Both he and Sagar lay flat on their backs, their arms held in a grip as fierce as their own tempers, the blue sky so piercing that it hurt to look at. Nattu, the limping herder living at the crossroads, held them down, and released them only on a signal from someone beyond them. When they sat up, they saw their aunt looming before them, fear in her eyes. Their anger changed to dread. The mottled purple bruising on their skin would not dissuade the Elders from beating them again. The rest of the day passed in silent anguish. The Elders came and went, eyes sliding over the boys without seeing them. Their aunt laid out the midday meal, then the evening meal. When it was dark, they went to bed. She blew out the candle, but remained in the room, her form an eerie black shadow. And then her voice sounded in the dark.
Do you not even know when you are cutting your own hand?
Standing at the edge of the courtyard, Pramesh rubbed his wrists and looked at his palms, flexed his fingers. He felt the heat within him dissipate. Moments before, he’d been so angered that, had Sagar been there before him, he might have done some violence to the man. But what harm could a living man do to a ghost?
The next morning, Pramesh was up early waiting on Narinder to rise. The head priest closed the office door without a word and sat in a chair opposite Pramesh, his hands looking frail and naked without the prayer beads he usually held. He listened as the manager made his case for performing tripindi shraddha early, starting that very day, if possible. He sat and stared out the window for some time after Pramesh had finished speaking, and the manager waited, trying to discern from Narinder’s blank face what he might be thinking. “You remember our chat with Govind-bhai a few weeks ago?” Narinder asked at last.
“I do,” Pramesh said, wary.
“He advised you to try and find what the man wanted so badly that caused him to linger as a ghost to begin with,” Narinder said, eyes still on the window. “Well? Have you thought more about why he was here?”
The rains had begun again, and a heavy patter of drops sounded. Pramesh felt a rising desperation engulf him. “There is nothing to think about. He had a bottle with him.”
“You believe he’d been drinking?”
Sagar raising that bottle to his lips, speech slurred, eyes rimmed with red—Pramesh shook the thought away. “He could have intended to use it as a vessel for river water. Perhaps it was late at night when he arrived here, and our gates were closed. Then … then he went to the river.”
“But that cannot be it. What else did he do that day? What was he doing on the river?”
The boatman’s tale returned to Pramesh. Sagar may have been ill, but would illness alone have driven him to travel all that way to see someone he hadn’t spoken to for a decade? He tried to picture Sagar in a boat, discarding a lifetime of skepticism to chase after a city myth. He could not see it.
“The only person to know those answers is someone who is dead—and he isn’t telling us, no matter how loudly the pots bang every night,” he said instead, his voice rising against his will. “What good is asking? Why should I continue to think about him when I must detach? The body is burnt and so should the memory be—we tell our guests this. Why should I be any different?”
“And yet, you are different,” Narinder said, turning his piercing gaze on Pramesh. “Those who come to Shankarbhavan are old; they have completed all the hurdles of life and are here for that one final step. They are not young, like your cousin, nor do they have any reason to linger. We can tell those grieving families to detach because we know that their dead have already done so, have released themselves. Not so with you.”
As the priest spoke, the manager noticed how old Narinder had grown. For the past ten years, that head priest had seemed as steady and unchanging a fixture in the bhavan as the iron gate. His routines played out each day with the regularity of the sun’s rise and fall. His presence in the courtyard, reading from sacred texts or circling the walkway with his prayer beads, was so fixed that one guest, who had been at the bhavan to help his father die and who returned with his mother years later, remarked that the priest seemed never to have moved in all that time. But time had passed, and Narinder had aged. “So it was a just a visit, or so you say. No other thing on his mind when he decided to come here.”
Pramesh hesitated. “Possibly he was ill. I don’t know for sure. But if his life was an unhappy one.… And there was his wife. Sagar-bhai knew I had hated the marriage, for his sake. If something happened … perhaps he changed his mind. Perhaps he meant to see me, but died before he could.”
