The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  “Bhaiya!”

  “Well? What is it?”

  “Bhaiya, this way, this way!”

  “Can’t you simply tell me?” He waited for a single disgusted minute, then cursed. He crawled over the seating slats to the bow, muttered a quick prayer, and touched his feet to the white sands. He pulled his boat up higher onto the shore out of the current’s drift, and then he ran down to where his companion stood waving and yelling, his voice high and shrill.

  The anklets were still in Bhut’s hand when they found him. The fingers had curled so tight in rigor mortis that the chains did not sing nor weep—they did not make a single sound as they moved the body from shore to boat to shore again.

  ***

  Halfway across the city, a different search party came upon a different body. They found it just one step outside the city, carefully aligned so that not a single toe brushed the boundary into Kashi. The men were silent as they lifted Mrs. Chalwah’s light frame onto a bier. They said nothing as they carried her home, where her son and daughter-in-law waited. No one spoke about her past, or her family, or her disappearance from the world in her later years. No one spoke of that story from so long ago. In the end, what they said about her, what they would always say about her, was that she died with her eyes open.

  49

  Footsteps shuffled outside the hole in the bhavan where the gates had been, hesitated, and then shuffled back to the entrance. The bhavan was empty, and every noise echoed. With Sheetal’s father newly cremated, not a single dying guest remained.

  News of the bhavan transforming into a House of Life had traveled with the quickness of a thieving monkey, but news of the bhavan coming back to what it used to be, a House of Death, was much slower to make the rounds. Mohan had tried. He’d been around to all his connections to ask them to pass the news. He’d even tried to contact the newspaperman who’d written the story that brought such masses of people to the city in the first place. That man had demurred at first, but he relented in printing a small retraction that fell on the last page of the paper in type that Mohan had to hold close to his eyes to see.

  Pramesh did not worry about this much. “They will find out soon enough, Mohan-bhai. Patience, that’s all we need.” He and Shobha had returned after being away for three days. They’d walked straight from the train station to Mrs. Mistry’s house to fetch Rani, and then the three walked over to the bhavan, which was much changed from the building they’d left behind. Furniture had been damaged or stolen outright. Doors rested on bent hinges, moldering flowers and dried rice littered the stone walkway, foodstuffs and clothing forgotten in the haste of departure attracted mice and rats, which scurried about in the open. Shobha’s kitchen had been raided entirely—even the leftover wood perched in the grate was gone. Only the contents of the upstairs bedroom remained intact: Thakorlal’s key plate had stood strong.

  “You cannot stay here,” Mrs. Mistry pronounced upon visiting a day later to check up on her young charge. “She has only just recovered! Do you wish her to be ill again?” That was how Shobha and Rani came to stay with Mrs. Mistry. The men, Pramesh included, remained behind to assess the damage and begin repairs. Though he slept in his office, the manager spent most of his days outside the bhavan, speaking to workmen and inquiring about new furniture for the rooms.

  In the interim, folk who still did not know that the bhavan was once again a death hostel became Mohan’s responsibility. Now, hearing the shuffling outside, he straightened his cuffs and smoothed his hair with his hands, intent on matching the bhavan’s reputation as a holy, clean place. A man waited at the entrance, a bundle of clothing on his back. “Is this Shankarbhavan?” he asked.

  “It is,” Mohan said, preparing himself to make the same explanation he’d already given twice that morning. “Listen, Bhai, the thing is—”

  “For the dying?” the man said.

  “What? Yes, for the dying.” Mohan peered past the man into the empty lane.

  “Do you always make people wait? That room over there, is it empty?” The man strode ahead. “This one,” he said, gesturing with his chin at it, empty though it was, with no rope bed, not even the peeling list of instructions and rules for the bhavan. “I came ahead of my family,” the man explained. “My brother is bringing her. My mother. And also my wife, my brother’s wife, my children, grandchildren.…” He peered at the scene behind Mohan, the empty courtyard, his voice echoing against the walls. “You’re sure this is the right place? The death bhavan?”

