I
So in death she got what she had never got in life. Love, a bit of remembrance, a bit of sorrow. I myself had withheld these - or should I say, had not given her - for reasons I cannot explain.
I helped undress her, along with the nurse. We ripped apart the nighty, tearing it down the front. We forced the stiffening old arms out of the woollen blouse, pulled the gold bangles off the arms with soap water. I saw her naked body, still warm, for the first time. I was astonished. I had always imagined a woman decrepit and wrinkled, like her arms and face - a female monstrosity that would repel the eyes. I had known or seen no beauty in that face with the gaping mouth, a face strangely constructed and almost skeletal. But she proved me wrong, once again, in death. The body was smooth - the almost taut stomach, the proportionate torso - I could imagine that body, even at the age of eighty, arousing male desire. But she had never known a man. She was a spinster. She died a virgin.
II
They had all turned up. Every single one of them. All of them, all of us, who had not given her. They all brought flowers. Most of them wiped their eyes, but some didn't. I know them to be the real ones now. There was just one exception, and we all knew her to be one.
I know little about death. I have seen little of death. I have only heard much about death, read much about death, watched much death re-enacted and enacted over and over again. Theoretically, I know a lot about death.
I was asked to get ready to go to the crematorium. I got out a white and black silk saree from my grandmother's wardrobe, and dressed myself. When I came out, a dining room full of people turned to look at me. I crept to the shelter of the kitchen. Dida was indignant. She was shocked. Silk? Idiot that I was - all I had known was what the colour should be. Embarrassed beyond belief, I took shelter in the pantry. I sat there on a bin of rice, refusing to come out.
I finally did emerge from the pantry, shuffled across the room full of people in an embarrassed way, and rushed into my room, pulling close the curtain with a sharp snap. I changed into a grey cotton saree, and felt the colour descend from my cheeks.
III
We drove through the streets with grandeur, a hearse followed by three cars. The hearse was the usual glass-encased kind with the stretcher inside; the property of some sporting club. I sat listlessly in the car immediately behind it. My cheek was squashed against the window. I had not washed my face properly. I had not brushed. I believe I had bad breath. My hair had hardly been combed. I looked wretched, but I felt blank inside. Just a single, solemn blank. No sorrow, no happiness. Just neutrality.
People turned for a second look as the hearse passed by, blooming with white wreaths and bouquets, smoking with incense. Suddenly a thought struck me. I began to watch the passers-by intently, scanning the streets and pavements around me. There was something I expected them to do; wanted them to do, even. They prayed for peace for a soul they had never known existed. Some put their hands together and briefly touched their foreheads. Some merely touched their noses, then their chests, with a fingertip. Yet others vaguely passed their hands back and forth over their mouths. They all prayed. But I saw one man stop in his tracks, and raise his joined hands to his forehead slowly, keeping them there for a long time. His prayer was true. Yet I know that for the rest of them, it was just a passing thought, a brief action mechanically done. In death, she had found what she never had in life. Suddenly, she was the queen of the city streets, a goddess.
IV The Shoshan
Why must they destroy death's beauty? Death is beautiful. But at Nimtola Shoshan, a row of bodies, like a row of hospital beds, lay in a line, covered by podabolis, tulsi leaves on eyes, cotton in nostrils newly grown silent. She alone, had none. She had her sheet, and her flowers. That was all. We would cremate her our way.
So there were flowers, and the flowers were beautiful, but their beauty couldn't save the bodies from the squalor of mortality and death. The chamber was a crowded municipal hospital room; a metro station far dirtier and claustrophobic than any other. They lit incense sticks by the hundreds, but the incense was ugly. The fumes hit me in the face as I entered, clutching my aunt's arm. The smell of dead flesh mingled with that of the incense. I felt sick. People snuffed out the fire at the end of the sticks, jerking them this way and that in the foul air.
I saw the dead. My eyes passed from one face to another, slowly, across the length of the room. There must have been a dozen of them. The man right before her had bulging eyes, barely covered by blackened lids. His lips were swollen, his face was a heavy balloon of flesh. The hair was white, I felt reassured. The two men before him had black hair. I do not remember their faces anymore - just that one had a beard, and I felt reassured again, I don't know why.
Then I saw her. Her face will haunt me forever. A little child, dark as midnight, barely 11 or 12. The bright yellow ghomta of a cheap chiffon saree framed her face, in brutal contrast with the skin. How they defame the dead with their ugliness! Why can they not let death be beautiful?
A thick line of sindoor was drawn to the tip of her nose. She had been a married woman. The lips were slightly parted, baring perfect, gleaming white teeth. I will never forget that face. Why was she married? How did she die? Was there a connection between the two?
We went to a waiting room next to it. My uncles and aunts took turns watching the body in the main room. Nimtala Shashan is an ugly place. A dirty place. So I had tea with my uncles in one of the shacks lining the other side of the road. But there is more to death than beauty and ugliness. Men stared. They sang. They made comments. While I waited for her to burn inside. Nimtala Shashan is a sleazy place. Where death and sex meet. Men will sing, even in the presence of stinking, burning, churning death. They will sing their naughty songs and pass their eyes this way and that. What is death to sexual desire?
I came home early, hours before the others. It takes a long time to burn your dead. Especially if you live in a city - a city where the streets bear too much life, and the crematoriums bear too much death. Where the dead must wait in line to be burned. Like for paying bills. Or for voting. Or for paying your examination fees at university.
I do not want to end in this way. To be decimated to a thing in a hell house, waiting in a line to be decimated further in an electric oven. I do not want to be snuffed out thus. I want to end with dignity, with space, with silence and orderly gardens and trees and grass and even birds, may be. I will tell them, before I die, that I want to be buried. Or that, if I cannot be buried, I would like to be cremated in the shashan at Boral. I have passed it in a car. I want to die with beauty.
