The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  The ghaatiyaa sighed and rubbed his brow. The expensive embroidered shawl he wore had slipped from his shoulders, but he did not bother to adjust it. Irritation crept at the edges of his voice. “Tell me,” he said. “Are we spinning thread from nothing? Are you absolutely sure that this weaver was dead to begin with? What if he has been alive all along, and this is an empty drama we are debating?”

  Mohan, silent all this time, spoke. “The soul had flown,” he said. “We were all witnesses. The spirit had flown! Why would it come back?” The assistant seemed to perspire sincerity, brow glistening with sweat, shirt damp in patches under his arms and on his back. The ghaatiyaa looked to Pramesh. The manager, after all, was in charge, and besides the weaver’s daughters and Shobha—who, being women, no one thought to ask—only he and Mohan had seen that the man was dead. Only they knew the truth that, if known, would lead back to the washroom and Sagar’s ghost. The answer Pramesh gave the ghaatiyaa this day would be the tale subsequently spread across the city, and in the years to come folk would look at him and his family and see not the faces of Pramesh and Shobha and Rani but that story. Bhut’s warning rang out in his head, and he thought of the circle officer’s two older sisters and the tale that had doomed them to spinsterdom. If he was not careful, he would ensure the same fate for his daughter.

  “It is possible we were wrong,” he began. Despite Narinder’s sharp look and Mohan’s audible gasp, he continued, his mind clearer with every word. “It was so early in the morning, perhaps we were all tricked by weariness.”

  Kishore’s eyes hardened. “Then who,” he pressed, “was the one to say the fellow was dead to begin with?” In that moment, if Pramesh had looked at Mohan full in the eyes—he who had trailed by his side for so many years, who had shared his meals for so many nights, who had assumed the kindness of a blood uncle to Rani and a brother to Shobha—he might have lost his courage, for even a lie takes courage, though of a certain kind. But Pramesh did not look at his assistant. He thought only of Rani, and of getting the bhavan to the day of tripindi shraddha so that the ghost would leave and this entire thing could be forgotten.

  “Mohan-bhai,” he said. “It was dark in the room, nah? The weaver’s daughters were wailing so loudly—you would not be the only one to make the mistake.”

  Mohan stood up, his agitation causing him to drop his steel tumbler to the concrete floor where it clattered and rolled to a stop at Narinder’s feet. “It was no mistake, Pramesh-ji! The man was dead. I swear on the Mother!”

  “No,” Pramesh said. He had to make certain that none of the men would doubt what he was about to say. He looked straight at his assistant, feeling Kishore’s eyes on him. He spoke so that even the guests loitering outside the room heard every word. “No, Mohan-bhai,” Pramesh said. “You are wrong. It was a mistake. The weaver must have been alive the entire time. He was never dead.”

  25

  The story that a disgusted Kishore left the bhavan with, that he shared in moody clipped sentences with the audience waiting outside, was based on a lie, but how could anyone know that? As the wandering gossips dispersed themselves and the tale across the city, they came to see it as something to be laughed at. “Imagine!” they said. “We all thought it was something extraordinary with a man who had died only to come back to life, and instead it is this!” And this, this joke, now made the rounds in and out of people’s mouths. “I have many faults,” the harangued husband, the underpaid office clerk, the child who’d come home with a rip in a brand-new frock all said, “but at least I know enough to see if a man is dead or not, ji.”

  Those bhavan folk had gone for so long without anything to do that they’d deluded themselves into believing that which could not be, the city said. What other excuse was there for such an idiot mistake? Even dogs could tell the difference between dead and alive. A man who couldn’t was either drunk, grieved, or stupid, and while no one accused the bhavan manager of any of those three maladies, most people assumed Mohan to be afflicted with the last.

