between morning chews of tobacco and sips of chai, the onlookers updated each other on what had happened, and entertained theories about what would happen next, each man supporting his version with a story of a similar event, of which they all had at least one or two to tell.

  “Dead, they say, and now back to life!”

  “My father had a cow like that once.…”

  “What if they were wrong? Probably the old fellow was alive all the time, and that Mohan made the mistake and started this whole drama.”

  “It’s the rains, makes everyone a little crazy, nah?”

  “But is he really alive after all? Do we know the facts?”

  “… such a gentle animal, it used to eat grass straight from my hand. I cried when I heard it was gone. The second time it died, I mean.”

  True to his nickname, Bhut had stepped out of a side lane to observe the crowd and peer through the gates unseen. His house had been quiet when he’d left—for once, neither of his sisters had commenced the day by rehashing the quarrel from the previous night—and his mood had been light, his mind curious about the city folk’s latest mania. The familiar street made something within him harden, like a clenching muscle he could not relax. He could feel eyes on him from above.

  “Officer-sahib—chai? Fritters? Will you take some refreshment?”

  “Keep the lane clear,” Bhut barked in answer. He turned away from the bhavan, where more men clumped outside to peek through the bars of the gates, heedless of the order.

  ***

  Though the bantering men outside the building did not know it y
et, Mohan had spoken the truth: the weaver was indeed alive. With Kishore at his elbow, the manager hastened to the room of the man he had left for dead. He could read the truth in everyone’s eyes. His wife, the priests, the other guests—their faces all held a mixture of bafflement and fear. The sight that met him in the weaver’s room was no more comforting. The man’s daughters appeared just as Pramesh had left them: two weeping girls, the older just on the cusp of womanhood, clutched at each other for support. The father, that skeletal man who had been a mere cold body just a half hour ago, flailed in weak motions on the concrete floor, his blankets tangling in his limbs and his eyes streaming with tears as he cried out, “Rama! Oh, Rama, Rama, Rama!”

  So it was true. The man repeated the holy name over and over again, each cry setting a new weight on the manager’s chest. It could mean only one thing. The man had reached the great God, had been at the point of assimilating his spirit into the divine Supreme Soul, only to be torn away and pulled back into life at the crucial moment.

  Pramesh returned to the courtyard, where he could breathe easier. “How could this happen?” he murmured to Narinder. That old priest raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. The manager’s question rippled out and echoed among the male guests who, like the curious men beyond the gates, clustered in the courtyard and outside their rooms, while the women formed their own group. A few ventured to the manager’s family quarters, where they found Shobha waiting near the window, her hands absently picking over a thali of lentils for stones while Rani played nearby. She was anxious, but when the others asked her what was going on, the manager’s wife only held her hands up, palms out, requesting patience. “Wait,” she said. “I am sure we will all find out soon enough.” To help the minutes go faster she tried to engage the women in light talk about their children and the homes they had left behind. Some responded, some remained silent, but in this way they passed the time. They were women, after all—their condition was not new. They had waited for other answers before, and they would find themselves waiting again many more times in their lives.

  Of all the people in the bhavan, Kishore alone remained unruffled. “The man is certainly able to speak,” he said. “Can you not ask him?”

  “What would we ask?” Pramesh said, surprised. “What could he possibly tell us?”

  “If he saw anything, heard anything. Words, a vision, something. One cannot go through such an experience with no memory of it.” There was a hunger in his tone that Pramesh did not like, but the guests around him heard the ghaatiyaa and clearly expected an answer.

  “Narinder-ji,” he turned to the priest. “Would you?” The older man tilted his chin in assent. Pramesh followed him back into the weaver’s room and was overwhelmed with terrible visions: the weaver confessing before all that he had actually died, that the merits of a good death in a good month in the holiest city had almost bestowed several lifetimes of exquisite karma on his future generations, and that he had been turned back not by a wronged ancestor or the ill merits of his own past actions, but something else. Someone else. In the pit of his stomach Pramesh felt the realization unfurl like a thundercloud.

  The weaver had died.

  The pots had shrieked.

  The weaver had lived.

  Of course Sagar was to blame for the dreadful change. How naïve he had been to believe that the ghost’s presence would impact the bhavan no more than a spider weaving its web in a high ceiling corner. All those weeks, with no death breathing activity into the bhavan, families arriving with hope and leaving with uncertainty. He knelt with a quaking heart as Narinder endeavored to communicate with the wailing weaver. After the intonation of the sacred syllable, the OM on whose breath Narinder began every religious rite, he began his interrogation. “Do you know who you are?” he asked.

  “Rama,” was the startling reply. Here was an explanation even Pramesh had not foreseen. The divine, come down to the bhavan through this vessel? For an instant, Narinder looked as if he had lost his famous composure, but the skeptical clicking of Kishore’s tongue goaded the priest.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Rama,” the weaver said.

