The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  A ghost? A memory tripped at the edge of his brain, came closer in a tantalizing dance and then whipped away just as he thought he remembered. He moaned as he sat up, “Rama.” He grimaced as he bent his knees and raised himself to standing. The sun was not yet up. He had a dim idea that the ghat was not a good place to be, and although he could not remember why, he obeyed this internal warning. He stumbled down the street, one hand against the walls, and he got as far as a dozen houses and half as many home temples before he could go no further.

  He collapsed on the closest stoop and tried to decipher where he was, but his head felt like a cotton boll, his senses all stopped up. He, who knew every crevice and gully of this city, found no familiarity in his surroundings. There was no one to ask, either; those few who passed him on the way to the ghats opened their eyes wide and murmured the great God’s name when they saw him but hurried onward, distancing themselves from this man who had no doubt run afoul of some crime lord’s goondas in the middle of the night.

  The stillness embraced him with a kind of comfort he sensed he had not felt for a long time. Then, music slowly drifted down in a morning song: the plucked notes of a sarod shimmered out of an upstairs window. He heard stirrings behind him, a door opened, and a woman came out.

  “It’s that what’s-his-name again—haven’t we told him so many-many times to not play so early?” She caught sight of Mohan and gasped. “Rama!” she shrieked. “Rama!” She slammed the door shut. Mohan blinked. He strained his ears toward the music, the sound covering him like a blanket. The door opened again, and this time the woman stood behind a man who stared with bleary eyes at Mohan and yawned.

  The assistant opened his mouth, intending to ask where he was. “Is it—where—” he said, his tongue bumbling over the words.

  “Drunk!” the woman hissed over her husband’s shoulder. “Hai Rama, look at the mess of him! It’s the fault of that metal-man, haven’t I told you?” Her husband grunted in response. “And will anyone listen? Must every man be stumbling down the streets, smelling of homebrew, before someone acts? Well? Will you just stand there?”

  “Yes, yes.” Her husband waved his hands back at his wife, as if that gesture would somehow quiet her, or better, make her disappear. “I suppose we should take you to the police station,” he said, facing Mohan with glum authority. “Listen,” he said. “Ey! Are you listening?” He kicked Mohan, then leaned down and stared. Head tilted back, cheek against the dirt-smeared wall, hands limp at his sides, the would-be drunk did not respond. “Huh.” He pushed at the fat man’s shoulders. “Hai Rama,” he said, more in surprise than shock.

  “Don’t bother with Rama right now,” his wife hissed. “Get him up and drag him to the station. Come, I will call the neighbor to bring her husband.”

  “Yes, I suppose you should, although no need to rush about it,” her husband said. “The fellow is dead.”

  ***

  Pramesh’s heart assumed a furious beat. He strode away from the gate and into Mohan’s room. His assistant was gone—of course. It had been clear for hours, though he’d been too preoccupied to recognize the signs. When had Mohan ever let folk wait at the gate? When had he ever slept in, ever left without informing either the manager or the bhavan mistress; when had he ever shirked his duty in anything? The bed with its neat folded blanket and Mohan’s empty steel cabinet were the only objects in the room.

  “He must have left last night,” Pramesh said to Bhut as he opened the gates and joined the men in the street, taking care to close the iron bars behind him. “He had no family, no one but us.” Only us. A sick feeling churned in his stomach. Pramesh looked from sniveling boatman to the circle officer, Bhut’s face a mask of fury. “Where is he now? Who saw that he was dead?”

  Bhut gave Raman a rough shove. “This one seems to think so. But no one has seen this dead man, and the body is no longer there.”

  “He was dead,” Raman whimpered. “So much blood everywhere. And a gash, right here, on the side of his head. Ah, Rama, Rama.…”

  “Where?” Pramesh said again. He would not believe the thing until he saw for himself. “Which ghat?”

  A shout went up from the back of the crowd. “Does it matter? Does a dead man walk, Bhaiya?” The crowd laughed. When the last wheezing giggle died out, they heard it: a familiar chant further down the lanes. Rama Nam Satya Hai. Rama Nam Satya Hai. Some turned toward the crossroads, curious about who was coming with a body here, in a direction opposite the ghats; others shifted from one foot to another or stared at Raman and Bhut, willing the drama to continue.

