Ten days of making his own food on a makeshift hearth he constructed in the side alley between the bhavan and the Mistry house, of eating just a single meal each day, apart from everyone else, each time facing south with his eyes trained in the direction of the Land of the Dead.
Ten days of waking each morning to walk alone to the river, of bathing but avoiding the razor and the nail clippers, of making an offering to Sagar of a single rice ball that he molded with his hands. Ten days of going without shoes or sandals and of sleeping on the ground just outside the kitchen.
Ten days of waiting, of listening as Narinder recited from the Garuda Purana, describing the horrors of the Vaitarani river, whose crossing all souls endured before they transformed from Earth-bound spirit to nothing, to no one, a blessed merging with the great God. Ten days of repeating the holy name to himself until his mouth was dry and his throat parched, all while banishing Sagar’s name from his lips, his heart, his mind.
Ten days with the responsibility that all chief mourners bore: To exist without human interaction, without the joys of the living, to deny the name of the dead, to expunge all memory of the relationship and the bond, to replace all emotion and feeling with an iron will, to ensure that Sagar’s spirit, now wandering, now in between, would not be lured by those reminders of its previous life and decide to delay its journey onward.
And all the while Pramesh was shadowed by Sagar, whose heavy presence he felt on his shoulder as he walked from the bhavan to the river to bathe, hovering around his head as he tried to slip into the solace of dreams, sitting behind his eyebrow when another headache threatened to engulf him.
Had Sagar already done this three times—once for each of their Elders and their aunt? Had his father and uncle wandered around like dead men when their wives died, when Pramesh was imprisoned in the land of fever and wondering why neither his mother nor Sagar’s would come to him? He tried to remember, caught only a glimmer of green, and then stopped himself before the memory took him further, replacing it with the great God’s name repeated over and over.
Ten days of this, of such intense concentration that Pramesh felt the connection to his body and to his life and reality begin to fade, faces blurring, his feet taking him from room to room of the bhavan, the manager unable even to smile at his daughter, to remember the feel of his wife in his arms.
And then the eleventh day arrived, and Pramesh felt soap on his skin, a blade smoothing his cheeks, sandals on his feet, sunlight on his face. A child’s smile, his daughter’s smile, registered in his eyes and he blinked, like a man just born. That morning, he walked to the ghat with Narinder, and together they spent the day completing the Narayana bali, the priest leading Pramesh in the many steps of the ceremony that was an extra precaution after a bad death, to ensure the safe passage of Sagar’s soul.
When they returned, Shobha was deep in preparations for the next day’s feast, Mrs. Mistry at her side kneading dough and chatting away. On the twelfth and final day, Pramesh woke, his mind already locked in prayer from habit, and he flung the gates open to welcome the Brahmins who would come to eat Sagar’s favorite foods, chickpeas served with airy bhatura, spicy potatoes, sweet pura, rice studded with vegetables. When they were finished, everyone in the bhavan, and anyone else who happened to walk in through the gates, took their turn at eating. Until finally the last grain of rice was gone, the last guest sated, the sun set, and the air was peaceful.
Narinder pronounced the period of mourning complete. “He is now released to continue the journey on his own,” the priest said. “Everything was correctly done.” He gripped Pramesh’s shoulder in a rare gesture, as if welcoming the manager back to the world of the living.
That night, Pramesh fell into his bed exhausted, Shobha at his side, Rani’s soft breaths reaching his ears and filling his heart. His mind, tightened like a fist on the holy word and mantras during that time of mourning, unclenched. His cousin’s name rose in his throat; he could say it now, if he wanted to. Those two syllables, absent from his lips for years, never quite gone from his heart and mind.
Sagar. A whisper, at first. He glanced at his wife, who breathed the deep slow breaths of sleep. “Sagar” he said aloud, and something within him shifted. Sagar’s face—his adult face—all this time like a shadow in water, clarified in Pramesh’s mind. As he registered its features, so recently burned in fire, the memories arrived in a torrential rush.
