Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (11 page)

‘Stop complaining!’ my father raised his voice, then muttered below his breath, ‘Silly woman. . .’

But before the war of words between my parents could escalate, it was Vispy who butted in:

‘See, again! How cleverly he has deflected the conversation from his misdemeanours to his studies. But what studies? Jaalbhoy Master told me he hasn’t attended a single revision class!’ I stared at my elder brother, amazed. I had no inkling until now that he harboured so much resentment against me.

‘And just this morning, Temoorus Kaka phoned me at my office. I had to take a half-day’s casual leave to meet him at Doongerwaadi. I felt so ashamed to hear all the things he had to tell me.’

I had never felt anything but admiration and pride towards Vispy and his achievements. What was it that had made him turn on me so viciously? If Temoo Kaka had indeed complained to him about me, he could have spoken to me privately. I could hardly believe my own ears as he went on. And from the way my mother kept nodding her head emphatically and righteously as he ranted, as if to confirm that she already knew the truth of all these sordid details, it became obvious to me that, while working himself up into a rage, Vispy was repeating them for a second, or perhaps even a third time. The animosity of this terminal confrontation was essentially on display for my father’s mortification, it seemed to me, as if to prove to him, finally, who was the worthier son.

‘. . .days on end, days on end, from morning till evening in their hideout in the woods until even Nusli Kavarana, the warden, noticed their goings-on and complained to Temoo that he must put an end to this public indecency—and imagine, with that slut!’

‘Enough said,’ rumbled my father, looking completely distraught. ‘I have heard enough. . .’

‘Not the half of it, Daddy,’ continued Vispy venomously, ‘I haven’t told you the worst part: Temoo Kaka’s ultimatum to Phiroze is that if he wants to meet Sepideh again, he should be willing to marry her. And work and live with her at Doongerwaadi!’

‘
Saalo badmaash
!’

That was my father’s only impulsive outburst, and for the first time in my life I saw a spark of hatred in his eyes. But it was there for only a moment, before it faded. Meanwhile Hilla and Vispy were speaking at the same time.

‘An insult to our family! Proposing such a thing to the son of a high priest!’

‘How dare he talk like that, the drunkard! He should be thrashed! Flogged with sticks and chains!’

‘A thousand lashes would be too little. Teach him a lesson, Daddy. Complain to the Punchayet and get him sacked from his job. Then he’ll learn his position. Such insolence. . .!’

While my mother and brother were engaged in this monody of vengeance, I remained completely silent, my eyes transfixed by that great jumble of my father’s grey beard that seemed to me to quiver and twitch ever so slightly. His eyes, beneath those shaggy eyebrows, were on the verge of dissolving into tears. When he spoke, the other two persons in the room fell silent.

‘Listen to me, Phiroze. . . Without knowing it, you have become entangled in something that goes back many years. This man has been waiting patiently all these years to find the right moment to plunge his khanjar into my belly. And now it’s in, he’s twisting it. You don’t know what this is all about.’

‘But I do, Father. I know I love Sepideh. I’m not concerned with Temoorus. And I’m willing to—yes, I
want
to marry her, Father. . .’ I heard a gasp of horror from my mother, but didn’t look at her. ‘Until a few days ago, I didn’t even know we were related.’

‘He’s gone completely mad,’ screamed Mother.

‘Shameful. . .’ muttered Vispy, under his breath.

‘She’s your first cousin, son; well, almost. The girl may be blameless in all this. But we have no contact with that family anymore, haven’t had any since—’

‘Blameless!’ screamed Mother. ‘That loose bitch? And she’s so much older than our Phiroze! This has all been very cleverly planned and plotted, don’t you see? Just my rotten luck that I decide to take Phiroze to Hirji Mama’s funeral. Temoorus would have certainly recognized me immediately, and pointed Phiroze out to her, and immediately, the seduction starts. . . What scoundrels!’

‘Oh, stop it, Mum!’ I snapped irritably. ‘Nobody’s been plotting anything. . .’

‘Shut up, both of you,’ shouted Father, at the end of his endurance. ‘Anyway you can’t marry such a close relative, you should know that, you fool. But do you know what this is all about, what choice you are being asked to make? Do you know what it means to live the life of a khandhia?’

‘I was thinking, Father. . .if I have to, maybe I could train to become a nussesalar? It’s the closest I’ll ever come to being a priest.’

(I forgot to mention this: some weeks ago, when Mother reported to him that I had finally succeeded in memorizing the longer segments of the liturgy, Father had strongly urged me to pursue my initiation into naavarhood. I pleaded that I needed time to study for my upcoming exam.

‘But there’s no harm in taking your books along,’ countered Father. ‘In the nine days of retreat, when you have to maintain a pious and meditative frame of mind, you’ll find plenty of time to study. Reading is a pious activity. And
then
see how well you do in your exams! An idle mind, as they say, can so easily become the Devil’s workshop!’

So I did go into retreat, carrying a fat science textbook as alibi, and did try to qualify as naavar, at one of our four main Fire Temples in Bombay, Wadiaji’s, the one near the big ice-cream shop at Charni Road. As luck would have it, on my very second night there, I had a wet dream. The shrivelled-up old dastoorji, Muncherjee, who had been assigned the task of grooming me through my initiation, was crestfallen when he saw the telltale blotches on my freshly laundered, white pajama next morning. Almost writhing in dismay—or was it disgust?—he moaned, ‘
Aai joyoo
? That’s why we keep telling you boys, that’s why we always tell you—finish your naavar ceremony before you turn fifteen at least! Or you’ll have trouble. You’ll have to start all over again, my boy. . .’