  “Do you know who these are?” Narinder persisted, pointing at the two daughters.

  “Rama!” the weaver shrieked. He could not speak a word beyond that divine name, and any other syllable he attempted exited his mouth stillborn, his toothless gums smacking with the useless motions of a dog that can no longer chew. If he had seen or heard anything during his soul’s flight and subsequent return, the secret remained locked within him, at least for now. And now was time enough for Pramesh to feel a temporary relief that the washroom and all its supernatural doings of the past months would not reach the ghaatiyaa’s ears, and therefore the city’s.

  “Perhaps you need to bring a doctor,” Kishore said once they were all again in the courtyard. “Someone to check this fellow out, nah?”

  “Ji—this is a house of death,” Pramesh said, careful to control his tone. “We’ve never had reason to call for a doctor.”

  Narinder touched the manager’s shoulder with gentle fingers. “Perhaps we should discuss this elsewhere?” he suggested, his eyes indicating the guests who had attained a miraculous silence, ears straining to hear every word. Pramesh led the priest, the ghaatiyaa, and Mohan to the family quarters.

  ***

  The gathered women covered their heads and filed out, and Shobha, happy to have a concrete task, served the men chai. As they talked and sipped, Shobha coaxed Rani to her side and slipped to the weaver’s room to check on the weaver’s daughters. She’d felt an affinity for them the night before, having understood their pain; hadn’t she lost her own father in this very house? But now she tapped on the door with hesitation—she may have experienced a father’s death, but she had certainly never experienced his rebirth. The sisters were crying, but were those tears of sorrow, joy, or both? Did they require sympathy or a show of happiness? She instead turned to the weaver. With the same gentle words used to soothe Rani before setting the child to bed, she persuaded the agitated man to lie still and tucked the blankets back around him. She met the eyes of his daughters, and their sobs subsided. “This is extraordinary,” she said, sitting down, unsure how to continue. Rani stood next to her, leaning against her shoulder, pushing jasmine from the courtyard into the hair coiled at her neck. She decided to be frank. “What will you do?”

  The older daughter swabbed her wet cheeks with the end of her dupatta and used the same soaked cloth on her sister’s face. “They say this is a holy place,” she said, her voice skipping with tears yet unshed. “We know that now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All night we prayed,” the older one continued. “We have been praying for days, and fasting too. Neither of us has taken anything but milk since arriving. When our father passed, we wanted to die too. Who else could look after us two in the whole world? When everyone went back to sleep, we decided to take all of Pa’s sleeping pills between us.” She showed the clear brown glass bottle to a bewildered Shobha. “We split them, one pile for each of us, and we decided to take them just as the sun came up, but we wanted to say one more prayer. We each made one more round on our prayer beads to the great God.”

  “And then?”

  “He came back.” The younger one choked on a sob, and her older sister smiled and squeezed her. The tears ran afresh down their faces, around the corners of their smiles.

  “And your plans now,” Shobha faltered. “Will you leave?”

  The older one rocked her chin from side to side. “As soon as we can, with your and the manager’s blessing. We’d thought this place would be our end. Instead, life is beginning.” The girl’s face broke out with such glowing radiance that anyone would have thought the monsoon had ended and the sun had returned. “Our father has such a gift, another life within this life, nah? Rama could not take him knowing that we were so unprot
ected. Now we will go home and Pa will settle everything.”

  Dismayed, Shobha could see that the girls foresaw a future no one else had considered: a father come back full strength who would regain the faculty of mind needed to manage his household and choose proper husbands for his two unmarried girls. The sheer implausibility of it! She wanted to tell these two innocent joyful daughters that yes, their father was alive, but that was as far as the great God’s gift could go. Life, after all, did not automatically extend into living, being present and cognizant in the world. That was another gift entirely, and not one the weaver was likely to receive again. The girls rubbed their faces, sending a rush of vibrant pink to their cheeks and noses, happiness exuding from their pores.

  A vision came to Shobha, an image of a pair of girls praying with the intensity of wizened sages; they held their prayer beads in their right hands, and in their left, a trove of white pills like some sort of toxic pearl. She shuddered. To go from one dead body to one living man was something, but how close they had come to going from one dead body to three! Pramesh would have been shattered by two suicides. There is a blessing in everything, Shobha’s father used to say; she sat with living proof of the statement’s truth. “Hai Rama,” she murmured under her breath.

  The younger daughter clasped Shobha’s hand and smiled. “Yes,” she said, not seeing the distress in Shobha’s eyes. “Say the God’s name—we will never hear it enough after this.”

  ***

  The four men sat in the airy corner room and fiddled with their empty chai glasses. They had reached an impasse. Though Kishore had been at his most persuasive, Pramesh would not agree to bring a doctor to Shankarbhavan. “Their skills only extend to the living,” he said. “Once the body begins to deteriorate, there is nothing they can do. They cannot even predict the timing of the event. With death they are as helpless as any of us.”