Bhaiya, you cannot leave me behind—We are pawns Bhaiya, we always have been—Bhaiya, will you make me that promise?—You lied to me, Bhaiya; all of it was lies.
He sat up, gasping for air beneath a heavy weight that pressed like a foot on his chest. Sagar’s body was gone, his spirit was off on its final journey. But the memories Pramesh had tried to forget, and the guilt dragged along with them, all arrived in full force and settled squarely within his heart.
***
In the morning, Shobha kept her ear trained to the gate, primed for its low squeak. When Pramesh returned from bathing in the river, she had his chai ready, as well as a portion of laapsi. She’d spent the previous day cooking the favorite foods of a man she’d never met, but the cracked wheat cooked with sugar and ghee was what Pramesh loved, and she’d mixed in extra golden raisins and bits of cashew. It was what she’d fed him on their wedding day, a barebones hurried ceremony made somehow luxurious because of the quiet sweetness, the richness of the ghee, the look in his eyes as he’d eaten from her hands. She meant it as a lucky start, something sweet to mark his return to normal life after the mourning period.
But if he recalled that day, that joy, as he sipped his chai and ate, he said nothing, and his silence and blank stare revealed nothing. Rani sat by her side and she handed her small bites, alternating between roti and laapsi, ignoring her daughter’s obvious preference for the latter, trying to think of what to say to dissolve the silence that lingered in the air after the mourning period. “I think the door upstairs will need a new key plate soon—the rust is eating away at the edges.”
Her husband gave a low murmur of agreement.
She tried again. “Will you look in on the dying this morning?” she asked. The question sounded strange, as if she’d forgotten how to communicate with her husband. And he, too, seemed to have forgotten, looking up at her, startled.
“Later,” he said, putting the last bit of cracked wheat into his mouth. He licked the pads of his fingers, and this, at least, lifted Shobha’s heart: he still remembered sweetness enough to value it to the last grain. He plucked another fingerful of laapsi out of the bowl in front of Shobha and leaned forward to pop it into Rani’s mouth. “If Mohan is looking for me, tell him I will be in my office—I will do the rounds later.”
She wanted to ask him to stay with her and Rani for just a little longer, but she held her tongue. She was being foolish: most women would be glad to have twelve days without a husband telling them what to do, always underfoot. And he hadn’t even gone anywhere. But he’d seemed less like the man she had married with each day of the mourning period as he walked around with his shorn head, the look in his eyes growing steadily more distant until it acquired a frightening blankness, the hollows in his cheeks growing deeper, the constant mantras on his lips, his fingers twitching through his prayer beads, making him look more like a man gone slightly mad than one in deep meditation.
She needed to be patient. That is what Mrs. Mistry would say. So she set herself to her usual chores, cleaning up after the morning meal, thinking over what she wanted from the market, until she felt enough time had passed and she ventured to check on Pramesh, a glass of water in her hand as an excuse for her intrusion.
She found him standing at his desk, reading through a stack of letters, yellowed and crackling. She knew what they were. Letters from his cousin, missives that once arrived weekly at the bhavan, in that first year when her husband was a stranger to the city, assisting her father with the management of Shankarbhava
n.
“You haven’t looked at those in years,” she said.
He put down the letter he was reading and took the glass from her. “There was no point in keeping them. They serve no purpose now. But then I began to read … foolish, I know.”
In the early days before their marriage, the postman had handed her one of these letters for Pramesh. She remembered the way his face brightened when she gave it to him, the shy smile he gave her in thanks, and how, during the rest of that day, his hand wandered to the front pocket of his shirt where he’d folded it, waiting to read it in the evening, then perhaps once more the next morning, stretching the words until the next letter came.