“Your cousin’s wife, his marriage: why did you hate it?” Narinder sat immovable.
“It was a business transaction, not a marriage,” Pramesh said. “My Elders, hers—they didn’t think about whether their children would be happy, whether the families could blend and benefit from each other. She was meant for me at first—I had married by the time I learned this. Then Sagar-bhai married her in my place. They took advantage of her, of my cousin and me.”
“Advantage?” Narinder leaned forward. “How so?”
Pramesh sucked his teeth in irritation. “She was young when she married my cousin, but even then she had a history. A story behind her name. Village gossip.”
Seeing that Narinder demanded more, Pramesh brought out the long-buried story. “She was a repeat runaway. She used to do it as a child all the time. One minute she would be sitting by her mother, helping in the kitchen—the next she would be gone. When her family found her, she was always off by herself somewhere, near a pond or in a field. They said that each time, she greeted them with a blank face; she did not understand their worry, did not heed their warnings never to do it again.
“As a child, this wandering may have been harmless. But as a woman, the stories grew worse. She was no longer alone when she ran away. She met men. She met one in particular, a rich man’s son, heir to a great fortune in orchards and acres of land. She followed him everywhere without shame and refused to leave his side.
“He engaged himself to her. They said she bewitched him—foolishness, all of it,” Pramesh spat out the words like a poison he’d long held inside. “Perhaps there was truth to her wandering off as a child, Rama knows, but as for the man: more likely he pursued her first. Her parents knew of that other family’s wealth and encouraged it. Then the man’s family found out and sent him away, paid the girl’s family to leave them alone. They ended up leaving the village for another place. And right after they left, the man died suddenly—likely of any common illness, but everyone said it was because of her. When her people entangled themselves with my family, it was because they needed to be rid of her, having ruined her name. And the Elders needed the money.”
He’d always felt pity for Kamna. She was lost in a family like that, with little control over her life. He had been able to leave—but she couldn’t. She was like his mother and aunt, bound to the person and the place their parents chose, with little recourse even when that person put bruises on them, on their children.
But how could such a girl, with such a family—elders to rival his own—ever be right for his cousin? After the upbringing they suffered, Pramesh was certain Sagar required someone equally strong, equally intelligent. He needed the chance at a real family, one that loved and protected, and a proper partner who was loyal and reliable—not more grasping elders, more dark stains on a name that was already burdened with plenty of its own whispered stories.
“Did your cousin know?”
“He was the one to tell me. On the day I learned of the marriage agreement. Her family, her name—I knew nothing of them. The family had been wandering apparently, going from village to village. Living in each place for a year at a time, then moving. Because of the stories, he said.”
Narinder listened in silence, betraying no emotion. “And yet he married her anyway. Did he knew how you felt about it?”
Why must you walk where you were never meant to go? Prames
h squeezed his eyes shut. “He did. I told him he was throwing his life away. He refused to listen. We never spoke after that.”
“And your elders, your father and uncle—why would they have condoned such a match? And for you, the eldest son?”
Pramesh stared at his desk, rubbing a finger along the top edge, back and forth.
Narinder coughed, cleared his throat. “So it was an ill-matched marriage. Perhaps she was a runaway … perhaps not. Her family used her—they might have continued to do so after the marriage, and to use your cousin as well. Was that enough? Enough for him to leave the only home he had ever known? Enough to set off a desire to see you after ten years of silence, a desire so great that he became a ghost, rather than die a good death?”
You started your new life—why are you pulling me back from mine? He remembered the fury in Sagar’s face, his voice, the memory so palpable that blood began to pound in his ears. “Why is it suddenly our duty to think of the dead?” Pramesh’s words came out louder than intended, but he could not stop. “After the rites are done, must we still think of nothing but their wishes and the things they left behind? How then do we move forward? How do I continue on?” He heard footsteps outside the door that paused before turning back with tentative steps—Mohan, probably, wondering why Pramesh had raised his voice at their head priest. He swallowed his frustration and lowered his voice. “Narinder-ji, please. My cousin is gone; there is nothing I can do for him. My duty is to the living, to the ones who seek refuge here. The tripindi shraddha—will you do it now?”
