Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (29 page)

Buchia was in no position to answer any questions. At night, he had stubbornly refused to seek admittance to any hospital after the last shovel of earth was heaped on Joseph’s coffin, saying he wanted to spend what remained of the night in his own quarters. But it had turned out to be the worst night of his life; for he could neither sleep nor ward off the fanciful torments his wakeful brain fabricated in anticipation of what the morning would bring. The pain must have been bad, too. Mercifully, during the outbreak of all the commotion over the missing body, Farokh and Jungoo quietly bundled him off to the Parsi General.

The redoubtable Nariman Kanga was completely distraught when he heard that his son’s body was missing—but only for a few minutes. He recovered quickly and phoned his friend Ignatius Strickham, now Commissioner of Police, who promised to immediately visit the Parsi General Hospital to cross-examine Buchia, and launch a probe into this devilish piece of trickery enacted no doubt by some extremist splinter group of the orthodoxy.

In the condition he was in, for Buchia to see the red-faced Englishman towering over his hospital bed firing questions at him must have put the fear of God in him, possibly precipitating his untimely end. He didn’t die of a broken collarbone, of course, but during that cold night when he had wrestled—or tried to wrestle—a dwarf to the ground, he had apparently caught a severe chill, that swiftly progressed into double pneumonia from which he never recovered.

On his deathbed, under the gimlet eye of Ignatius Strickham, Buchia confessed to kidnapping the corpse of Joseph Kanga and revealed the place of his interment. Shortly after, he died. Nariman Kanga dropped all charges against the miscreants who had kidnapped Joseph’s body. Nor did he desire that his son’s body be exhumed, or renew his efforts to arrange for him the Zoroastrian funeral he had so desired while still alive. Instead, he decided to let him lie in the selfsame grave undisturbed, and built a modest monument of flawless white marble in remembrance of his son at the site. It can still be seen at the Sewree Christian cemetery, smeared with dust and bird droppings, with its slightly cryptic but finely etched inscription still very legible:

Gentlest of souls,
Savant and scholar extraordinaire,
Who sought in death as in life to be
A morsel of tasteful
Charity
.

Here lies Joseph Nariman (Maloney) Kanga (1902-1947)

For years, the forest on the hill had been my refuge
.

Thick woods might more precisely describe the tangled profusion of fruit and flowering trees that covered the hill. Thickest near the summit where the crude path that led to the rusty iron gate of a small white fire temple was almost lost in tall grass and bramble; here grew casuarinas, banyans, date palms, mango, pear and so many flowering bushes and trees whose names I do not know. On occasion, I would spot a hare or a snake here; sometimes peahens, once, even a deer. In this strangely enchanting Eden, I felt completely at home.

Then, one day I saw a forest nymph, lying cradled in the low branch of a tree. After that, everything changed for me. . .

Difficult to say when exactly my interest in the world began to wane. It didn’t happen in an instant, or a day.

Yet, if compelled to choose a moment, I would have to pinpoint the day Sepideh died. Remember this, though: the entire strike, Farida’s prolonged schooling, my brief intimacy with Buchia, my evening with Rohinton at the Taj, the abduction and forced interment of Joseph Kanga, India’s independence, the departure of the British, all these happened long after Seppy died and I can’t remember feeling so completely uninvolved in any of these events while they were happening, as I now feel from most public affairs. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve grown too old to care.

The British left India, Indians took over, but nothing really changed. When India achieved Independence from its British rulers, if I remember rightly, Gandhi was in favour of disbanding the Congress party. He wanted to abandon Western-style confrontational politics, and concentrate on reaffirming basic values of self-help, service and upliftment of all; on rebuilding a community-based consensus at the village level. But Gandhi fell to the bullets of a Hindu fundamentalist who believed he had betrayed the nation. After him, many leaders rose to power who strove to create a nation out of fragmented regional interests, but not one of them shared his vision. Nor did any of them care to pause and look back, reassess where, along the high road of history, he or she may have taken a wrong turn.

As in the usual course of things, earthquakes, floods, droughts, riots, wars, exploitation of the helpless, accidents, calamities of every sort continue to take their toll—the meaningless, mindless decimation of millions of human ants, or should I say, vermin? I’m not talking merely about the misery of the poor, or the disingenuousness of the powerful, but of that unstoppable merry-go-round of human suffering, of the abominable lack of any higher meaning or significance to life, entirely at the mercy as it is of random death. I have lived through almost sixty years of what was probably a historically significant century, and sometimes I do wish I had taken better notes, paid greater heed to Temoo’s radio for the news of the world it gave me. But I never cared to: the torrent of human suffering ran unabated, shutting out every glimmer of hope.