Once, her eyes had lingered on him too long, and he looked up from reading the same letter for at least the third time that day. Foolish, I know, he’d said then, sheepish. And she’d smiled back before she realized what she was doing, then covered her head with her sari and hastened to hide herself in the kitchen before the entire bhavan—or worse, her father!—saw her flushed face, heard her heart drumming in her chest.
“You were so happy to see them, once,” she said. “Not so foolish.” She thought perhaps he wanted to be left alone, but then his hand nudged the stack toward her, the slightest of movements. He dipped his head to the side when she looked up at him, and so she took the first letter and began to read.
Bhaiya, I never took you to be anything but a village bumpkin like myself, but look at you, the new expert on Kashi! Soon you’ll—
“Pramesh-ji,” Mohan said, poking his head into the office, “we have three rooms open, but five families are here and they all claim to have arrived at the same time. What should I do? How should I split the space?” He stood at the manager’s office door, glancing back and forth between the courtyard and Pramesh.
Seeming to surface from some deep place, Pramesh gathered the letters into a neat stack. Shobha reluctantly handed back the one she’d been reading and he filed them back in the cabinet. He pushed the door shut and paused, leaning his head against it. “I should burn them,” he said. “It was all lies in the end.” Abruptly, he turned, brushing Shobha’s fingers with his as he passed, leaving her to wonder what he meant.
***
That afternoon, Pramesh was filled with a great rush of energy. He swept through the perimeter twice, four times, sometimes five revolutions each hour. He could not advise the guests enough, could not extend conversations long enough, and punctuated his answers to their questions with drawn-out stories.
Out near the front gate, he settled the matter of rooms by looking over those who were there to die. “Mohan-bhai, kindly take that family to No. 6,” he said, pointing to the group accompanying a man who was little more than skin pulled taut over large, protruding bones. He parsed out the rest of the rooms according to how close each guest looked to death, and he gave the remaining two families the choice of the courtyard or a shared room with another family.
“But surely there is more space somewhere?” one of the men said, his chin pointed at the family quarters. The only man in his family of women, he escorted his grandmother—presumably, the one who was dying—who stood on her own two feet, walked among the rooms, and smiled and laughed and seemed to think that they were on holiday.
“None,” Pramesh replied. “I am sorry, but many of the families often share. The goal is the same for all of you, after all.”
“What other families are here for is hardly my concern,” the man replied, his eyes still on the curtain portioning off the kitchen from the rest of the space. With a loud grumble he turned on his heel and was out the gate before the rest of his family understood what was happening; then the women followed one after another, the grandmother in their midst still laughing as if it were all a delightful game.
“Pramesh-ji,” Mohan ventured after the remaining guests had settled into their spaces. “What about room No. 5?”
“Is it empty?”
“No, ji,” Mohan said, words halting. “The son and his father—the boy Sheetal, remember?”
The manager had forgotten. The two-week deadline had long passed; during the mourning period for Sagar, Sheetal’s family had departed, leaving the father and son to themselves.
“You said they could stay only if no one else needed the space,” Mohan ventured.
Pramesh looked around. The courtyard was empty; the one extra family had decided to share a room, and from the bustle in each of the doorways all the guests appeared to be settling themselves. “Well, the space isn’t needed anymore,” he said, half to himself and half to the assistant. And then, noticing an odd look in Mohan’s face, he tried for a real smile. “But you are right to remind me. The next time, Mohan-bhai. The rules are for everyone, and they are fair.”
***
That evening at dinner, Shobha laid out the meal and filled everyone’s thalis before preparing one additional plate. As the priests and her husband began eating, she looked to Mohan. “Will Sheetal come?”
The assistant shook his head. “I tried. He refuses to impose.”
Shobha tsked and handed the full thali to Mohan, who left the room with it and soon returned empty handed. “Was he hungry?”
“He promised me he would eat. I will go in directly after I finish and check.”