Narinder’s silence stretched until Pramesh felt he might burst from uncertainty. The priest sighed. “My duty is also to the bhavan. I too remember my failure.”
“What failure?”
“I froze. You know this. Every time the spirit has asserted itself, you have walked right up to it, and Mohan-bhai has done his best to distract others from it; Loknath and Dev each continue reading the holy word—but I can do nothing.”
“No one blames you—” Pramesh began to say, but the old priest held up his hand.
“I thought, after all these years, that I had conquered all emotion. That I was readying myself every day for the moment when I would follow the dying folk who come here and depart. But then the ghost came, and I was afraid. You saw this yourself. I am afraid because even living next to death, I realize I do not know everything about it. But I am learning, Pramesh-bhai. Each night, I am still afraid—but a bit less than I was before. To perform tripindi shraddha, one must have a perfectly focused mind. It is not easy; I have told you this. Even if you feel you are ready, I am not. I intend to use all the time I have, so that when the moment comes, I will not fail.”
“But—”
Narinder was stern. “You know better than anyone that death does not come on our schedule,” he said. “Why should it be any different with the timing of the rites?”
Pramesh was defeated. Narinder was right. He sat in silence, while Narinder continued to stare out the window. When the priest rose, the manager thought of something. “My question from before, Narinder-ji. I truly want an answer. After the rites.… Will I be free of Sagar-bhai, then? Will I be able to detach?”
Narinder, in the absence of his prayer beads, lifted the end of his shawl and gripped the fringe between his fingers, worrying at the threads. “All this time, you have detached, you have pushed your cousin and your past from your mind.” There was no reproach in the priest’s voice, but the manager blushed. “You ask the wrong question. Perhaps you should ask if the ghost has detached, Pramesh-bhai. You are so ready to leave that shade of your cousin behind, but are you sure that he, too, is ready to leave you?” Pramesh felt a sharp twinge through the center of his heart. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was dry. Narinder stepped to the door. “They are saying the rains will end in a week, Pramesh-bhai. We will take the first auspicious day after that. How you decide to spend that time is entirely up to you.”
Pramesh sat in his office for some time after the priest left. The rain stopped, started again, stopped. Water trickled down from the roof to the ground. He fiddled with his pens, crumpled up some precious sheets of paper and then smoothed them back out again. Eventually, his hands wandered to his desk drawer, and as he picked through the scraps of notes and the odd rolling pencil, he came upon a dirtied card wedged beneath a letter opener.
Shankarbhavan, it read, The premier luxe hostel of the great God’s city. He flipped the card back to front, front to back between his fingers. He flicked it back into the drawer.
He spent the day wandering amongst the rooms, sitting with Shobha and Rani, passing back and forth before the washroom. His mind felt like a sieve. That night, he was outside the washroom door before the pots began their evening protest, and he quickly silenced them, tone filled with the same iron as the previous night. Still, he felt as if the echoes of that ghostly sound coated his skin in a film he could not wash off even in the holy river. There were just a few hours left until dawn, and yet he had no desire to sleep.
Out of habit he walked one round of the courtyard, glancing in all the vacant rooms as he went. His heart grew heavier with each empty bed he passed, remembering when the guests and their dying folk had numbered so many that blankets and bundles spilled out of the rooms and into the walkway and courtyard. Even when quiet, there had been a kind of hum to the bhavan that was absent now. He glanced in Sheetal’s room, saw the boy sliding a knife down a block of wood, whittling it into some form as yet known only to him.