  “What else could it be?” Mohan said. And he hastened to get the register from the office while the man unloaded his bundle and went into the lane to wait for the rest of his party.

  50

  “I will be back in an hour,” Pramesh said, scooping up Rani in his arms, swinging her back and forth, still marveling at the ease with which she’d returned to health. He put her back down as Shobha approached with a glass of milk. Shobha stood over her daughter until the liquid had all disappeared down Rani’s throat. She’d never had frequent cause to scold her daughter before, but alongside Rani’s health an impish quality had emerged. She’d taken to hiding in the bhavan’s many crevices and shadowy corners whenever her mother required her. Once, in a panic, Shobha had spent a half hour searching for the girl before finding her in room No. 5, empty since Sheetal had left it behind. He’d returned to his family farm, having completed his father’s rites and spent the mourning period at the bhavan, every step completed perfectly under Narinder’s instruction, the skull cracked on the first try. Rani had only smiled and proceeded to hide beneath the bed until Dev coaxed her out for Shobha.

  “Going for a walk?” Shobha asked.

  “A short one. To the ghats,” Pramesh answered. “And then I will take her out in the lanes. There is a chaat stand that I’ve wanted to try.”

  “Don’t mention that to Mrs. Mistry. Full of germs, the dangers of street food, she’d say.”

  “Strange; I’m sure I saw Mr. Mistry there some days ago.”

  “He would not be the first husband to keep something from his wife,” Shobha said, and she turned away, Rani following, before Pramesh could reply.

  Out of the gate, he looked up reflexively, hand raised in habitual greeting. The shutters on Mrs. Chalwah’s window were closed, and he dropped his hand, moving on.

  The streets were crowded. The air was festive but tense, everyone intent on some mission. Pramesh walked through narrow lanes, where children trailed each other with purpose, dogs trotted past fresh garbage piled in the alleys, and older women waved their hands when their neighbors tried to flag them down for gossip and instead continued with hobbled steps, holding market bags tight.

  Out into the open air at a crossroads came competing sounds: radios spewing music and static in equal proportion, men scolding their wives who scolded their children who scolded their siblings, old folk who moaned at the windows in hopes that someone might hear them, unlike their families who’d long ago stopped up their ears to the sound.

  Up the sloping path, past crooked doorways, folk sat ensconced on verandas high above the street, their faces like the statues hidden in temples across the city. Waving tree branches mingled with tangled power lines; monkeys scaled thick black electrical wires with the skill passed on by ancestors who rappelled down vines and across treetops. The air grew thick with incense and the warmth of human bodies, and the walls fell away to reveal the sigh of open sky and wide flowing river.

  Pramesh sat at the foot of the ghats, his back to the sound and the crowds, his eyes straight ahead. He spied the skinny man with the spare stubble lighting a beedi with trembling fingers, the man he remembered to be Raman, the blubbering boatman who helped bring Mohan back into the bhavan. There, under Raman’s tight but nervous watch, was the man’s boat: twice exorcised, the second ritual completed most recently after the vessel returned carrying the circle officer’s body.

  That was
the boat that Sagar had taken; the boat he’d chosen under the guidance of the desk boy at the false Shankarbhavan, the boat he’d pushed off into the river. The boat where Sagar’s life had come to an end. Pramesh had walked every step that Sagar had walked in the city, visited every place his cousin had wandered—except one.

  “Ah, Bhai, you mustn’t take that fool’s boat, don’t you know the stories?”

  “Bhai, my vessel is just a few steps away and you’ll see it’s recently been blessed; surely you’d rather travel with me?”

  Pramesh stood before Raman, who looked back at him with anxious eyes and hands that trembled with the slim weight of the beedi wedged between his fingers. “Raman-bhai. No other boat will do. Will you take me?”