  Pramesh focused on the bier, which was supported by four men, their arms quivering beneath the weight of the body. Slowly, they made their way into the crowd. Several of the men clicked their tongues or raised their eyebrows. The body had not been dressed properly or wrapped in cloth. In fact, the round person on the bier still wore his leather chappals, his torn pants, his woeful shirt. The carriers cut their way through the mob until they reached the manager and the circle officer. Then, none too gently, they set the bier down on the ground before those two men. “He is yours?” one of the men asked. All four panted with exertion.

  Pramesh’s heart dropped when he saw Mohan’s battered face. Blood matted the black hair, only recently grown back to its former lushness, streaked the forehead, tinted the ears. There were scrapes and bruises on the man’s hands and feet.

  “See?” another of the bier carriers said. “I told you he was a bhavan man.”

  “Where did you find him?” came Bhut’s sharp query.

  “In our lane,” the first man said. “My wife saw him. Frightened her most dreadfully, Officer-ji. She is still hysterical; not a nice thing for people to just die in the lanes, nah? Isn’t there some other better place to do it?”

  Pramesh knelt at Mohan’s side and touched the man’s shoulder. Another body stretched on another bier came to mind; slimmer, with a face to mirror the manager’s but for a split right eyebrow. Pramesh had failed that man in life. He had never imagined the same could happen with Mohan.

  “Him? Is this him?” Bhut asked Raman with gritted teeth. The boatman wagged his head quickly and swayed from one foot to another, while the men behind them, cloaked in the anonymity of the crowd, grew bolder.

  “Sahib, what will you do with him? I thought the police only arrested living men!”

  “Ah, Manager-ji; you will be needing a new assistant, nah? My brother-in-law is most suitable.”

  “So much wood it will take to burn that one, nah?”

  “Something is wrong,” Pramesh said. He moved his hand to the assistant’s chest, then raised his palm just beneath Mohan’s nose. “Hai Rama,” he breathed in relief. He gave the assistant a shake. “Hai Rama!”

  “Hai Rama,” came an answering groan. Mohan’s eyes popped open. He blinked and looked at the faces staring down at him.

  “You!” Raman blustered. “You were dead!”

  “Was I?” Mohan said. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. When he saw Pramesh, he was unable to meet the manager’s eyes. “Dead?” he asked, looking at Bhut, at Raman, at the other faces hovering above him.

  Bhut frowned. He squatted down and looked Mohan in the face. “Where were you last night? What happened?”

  Mohan’s ears and neck flushed. “I was at Mir ghat,” he mumbled.

  “Doing what?”

  “Ji, does it matter?”

  Bhut’s face darkened. “I say it matters. What were you doing?”

  A light clatter of bangles sounded behind Pramesh. He turned to see Shobha giving a cup of water to Sheetal, who then brought it with swift steps over to the crowd and handed it through the gate bars to Mohan. The hostel mistress kept her distance, about halfway between the gate and the kitchen so that she was shielded from the mob’s gaze. Mohan managed a wan smile in her direction, but he still refused to look at the manager.

  Prames
h could see that Bhut would not stop his questioning. “Bhut-sahib, Mohan will remain here. I give you my word. But he needs a doctor, he needs rest.”

  “And I need an answer,” Bhut said, his gaze never moving from Mohan’s face. “Now, again: what were you doing on the ghat?”

  Mohan groaned. “I cannot remember it all.” But he gathered himself and told Bhut and all who listened of his night-time toilet habits, his sudden trip to the ghat, and his meeting with someone whose name he could not recall. Beyond that, he could remember nothing.

  Bhut was silent for a long time after Mohan finished. He stared at the assistant, as if the pressure of his gaze could pull something else out from that man’s mouth. Then he held out his hand, unfurling the set of silver chains. “And these?” he asked. “How did you come by these?”

  “Oh!” a voice from the crowd shouted out. “Does Mohan-sahib have a secret lady friend? I thought that was Raman’s game, nah?”