  Mrs. Gupta knew better than to try the joke with Mrs. Mistry, but she repeated the lines loudly in the lane outside her house, within the bhavan’s hearing, always on the watch for Shobha. Bhut, well known for his short temper, broke up several groups of laughing deputies with his mere presence, yet when he arrived home for lunch he tried the joke on his sisters, heart bloated with hope. Those two women sniffed in contempt and instead started on their latest grievance. They were not the only ones who refused to laugh. Mrs. Chalwah heard the joke from her daughter-in-law, who came in smiling with the chai tray and then had to retell the story to explain her mood. “I do not see the humor in it,” the older woman said, her pace on her prayer beads stumbling.

  Inside the bhavan, no one was laughing either, least of all Mohan. After Kishore left, the assistant had bolted out the bhavan gates into the solace of the city. Instead of the comfort he usually found, he encountered a group of his friends, all clustered in the marketplace, cackling so hard that some were bent, hands on knees, and a voice in the group saying, “At least he kept his head better than our Mohan at the bhavan, nah?”

  All Mohan wanted was a confirmation that he had been right, that the weaver had died. But when he broached it with the manager, he was met with only a long stare, eyes that did not even seem to see him. “It will pass. It will end, Mohan-bhai. And anyway—”

  The manager never finished his sentence. Something caught his eye outside his office, and he held a hand up to Mohan, hurrying to the courtyard, where the woodworker from No. 11 stood, surrounded by his family entourage of eight, their belongings packed and the women readying their dying mother for travel.

  “Hemant-ji, surely you are not leaving?” the manager said. “Your mother hasn’t been here the full two weeks. There is still time.” A few days before, the weaver himself had departed, his daughters supporting his limp form on the rickshaw ride to the train station. The woodworker led Pramesh to a corner of the courtyard and faced him with folded palms.

  “Ji,” he said. “You have been good to us, and at any other time we would be happy to stay. But you must understand.” He gestured to the blanket-wrapped bundle just inside No. 11’s door. “That is Ma. She is the only one I have, nah? If I have promised her death in Kashi—and I have—I must see my word through to the end.”

  “But these things take time, nah? No one can predict when the soul will go.”

  “No, no one can tell when,” the woodworker answered with eyes that avoided the manager’s. “But I know where it cannot happen, and I tell you, Manager-ji, it will not happen here.”

  Pramesh could not have been more offended if the man had made an insulting comment to his wife. “What do you mean? This is among the best places to die! With the word of God going in the ears, and the family present, the atmosphere for a steady mind—what else is needed?”

  “What of the weaver?” the woodworker asked, looking up to meet Pramesh’s eyes. “The other guests have been saying he was dead, and that this place would not let him go, and pulled him back to life. What of that?” Pramesh could say nothing to this. Of course they would not stay in such a place. He’d supposed, with a presumptuous and wishful heart, that the guests would trust him, that they were all bound together to wait out the ordeal. But they owed him nothing, these families that merely wanted to see their loved ones die so that they could go home and resume their own lives. “I am not a man of much knowledge, but there are some things I know,” the woodworker continued. He kept his voice low, mindful of the ears that strained to hear his words from the other rooms. “How can I stay in this place where my mother cannot die? Better to set her in some quiet spot near the river, as long as she can pass in Kashi.”

  “But surely,” Pramesh persisted. “You don’t mean to live with your family on the street? How will you manage?”

  “There are other places in Kashi,” the woodworker muttered. “Other hostels, other rooms.…”
The manager was aghast. This man could not mean to let his mother die in one of those unholy rooms, some cheap and loose place where dancing girls brought their customers and men brought their mistresses. Even after Pramesh explained all of this to the woodworker, the man would not budge. Palms folded once again, he inclined his head toward Pramesh and then turned back to his family. Within the hour, they were gone.

  Several other families left as well, each muttering in the direction of the washroom, explaining with downcast eyes that they would be taking their dying folk elsewhere, or back home. A week after the weaver’s departure, for the first time since the bhavan’s earliest days, the hostel was almost empty. Each room held nothing but the single rope bed, the single washing bucket, the single neatly folded blanket. Families still trickled into Shankarbhavan, but they siphoned out just as quickly, deaf to Pramesh’s half-hearted pleading. Only one room remained consistently occupied: No. 5, in which a steadfast Sheetal continued to care for his steadfast father.