Politicians failed to act, reneged on promises; betrayed the people who elected them to office. Everywhere, everyone in public life, whoever he or she might be, is on the make, feathering a private nest. And so it has continued for decades. The only change I can make out in this compulsive industry is that incidents of fraudulence, cheating and theft of public money have accelerated both in frequency and volume beyond the wildest dreams of even those who first concocted them; until the very concept of probity in public life has become laughable.

Out here in my narrow microcosm of the Towers of Silence, too, so much has changed. For one thing, the roll call of the dead has been relentless. I don’t mean just the dead we attend to, but from among our own.

Poor Bujji was the first to go. His son had found a job, his daughter a husband. Living alone, without any visitors ever coming up to his flat, his body withered and dried like a twig. His front door had to be forced in when he didn’t appear for several days, and the smell from his flat became unmistakable. . . A man, once proud of his looks, slunk into himself, and faced death alone in an attic room.

Aimai, much older than he, died shortly after. . . And within six months, after a very brief illness, my friend Rustom, too. It was as if the bond between him and his mother was more essential than any of us had realized. Surprisingly, Vera didn’t take it so badly.

For a while, poor Temoo continued to potter about trying to help me in the kitchen. But the innocuous lump in his stomach had grown into a sepulchral mound that nagged him to tears; until one day, it burst and killed him of internal haemorrhaging. It was a bad blow for Farida, as I had always feared it would be.

But not as bad as the one that followed some three years later. Her childhood boyfriend, Khushro, had found a decent, well-paying job and moved out. He promised Farida he would come back and marry her once he had set up a home and saved some money. But he never did. The worst of it was that she didn’t know how to contact him, because he had changed jobs and moved on.

Like her spiritual sister, Vera, who has also remained single, Farida too may be headed for spinsterhood. But Vera at least has her work at the law firm, which is prized highly. Farida’s job is much more low-profile, on the shop floor of a workshop which manufactures nuts and bolts in Parel. Her Uncle Vispy helped her secure it. She enjoys travelling to work and back on a BEST bus everyday, but complains that traffic in the city is growing at an alarming rate.

Hardly anyone is still around who took part in the strike thirty-five years ago. But many of the advantages we wrested from our tussle with the trustees have resulted in positive change. Right now, for instance, there’s some replastering of my building going on. Whitewashing of all quarters every three or four years is a regular feature now. Children of khandhias and nussesalars are given free education up to high school, and easy loans or scholarships are available to those who show promise, or desire a university education. A new community room has been set up near the Albless pavilion, where there’s a carom board, table tennis and a television set.

But even here, at the Towers of Silence, commercial exploitation of properties has begun. Four acres of sylvan land were recently sold to a well-known Bombay builder for vast sums of money, and trees have been cut. Construction of a deluxe block of apartments has commenced; it will be called Ahura Apartments. Apparently, only bonafide Zoroastrians who can afford these exclusive flats, and who have booked them early enough, will move in. I fear for the wild garden of my youth. The teeming city nibbles at its edges. The turn of the wheel may well have become irreversible.

A few days before he died, Temoo begged forgiveness of me.

At the time I speak of, he was seventy-four, and rather obese. His fleshy brown skin hung loose, patchy and discoloured; unhealthy eruptions covered his forehead and other parts of his body. A large mole on his right cheek, which had been dry for some years, had begun to ooze. The protuberance in his abdomen had become more pronounced. When he left his bed to walk to the toilet, he needed to support it with his right hand; in his left, he gripped a stout walking stick.

‘What for?’ I asked him, puzzled, but immediately suspicious.

‘Ah,’ he groaned. ‘You ask me for what. . .?’ Tears started rolling down his cheeks, and his voice choked in sniffles and sobs. I was not impressed. In the past, I had seen him produce tears at will.

‘Can you see my suffering?’ he asked. ‘If I were able to, I would go to Framroze and throw myself at his feet. . . My Sepideh was taken from me so young. . .it was punishment for my sins! Look at me now. . .’

And for a few minutes once again he was crying piteously. The notion crossed my mind that what he was about to tell me was something along the lines of what my mother had declared after my first encounters with Sepideh, that it was all a conspiracy hatched by Temoorus to have her seduce me.