  The journey did not take long. Raman guided the boat with precision to the spot Pramesh had specified: the middle of the river, the halfway point between cursed sand and holy land. Whatever other men may have said about the boatman, he was a reliable captain for his beleaguered craft. He kept the boat steady when it seemed to drift, and he had the sense to keep his thoughts hidden regarding the nature of Pramesh’s trip.

  The city was beautiful from this distance; the buildings glowed with the sun’s light and the entire panorama seemed immoveable. What had Sagar seen? Had he looked only to his goal, to the river, to the infinite blackness that cradled the boat in liquid hope?

  There were things Pramesh knew and things he did not, things he’d seen and things he could not imagine. He could picture Sagar with the clarity of his own image in the mirror. He saw him disembarking from the train, running into the tout, walking with weak purpose after chatting with the boy at the false Shankarbhavan. He saw him charm Thakorlal into giving him a glass bottle and then resume his wandering, perhaps taking a circuitous route through the lanes. He sought out the boy at the hostel, walked to Shankarbhavan, was denied at the gate. Peered through the iron bars, hoping for a glimpse, then turned away. Walked the city, following a young boy, slept a feverish sleep on the ghats, and woke. Built up his courage, his belief, and was persuaded to take a boat by himself into the river, to dip from that holy water at the place where sacred met cursed. And then what? Did his body give out in the boat? Did he slip as he leaned over, trying to reach that elusive nectar? Did he tie the anchor rope around his arm with purpose, knowing that his end was near and choosing to seize the moment himself?

  Pramesh would never know. That pain of ignorance would remain with him forever until his own good death many years later; the twinge in his heart would remind him that his cousin’s story was short and blurred in a way that he did not deserve.

  He focused on the early afternoon sun against the river, the spots that sparkled with white pricks of light. The light shifted and bobbed with the water, refracted and broke apart and came back together with the current’s movement. The river would flow, the sun would rise and fall over the city; he and Shobha would grow old; his child and Sagar’s would create their own lives; the light would continue this dance for time immemorial. Always apart, always together. Pot broken, relationship finished.

  Not finished, Bhaiya. Never finished.

  He could imagine Sagar’s death, or he could imagine Sagar’s life, the parts he had missed, the parts did not know. Sagar holding a newborn Kavi in his arms. Sagar tending to his fields. Sagar running through the small grove of trees behind the house with Kavi on his back, Kamna watching from the kitchen and laughing at them both. A good death, a bad death; in the years to come Pramesh would never discover an answer that satisfied him, but in those moments his mind turned toward the one thing he knew to be true.

  The life, he was certain, had been good.

  END

  Author’s Note

  Though the death hostels of Banaras are very real, Shankarbhavan is a place of fiction. The portrayal of the religion, rites, and beliefs matches my own direct experience. Any deviation from fact in geography, custom, and language concerning the city or the hostels is entirely my own, done in service to the story.

  The tale of Yamraj and Magadha has no direct basis in scripture or in epic, nor is it part of the storyscape of Banaras. I was likely inspired by the story of Markandeya.

  Many thanks to Amrut Champaneri, Nila Champaneri, and Ranjani Murali for their patience and generosity in conversation, and to the following: Death in Banaras, by Jonathan Parry; Dying the Good Death, by Christopher Justice; Forest of Bliss, directed by Robert Gardner; and End Time City, by Michael Ackerman.

  —Priyanka Champaneri, December 2019

  About the Author

  Priyanka Champaneri received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts numerous times. She received the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for The City of Good Death, her first novel.

  Restless Books is an independent, nonprofit publisher devoted to championing essential voices from around the world whose stories speak to us across linguistic and cultural borders. We seek extraordinary international literature for adults and young readers that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultures and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar.

  Through cultural programming, we aim to celebrate immigrant writing and bring literature to underserved communities. We believe that immigrant stories are a vital component of our cultural consciousness; they help to ensure awareness of our communities, build empathy for our neighbors, and strengthen our democracy.

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