  “It does not matter to us,” he explained to Loknath, “whether we are here, or back in the village, we would be doing the same thing, nah? If I can keep him here in comfort for as long as you are happy to let me, I will do so.” And so Loknath and Dev continued to chant their mantras during every waking and sleeping hour and provided Sheetal’s father with tulsi water and daily blessings. Beyond that, there was not much for any of them to do.

  That night, when the pots screeched anew, the manager met them downstairs as he always did. The sound was unbearable, long needles inserted into his ears, and he felt a quailing sickness in his stomach that weakened his knees and sent bile rushing to the back of his throat. Still, he strode to the doorway and called out the word that would silence the vessels. But the pots were louder than his voice, and they continued to clamor, ignoring him. Pramesh stood fast, mustache trembling, hands clenched, and summoned all his breath to shout out the word “Bhaiya!” The word bounced off the washroom walls and echoed out into the courtyard. The pots instantly stilled, cowed by the anger in Pramesh’s voice. His hands were shaking, and his chest heaved with a burning heat that traveled up to his ears and encased his head. He stood there, daring the pots to move, half hoping they would so that he might fling them out the gates or against the cement walls. He had never struck anyone in his adult life, but he felt as if the fire would burn him from the inside out if he did not forcibly expel it. He’d only encountered such a feeling once before.

  Folk said that the young Pramesh and Sagar were inseparable, without a single quarrel or moment of ill will between them, but that was untrue. They were boys like any others, as prone to fight as they were to defend one another. Their disagreements ended as quickly as they began, like a piece of straw that catches fire and sputters and smolders down to ash in seconds. Only once had one of their fights turned violent.

  The rains were a month overdue, the air was dry and burned in their throats, the ground hard and unyielding beneath their feet. The Elders had raised their voices at them that morning for not rising earlier, and though Pramesh protested that he was at fault for sleeping in, the two men had showered Sagar with the brunt of the blame, until Bua stepped in.

  “Leave them,” she said. “I have an errand for them to run, and it cannot wait.” The Elders relented, grumbling as they stalked off. She handed Pramesh a cloth-wrapped bundle. “I borrowed this from Champa-behan. She needs it back today—take it to her.”

  Glad for the excuse to be out of the house, Pramesh pulled Sagar behind him. They hadn’t gone far when they ran into Jaya walking with her cousin. She saw the angry red mark on Sagar’s cheek immediately. “What happened to you?” she asked, reaching out, but Sagar knocked her hand aside.

  “You’re always in everyone’s business, and you don’t even live here,” he said sharply. Jaya colored, cheeks flushing in imitation of Sagar’s. Her cousin put his arm around her shoulder and roughly shoved into Sagar as he walked past.

  “Nothing but the son of a drunk,” the youth said, spitting behind him at Pramesh’s feet.

  Sagar stood frozen, looking after them. “You shouldn’t have said that to her,” Pramesh said after Jaya and her cousin were out of sight.

  “And you shouldn’t have argued with the Elders,” Sagar replied. “Why couldn’t you just keep silent for once?”

  Pramesh turned to soothe his cousin, but he saw the darkness in Sagar’s eyes and they continued the journey in silence. Sagar glanced behind him several times as they walked. But Jaya was gone.

  Champa-maasi would not allow them to go without a tall glass of aam paana each. “Too hot for both of you to be out,” she said, eyes on Sagar’s face. Sagar held the cool glass to his cheek for a moment, then downed the drink and stood. “We have to leave,” he said amid Champa-maasi’s protests, and Pramesh ran after him. Back out in the heat, Sagar trudged a long meandering route across a wheat field, Pramesh following wordlessly, until they saw the tree looming before them.

  The colossal peepal growing at the far edge of the field had been there for hundreds of years, or so village folk said. The dense branches were so thick and far-reaching that the canopy seemed wholly unattached to the massive trunk. With its age came veneration: holy string in shades of red and orange and sun-bleached pink was knotted in and around the corded trunk and the low-hanging branches and tied around a thick root that had burst upward out of the soil and plunged back deep into the ground. The string symbolized hopes and wishes and pleas directed to a power that had existed long before them and would continue long after.