Shobha gave a smile of thanks and glanced at her husband, but he kept his eyes on his food and seemed to have not heard. Later that night, when they were both in bed, she brought up the subject again. “He is all alone, and it won’t be for long.” Her husband looked confused. “The boy. Sheetal. He has no one to cook for him, and he is so busy with his father and helping around the bhavan—did you see how he mended that stool for that family in No. 7? And I always make more than enough.”
As she had suspected, he had noticed nothing. Since the mourning period, since the circle officer’s visit, even since that morning when she’d found him with the pile of letters, she felt as if part of her husband had been erased or even—terrifying thought—lost. She often found herself looking into his eyes for that familiar spark. He didn’t look at her now, though, as he patted her hand. “You always take care of everyone,” he said.
She grasped his hand beneath the blanket. “It felt as if I was in the Land of the Dead for twelve days,” he said.
“But you weren’t,” Shobha said. “And you aren’t.” She watched his face in the dark. “Why was he here?”
“A visit, probably.” Pramesh said. There was a lilt in his voice, the words a question more than a statement.
Shobha remembered something, a thing she’d wanted to ask her husband about but kept to herself during the mourning period. “The letter you wrote, informing his people in the village—no one replied,” she said. What kind of people had no response to a dead son-in-law, a dead husband? After mailing it, she’d half expected to see them at her doorstep, demanding to see the place where Sagar’s dead body had last lain. She, certainly, would have done the same, in their place. In Kamna’s place.
“No,” he agreed. “I didn’t think they would.”
“It doesn’t surprise you?”
“I’ve wondered if perhaps it was more than a visit,” Pramesh said. “Perhaps he meant to stay. It would be something he’d do. Pack up suddenly and decide to leave—make a decision and simply act on it, all in a few seconds.”
“But his wife—” Shobha’s heart tripped, but she pushed the question out before she lost her courage. “Why wouldn’t he bring his wife with him?”
He didn’t speak. She held her tongue, counting the seconds. He turned her hand over in his, traced the lines on her palm with his fingers. “It was a bad match. They thought they were getting me, and then they found out I was already married.” Shobha tensed. “They felt the Elders had tricked them. There was a dowry. And my father and uncle spent it all—not a rupee left by the time you and I visited. So the girl’s family lost the money, with no groom to s
how for it, no home to send their daughter to. But Sagar was there … and her family was quite adamant that it happen.”
Understanding bloomed within Shobha. Such matches were not uncommon. One family had a girl that they needed to marry off, one who most families wouldn’t look at. Running around as she does … you know the stories. Another family had debt they could not settle. An alliance was agreed upon, an amount set and paid, the young people wed, both families rejoiced—and the boy and the girl were left to spend a lifetime together.
He’d never spoken of this in such detail. That he was even speaking now was a kind of miracle, and she was hesitant to ask more, lest he clamp up in silence. But she could not stop herself. “Was there something about her … something that made them anxious to get her married?”
“Her?” Pramesh frowned. His pause was a beat too long. “I know nothing of her.”
Shobha waited, hoping for more. She tried again. “So your cousin married her. Was there no other way? Couldn’t the money simply be repaid?”
Something was churning within him, and the words burst out, so forceful that Rani stirred in her corner. “He never listened,” he said. “When we were children, when we became men—always he went where he wanted, never thinking it through. And the girl was no luckier. A family like that, so eager to marry their daughter off. Any husband would do. How could such a marriage, surrounded by elders like that, succeed? I tried to get him to come back with us. I begged him.”
Shobha blinked. “Something happened to make him change his mind, then,” she said softly. “To make him leave the family home and come here.”
“Perhaps he thought about it over the years. Perhaps he wanted to but wouldn’t abandon his duty … perhaps something happened to push him to it,” Pramesh mused. He rubbed his eyebrow, then brought his palm down over his face. “He might have had bad luck with the farm. Drought, disease—it was a hard life when we were growing up. You see how many of the guests come from such places. Sheetal’s family, even. Something made him change his mind. To try for a new life.”
The City of Good Death Page 7