  “Silence!” Bhut roared. “Or I will throw each of you do-nothings in jail, understand?” Everyone knew Bhut had no authority to throw all of them in jail, but the men obeyed, more because they feared missing the rest of the story than Bhut’s threat. The circle officer shook the chains. Mohan’s eyes crossed and he clutched his head. “Sahib, ji, what are those?”

  “You have never seen these before?”

  “Never, ji.”

  “This man,” Bhut glared at Raman, “says he found them at your feet. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Ji,” Mohan said again.

  “What of this person on the ghat you spoke to? Who was he?”

  “Bhut-sahib, please, you have talked to him enough,” Pramesh said.

  The crowd jostled, and a man pushed his way to the front. The manager recognized him as a doctor who made monthly house calls to Mrs. Chalwah across the street. “Let me examine him, Bhut-sahib,” this doctor now said. “Surely you can see the man can barely remember his name, much less anyone else’s.”

  Bhut ignored them both. “What did he look like? Where did he come from? Where did he go?” His voice rose with each new question, spittle flying from his mouth.

  Pramesh stood. “Ji, I must insist you stop. You may speak to him later, but he is injured and exhausted and cannot answer you now.”

  “Our hostel manager is absolutely correct,” a voice rang out in the crowd. “Coming back to life after being dead is certainly tiring, nah?”

  Pramesh gritted his teeth as laughter again suffused the crowd. He focused on helping Mohan sit up and stand.

  “Mohan-bhai, put your arm over my shoulder,” Pramesh said. Mohan shrunk away; he averted his eyes from the manager’s and instead attempted to rise on his own.

  “Manager-ji, I can help.” Sheetal had appeared from the other side of the gate. He meant well, but he was not very successful in raising the assistant’s heavy form from the bier.

  “Yes, ignore us, Manager-ji,” the earlier taunting man called out. “But you cannot hide the truth, all the men have seen it.”

  “Seen what, Bhaiya?” a man in the crowd asked with genuine confusion.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” the first voice bellowed. “A dead man came to life right here, so close to these bhavan walls.” The crowd turned to the speaker. Many of them were satisfied with the morning’s events: such a story to tell their families and neighbors when they returned! But they all stayed where they were, the promise of more fun glittering in their eyes.

  “But he was not so close to the bhavan, Bhaiya,” someone said in a helpful tone. “He is outside the walls, nah?”

  “And doesn’t that show you how powerful the thing is?” a second voice from the opposite end of the crowd asked. “Such wonders it can do outside the bhavan; imagine what it does inside.”

  Between the two of them, Pramesh and Sheetal lifted Mohan into a standing position, though they wobbled with the assistant’s weight. The manager glanced around for Bhut, but he had disappeared with the characteristic quiet of his nickname. With the circle officer gone, the surrounding mob swelled. No one offered to help, but then Raman stepped forward. Out of Bhut’s grasp, the boatman had gathered together the remains of his composure. He motioned Sheetal aside and took up Mohan’s other arm and draped it across his shoulder. “Come, Manager-ji, come,” he said, already panting beneath his share of Mohan’s weight.

  The mob, however, would not let them go. “Does no one care to know what this thing is?” the two men from earlier cried out. “They were all out there just yesterday, doing tripindi shraddha—isn’t it obvious? Does no one in Kashi care to know what happens in their city?”

  “Well, speak up then, don’t go on and on about it,” someone answered.

  Pramesh had his hands on the gate door, and as he struggled to pull it open while balancing Mohan, the two voices spoke up from either side of the mob, rapid and loud.

  “You all think Shankarbhavan is so holy, nah?”

  “Bring your dying here, bring them to end their lives in Kashi.”

  “But Manager-ji! Are you listening? Why have you kept it hidden so long?”

  “Why haven’t you told us about the ghost there? The ghost who brings folk back to life?”

  The effect was immediate. Raman stopped to turn and look at the speakers; Mohan felt the sick queasiness of shame as the words he’d revealed the previous night came back to him in this twisted reincarnation. And Pramesh, though desperate to get back inside the bhavan, knew that such a statement required an answer. The men would never believe his side otherwise. He turned, still supporting Mohan’s weight on his shoulders.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “There is nothing here that shouldn’t be. We are a house of death; what is this nonsense about life?”