  Pramesh made a pilgrimage to the tree as often as he could. His mother had told stories of men overcoming illness when they drank milk steeped with the leaves, long-barren women growing heavy with child when they rubbed the smooth bark, bandits fleeing in terror if they happened to pull a victim into the tree’s purview. He remembered following her on some errand and having to wait while she tied red thread and muttered prayers beneath her breath, Sagar’s mother at her side doing the same. Sometimes, a tree like this houses the soul of a great sage, come down to Earth to perform some penance, his mother had said. It’s important to venerate that being, to show it respect.

  Back then, Sagar had helped, holding whatever the Mothers had been carrying so their hands would be free, mouthing the great God’s name in imitation of the women. Now, he waited in the shade as Pramesh bowed and stretched out on his stomach before the trunk, lying prostrate, fingers reaching to touch one of the thick roots straining out like veins beneath and on top of the earth. When Pramesh rose, he brushed the dust from the roots onto his own forehead.

  “Do you really think it makes any sort of difference? Bowing to a tree?” Sagar asked, still in a foul mood.

  “I do not ask you to believe.” Pramesh was certain his devotion to the tree had sped his recovery from illness years ago. Even now, he was not sure he could have made the journey from home to the neighbor’s and back again if not for that blessing, that fruit of his firm belief.

  “But you believe. What do you think will happen? Will it bring our mothers back?”

  “Of course not. But it works for other things. I am stronger now because of it.”

  “That is because I dragged you out with me to walk the fields each day, not because of some tree.”

  Pramesh sighed. He remembered Sagar pulling on his arms with a firm but gentle grip, insisting he walk from their room to the front door one week, then farther out to the tree outside the veranda the next week, then even farther to this prayer tree. Pramesh had been terrified that his wasted legs would collapse, but Sagar walked behind him, and Pramesh continued forward.

  Sagar would have to let go of his temper before they returned to the Elders. “The stories are not untrue, Bhaiya,” Pramesh said. “Otherwise why would so many speak of them? Think of the schoolmaster—lame so long, and suddenly he visits the tree and rubs the leaves over his leg and it is as straight as yours or mine. Can you ex
plain that?”

  “That is just one story, and we do not know that the man was lame to begin with. Probably the leg was ready the entire time and he never bothered to try it out. Like you, at first. And what about the Mothers? All those years of dragging us here—what difference did it make?”

  “They weren’t asking for anything specific,” Pramesh said. “They were just paying their respects.”

  “But they were. They were asking for the tree to make the Elders to come to their senses. They were asking for them to stop drinking, to stop … to stop with us. And with them.”

  Pramesh froze. “How do you know that?”

  “I heard Ma one day. Remove the nazar from them both, she said.” He laughed, an ugly sound without mirth. “As if the problem came from some bad spirit, some evil eye attached to them, and not their own hands reaching for the bottle.”

  “Even if they did … it isn’t just a story,” Pramesh repeated, uncertain.

  “Isn’t it? Stories are not true. And there is not a single seed of truth there in your sacred peepal.”

  “There’s truth and there’s belief. Ma taught us about both things.”

  “Fine, then. Become like them, like those other fools in the village—believe any story you hear. Just don’t let the Elders find out. You needn’t remind them again.”

  “Remind them of what?”

  “You know. That you are not like us.”

  Not like us—their pact, a bond that grouped them on the other side of a line that divided them from the Elders. But this time, as he hissed out the words, Sagar crossed that line, joining the Elders and leaving Pramesh on his own. The words struck Pramesh like a blow across the face, and he swung around and clouted Sagar on the same cheek his own father had struck just that morning. Not like us—Sagar returned the blow, and then all restraint fell away. There were no Sagar and Pramesh, but only balled fists, cocked elbows, fast-moving feet. They rained blows down upon each other, the anger of one fueling that of the other, until a hand reached out and grabbed Pramesh’s arm.