Mohan’s door was ajar and a small candle was lit. The assistant was usually a heavy sleeper, quick to begin snoring even after the commotion with the pots was dispelled each night. He had never seemed to fully recover after his bout with the cold and had reached a constant state of glum stupor. Pramesh knew he owed the man an explanation. He stopped at the door and gave it a light tap before pushing it open. “Are you well, Mohan-bhai?” he asked, his eyes adjusting to the dim candlelight. Then he took in the scene before him. Water lay in puddles on the floor near the window, and Mohan himself was completely soaked, with his wet hair plastered to his skin and his shirt clinging to his round body. Outside, the rain fell to the earth with such force that a fine mist rose up from the lane. “What happened? What reason was there for you to be out at this hour?”
“Nothing, Pramesh-ji,” Mohan said, his teeth chattering. Pramesh’s eyes wandered over to the steel cabinet, usually kept locked, but now the door was wide open and the contents were fully visible. He stared at the packets of biscuits and chocolates and crisps that spilled onto the floor, and then he looked at his shivering assistant.
“Remember your place here, Mohan-bhai. Remember your duty.” He pulled the door shut. Mohan had never broken the bhavan rules in all his years here. He must have done so now only because he knew, as everyone else seemed to, that the ghost had made his hostel into a hopeless place. Pramesh entered his office and pulled open a drawer in his desk. The smudged card was where he’d left it earlier, touting another Shankarbhavan in a very different part of the city. Here, in his Shankarbhavan, he was powerless. The ghost would not heed him. The head priest would not budge. The guests refused to stay with their dying within these walls, and his assistant had succumbed to temptation.
He tucked the card into his pocket and looked out the window. It was raining even harder now, the sound a low rumble. Perhaps he would try his luck.
26
Bhut had started his day early, setting off on foot patrol with a deputy to show the goondas and moneymen and dancing-house owners that he was, after all, responsible for his portion of the city. He’d just come from the cremation ghats, where he’d hovered at the topmost steps, watching the proceedings. Folk spoke of his vigilance, his concern, never dreaming that the circle officer envied the mourners. They had the luxury of circling the pyre, cracking the skull, and throwing the pot of river water over the shoulder as they turned away—concrete motio
ns necessary for breaking ties to the person who existed no longer. Motions that others had denied his own family.
The priests of Kashi had relegated his sister, with her decidedly not good death, to the rites reserved for those whose ends were full of questions the living could not answer. Too obedient to urge his father to question the priests’ decision, too young to speak to those holy men on his own, Bhut had stood by helpless and mute as strangers placed his sister’s body on a wooden raft and set it afloat on the river. Having preceded her husband in that journey beyond life, she was dressed in her bridal sari, with the delicate ornaments of her wedding day sparkling from her ears and nose and throat and wrists, and the glinting gold was all the more painful to see for the pantomime of life it created in the body that lay on the raft.
But most devastating of all was that his sister’s husband was the chief mourner. Bhut, who’d begged his father to intervene, to bully, to throw enough money at the priests so that they would turn a blind eye to the way things had been done for centuries and allow the woman’s father—or even her only brother—to preside over the rites, had fixed his eyes not on a final glimpse of his sister, but on that man who everyone whispered about.
Shameful business. Such a light and happy thing, and such a change after she married.
His mother told him to do it.
It was only a matter of time. Doesn’t he already have a new bride?
How long had that man known his sister? A scant year, pitiful when compared to the years, the lifetime that Bhut and his sisters and parents had known her for. And yet the husband had the privilege of following the body out in a boat with another priest, while Bhut, his father, and the city watched from the ghats. The one who everyone said had pushed Bhut’s sister to her death now pushed the body across the water with a bamboo pole, while the priest muttered hollow chants and a boatman navigated the current. Once they’d reached the middle of the river, they had hoisted rocks onto the raft’s edges, each weight sinking the wooden structure a little, until the border of heavy stones gave the body over to the river completely, the water embracing and pulling it into its depths with the silent indifference of a beggar who accepts a coin only to put his hand out for another.
The City of Good Death Page 23
