The only time he saw her was after three days. By then a foul stench had begun to emanate from under her door. She had appeared a wraith like figure, her face covered by her sari. She had looked directly at him with her large beautiful eyes, dull and dark-ringed, red from crying. For some reason he just said, ‘Mama.’ She had tried to say something back, but the words stuck in her throat. Instead, she gave him the most pitiful look before sliding back into her self-imposed prison. The stink had got so bad that the next day he broke into her bedroom. There he found her dead, nursing the bloated body of her baby she had killed. And now the father he loathed was about to be burnt.
The company had sent a Land-Rover filled with ice and straw to bring the body to Gauhati, the capital of Assam, for cremation. Yet as so often happens, the organisation was haphazard and delays meant that the ice had melted. Dutt’s body had begun to decompose and by the time the Land-Rover had reached its destination, it was putrid.
There were six ghats, stubby concrete piers jutting into the river, on which the cremations took place. The steps leading to the river were jostling with priests and mourners. The silt black earth was littered with paper, trodden garlands and cigarette stubs. The scent of burning incense hung in the evening air and in the background was the incessant honking of traffic and the cries of the street hawkers. Nearby, naked children were cavorting and splashing in the river, while barges glided past, their crews disinterestedly staring at the spectacle on the bank.
All six ghats were in use. Two ghats including Dutt’s were being ritually prepared, two were ablaze and two were smouldering, with priests sifting through the embers. Most of the mourners’ attention was directed to the farthest, where a shrieking woman was being restrained by relatives.
‘If she really is wanting to commit suttee, then please let her,’ announced Mr. Chattergee. His pompous comment was met by murmurs of approval from the others. ‘Wretched woman. Just putting on show.’
Sanjay gritted his teeth, turned away and instead watched the doms, the untouchable caste, who traditionally tend to funeral pyres. They seemed to him no different than labourers, in loin cloths and grubby white vests fussing around, covering the shroud systematically with blocks of sandalwood, incense and ghee.
The senior attendant came up and spoke to Raul. ‘Sanjay,’ said his uncle, ‘time to do your duty.’ This was the moment the boy had been dreading; a player in the spectacle of ritual death. He walked down the steps onto the cremation platform with his uncle’s arm over his shoulder. ‘Now, you must be walking around the pyre three times this way,’ instructed his uncle, pointing anti-clockwise. ‘You see, everything is backwards in time of death.’ While he did so, the doms chanted verses from the Bhagavad Gita, about the immortality of the soul and the attendant handed the boy a burning taper made up of kusha grass.