I could have—started my retreat again, made a second attempt; but just as I had privately resigned to failing my matric a second time over, I had no faith at all in the sustained piety of my own dream life. I gave up on this venture, too, and quietly returned home. . . That was almost two months ago.)

‘What did you say?’ asked my father. ‘Nussesalar? Well, that might be preferable, I suppose, to being a mere khandhia,’ he nodded, approving sourly. ‘It’s supposed to be a noble vocation, that’s true. . .but you would still remain an outcast, don’t forget. Ostracized from society, unable to meet your family. . .’

‘But. . .’ I wanted to speak, yet couldn’t find the words.

‘Even if you went through all the purificatory rites and rituals, and even if I was sure you had been through them diligently and precisely, without being lax or slipshod, I still wouldn’t want you to enter my fire temple. . .do you understand? Now let’s go to bed. I have to be up tomorrow at 4.30 a.m. instead of at 4 a.m., like I have been doing these last three months—thinking that you were planning to sit for your exams next week.’

I nodded dumbly, and hung my head in shame. As Father rose stiffly to retire to his bedroom, I knew he was a deeply disappointed man.

In all fairness, none of us could possibly have expected the debacle
of the corpse to go unnoticed.

A dead body deserves some modicum of respect and deference. That’s a belief that cuts across religious persuasion. Right there on the road where it happened, I’m told, it caused much righteous murmuring. The incident even got a brief mention in the next morning’s
Bombay Chronicle
, which Vera, Rustom’s daughter (who worked as a steno at Gagrat, Limbuwalla & Co, the well-known solicitor’s firm), brought home with her. Rusi showed me the ripped out snippet.

Eyewitnesses stood flabbergasted—some even terror-stricken—when an unfortunate corpse toppled off a bier, falling flat on his face in the middle of a busy thoroughfare. Some claimed that the body immediately began to twitch, as though in great agony. Subsequent investigations revealed no substance to this claim, however, which originated, possibly, in some onlooker’s imaginative fancy. The corpse was quickly returned to its place on the bier, and carried into the sprawling, Elysian demesne of the Parsi community at Malabar Hill, wherein its members dispose of their dead. One corpse bearer, who had momentarily lost consciousness— and was probably responsible for the bier’s collapse—soon revived. In a few minutes, traffic on the road began to move smoothly again
.

For more than a week, we heard nothing more about this matter. Of course, even more dramatic events took place in our immediate vicinity in the days to come, whose countrywide ramifications probably diverted attention from my own unfortunate fainting fit; though not for long. . .

The morning’s funeral had just ended. For once, we had a free moment to ourselves. An impromptu get-together took shape around half a seer of milk that Bomi had to spare.

‘Can’t understand what Sola was thinking when he went and bought an extra half-seer from the shop,’ he said, offering it to Rusi. ‘In this heat, before you know it, it’ll curdle.’

Rusi’s mother, Aimai, made some spicy masala tea for everyone. Farokh and Kobaad were there, too. We were seated on the wrought iron bench on Rustom’s veranda—a few additional chairs had been pulled up—smacking our lips while sipping the aromatically pungent tea, when the first reports began to filter in of a terrific commotion at the Gowalia Tank Maidan, just a short walk from where we were. Today it had been Bujji, Sola, Yezdi and one other person—Manek, if I’m not mistaken—who had been walking past the fairground with a corpse, while these historic events were unfolding. Bujji came up to Rusi’s veranda afterwards and told us what he had heard and seen.

‘
Saala
,’ he said, still wiping his eyes with a kerchief. ‘What dhamaal! How to describe to you, boys? Here you all’re sitting peacefully sipping tea, and there something dreadful’s going on, no more than a stone’s throw away. . .’

‘What? What’s going on? Didn’t hear a thing. . .’ we exclaimed in unison.

‘They’ve been given marching orders,’ he said, which made no sense at all.

‘Who? What’re you talking about, boss?’

‘Are you okay, Bujji? Why are you crying like that?’

‘Those devils fired some shells in the air that made everybody cry. I’m surprised you guys didn’t hear anything,’ said Bujji.

‘I did, I heard some noise that sounded like firing,’ said Kobaad. ‘But muffled. Too distant and so soft I thought it couldn’t be gunshots. I had no idea what it was.’

It took a half-cup strained from the dregs of Aimai’s tea vessel—which she had promptly reheated for Bujji—to get a coherent story out of him. Apparently, at a recent Congress Working Committee meeting, Gandhi had given his call to the British to ‘Quit India’. This the four khandhias heard from the large crowd of people—both sympathizers and bystanders—who had collected near the maidan where, for perhaps the first time in Bombay, India’s tricolour was hoisted. The crowd, as well as the main organizers of the event were brutally caned by police and later, tear-gas shells fired to disperse them.

‘Did you see Gandhi? Was he addressing the crowd?’ Rustom asked Bujji.

Bujji shook his head.

‘There was some woman who hoisted the Indian flag.’

‘What woman? Wasn’t Nehru there?’

‘No one,’ Bujji explained. ‘All Congress leaders have been arrested, that’s what people say, and Gandhi, too. That chemical they fired at us—whatever it was—makes your eyes burn like anything. . .’ he said, dabbing his eyes once again. ‘For a few minutes it blinds you, you feel your eyes are on fire; then the tears start streaming like anything. . .’

All four khandhias were alarmed to have been caught in this disturbance because people were being arrested at random around them. But more than that, worried about the corpse they had to carry back safely. Bujji smirked and said, ‘Wouldn’t do to have one more topple off the bier, would it now? This time, it would have caused a stampede.’ The others sniggered at my discomfort.