  “There is a ghost, don’t deny it!”

  A man pushed himself to the center of the crowd. “For how long? For months! Months, to keep such a thing hidden?”

  “Such a ghost, Bhaiya, and we saw it with our own eyes, didn’t we? That assistant was certainly dead, even as those fellows were carrying him through the streets. And back to life, before our eyes!”

  “And yes we did hear of some ceremony these bhavan people did yesterday, didn’t we? And this was the reason? Such a thing, hai Rama.…”

  “All of you, listen,” the doctor called out. The fractious chattering ceased for a moment. “I have treated so many of you. I have been there to check on your children and see your wives through difficult births. You know that what I speak is true: there is no such thing as a dead man coming to life. It is simply impossible.”

  “But you are a man of science,” came an answering cry. “What could you know about such things? When was the last time you were even in the Mother’s temple? When have you last bathed in the river, offered prayers to the sun? How can we listen to a man who does not even count on his prayer beads each morning?” The men pushed closer and closer, their movements as restless as their words.

  Pramesh moved in front of the doctor as if to shield him. “If you would let me explain,” he said over the voices. “If you would listen—”

  But the time for listening was past. No one but the boatman and the assistant heard him; every other man in the crowd was occupied with stating his own opinion and feeding off the conclusions from his brothers in the mob. And as their tongues moved, so did the men themselves, jostling, pushing closer and closer to the bhavan gates until manager, assistant, boy, doctor, and boatman were all pressed against the iron bars. The door was forced closed, with Shobha and the priests helpless on the other side.

  “Wait, wait! Hold your tongues!” Mohan shouted. “Come now! Be reasonable! I was never dead—how could you think such a thing? And this lie you have decided to believe—no one has ever suffered such a thing in our place. Do you hear me? Never.” Pramesh watched the assistant valiantly repeat his own lie, but Mohan’s words had no effect.

 
“How can we believe you?”

  “You cannot even tell a dead man from a live one, remember?”

  “Bhaiya, remember the weaver? Remember? I bet you a hundred rupees that man was dead!”

  Into this fray Sheetal ventured. “I have no ties to the bhavan. I have been here with my father for almost two months now. None of the things you accuse the manager of hiding have happened in the bhavan.” He did not back down from the mob’s gaze. The youth’s words, however well-intentioned, became more fodder for the mob.

  “Two months, he says! Two months, with who, his father?

  “And still he lingers here. Child, don’t you see? He should have died long ago but for that ghost!”

  “He is proof, even more proof! What dying man lingers for another two months when in Kashi?”

  “My sister has been ill—”

  “Father cannot miss the birth of his first grandson.…”

  “The ailment has been there for so many years; no cure, they say, but now—”

  The crowd surged, each pushing forward until this human mass threatened to crush the five standing before the iron gates. The iron, weak and rusted at the hinges, only symbolically imposing, creaked and groaned as the mob surged again and again.

  “Wait!” Pramesh cried out as the many bodies threatened either to smother him or to pull him apart. “I will open the gates for you! Move back and I will let you through!” But the mob refused to move back, each man now a cell in a gigantic and ravenous organism. They continued to push forward, spurred on by the secret wish that each of them carried in their hearts for someone they loved best and did not want to lose just yet.

  “There is a ghost in there!”

  “Don’t deny it!”

  “Show us the ghost!”

  “You have lied to us!”

  The iron bars swayed, the hinges rocked, the ancient metal pulled apart from concrete walls, and the gates that had stood for centuries fell with a crash that would have been thunderous if not for the mob’s roar. The crowd rushed in, pushing aside the manager and assistant and boatman, Sheetal and the doctor, in their hurry to see or hear the miracle. But as they fanned out into Pramesh’s office and Mohan’s room and the priest’s quarters and the kitchen area—which a terrified Shobha vacated to wait with Rani behind the locked bedroom door—they found nothing and funneled to the washroom. Here they encountered one more barrier, which, unlike the gates, was far stronger and would not yield as easily.