‘Kneel down and call out ‘amma’ in your mother’s ear,’ said the pandit, wobbling like a lota about to tumble into shit.
I squinted at him.
‘It is customary for a son to call out to his mother one last time before she is taken to the funeral pyre,’ he added. ‘Sometimes people rise from the dead if a loved one wails for them yearningly.’
I was curious if Pandit ji had been successful in raising his mother from the dead. Maybe it never came to that; maybe he whispered ‘amma’ in her ear while she was asleep and immortalised her. My father, one of the eight pallbearers, glared at me from the foot of the funeral bier as if he had read my mind; his scrawny, adolescent-like body, trembling, unable to contain his rage.
I turned toward my younger brother standing a foot away from me at the head of the bier, still trying to fix the thread across his bare chest – whatever the fuck it’s called – and his dhoti. His welled-up eyes softened his infantile face. His right shoulder had deep red scratches where he had held the bier moments ago. I’d never noticed how small and bony his shoulders were.
I waited a few seconds and knelt down. The dirt and the gravel bore into my right knee, the left cushioned by the fallen marigolds.
‘Amma,’ I whispered in my dead mother's ear; my nose brushed against her face momentarily and caught a whiff of the coconut oil in her hair.
‘Louder,’ said the pandit.
‘Amma!’
‘LOUDER!’
‘AMMA!’
She did not rise. Either I did not wail yearningly enough, or the dead don’t hear very well.
The pallbearers took this as a sign to shoulder the bier once again and continue on to the funeral pyre. All eight of them took a deep breath, bent down in unison, and shouldered the bier in one swift motion. Beads of sweat the size of marbles rolled down their red faces as their legs trembled under the weight of my dead mother. I saw a couple of them giggle. I did not know who they were; all I knew was they worked with my father at the car dealership. We needed the shoulders. Not all of them giggled, though. There were two guys from my father’s office whose lips trembled as much as their legs. They were about my age, probably in their first jobs too. I should have asked one of them to wail instead. Behind those guys stood my father’s two older brothers, their bodies as adolescent looking as my father’s. In the distance, near the temple, about a hundred metres away, stood my three maternal aunts and my grandmother, huddled together, looking on and bawling. However, their cries did not carry over.
I tried to remember if I’d ever seen over four pallbearers in a funeral. But I’d only seen funerals in the movies. In one movie that I’d watched when I was about ten years old, the hero carried his father's funeral bier alone. To be fair, the hero was Sunny Deol. Did everyone really have at least four strong and broad-shouldered men in their families? It seemed like an odd requirement for dying with dignity. And who is to say there should be only four pallbearers? Definitely not the movies. You can’t trust them. If movies were to be believed, there would be black clouds roaring above. Instead, there was a big bright beautiful sun shining on my dead mother.
After I torched my mother’s funeral pyre, the pandit said, ‘Turn your back to the pyre, son. If you look on, your mother’s soul will find it difficult to depart this world.’
So as not to inconvenience my dead mother, I turned around and sat down on the ground a couple of feet away. The heat from the pyre stung my bare back; I leaned back further. My brother walked around the pyre and came and sat next to me. I imagined our mother’s soul departing behind our backs, rising from her body in soft white plumes, indistinguishable from the choking smog of this fucking city.
‘You did well,’ said my brother.
‘Now what?’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Home. Where else?’
‘All right.’
We reached the house just after sunset, and marched straight to our rooms without turning the lights on or saying a word to each other.
When I woke up the next morning, it was still dark. I walked into the drawing room, which connected the three bedrooms and the kitchen. The first light spilled in through the barred windows, and fell onto the single bed nearby. The hollow on the bed looked much deeper now, as if a chasm had opened up and swallowed my mother. An oval stain shimmered on the wall above the bed, left behind from the times my mother would rest her oiled head against the wall and sleep. The soiled bedsheet lay dishevelled as if she had just got out of bed for a glass of water and would come back any moment, except the bed was cold, but it still smelled of her or rather, what was left of her – of piss, shit and baby powder.
Once upon a time she smelt of jasmines. I would follow her into the garden every morning as she picked the jasmines, a few for her hair and the rest for the Krishna idol in the kitchen, before she put Suprabhatam on the tape recorder, and got us ready for school. I don’t remember if she stopped wearing the jasmines first and then the plant died or if it happened the other way around. I suppose it doesn’t matter; it all happened too quickly. This much I remember clearly: the garden was already dead when the doctor ran out of the house after my mother smashed a coffee mug on his head for telling my father that she would benefit from getting treated in a psychiatric hospital. My brother and his toy monkey bounced up and down on the floor and clapped their hands. ‘She did the right thing by smashing that mug on that charlatan’s head,’ my father would proudly tell our relatives, ‘They shock people into madness in those places, just like in the movies.’ The relatives laughed and nodded in agreement until they too got their heads smashed by mugs, or got called prostitutes or daughter fuckers.
I heard some commotion in my father’s room and peeked in through the slit in the door. He wasn’t there.
I went back to my mother’s bed, balled up the bedsheet and the pillowcase, and put them in the washing machine. I then turned the mattress over and spread a new sheet over it. I dragged in a bucket of water and a hand towel to wipe the stain on the wall. The water and the dust mixed together to form a thick brown paste. It now looked like someone had smashed a big mug of coffee on the wall. I tried cleaning it with soap water and vinegar. Nothing changed.
I rummaged through the piles of garbage in the storeroom on the off chance it might surprise me the way it always did. An old Bournvita bottle filled with marbles caught the bars of light streaming in through the notebook-sized window on the opposite wall. I moved things around and almost toppled over piles of books that had grown as tall as me over the years. I heaved a jute bag out from behind a tub full of toys and opened it; it had the kitchen temple and the cricket bat I had smashed it with after my last board exam, there were also a couple of ping pong rackets, and a rusted toolbox, and inside the toolbox was a piece of sandpaper the size of a picnic napkin. ‘Let’s keep it in the storeroom until we fix it,’ we would say every time we dumped something in there.
As I scrubbed the stain with the sandpaper, powdered distemper heaped on the bed, reminding me of the tiny ant hills I would pour water over as a kid just to see the ants scamper away. I stepped back to look at the wall. The area around the stain had lightened to a milky white, but the stain itself had a new sheen, as if my mother had just rested her freshly oiled head there. I gave it a few more vigorous strokes. It did nothing. It now looked as if a kid had ruined the wall with his stupid painting. I decided I’d call a painter later in the day to get it fixed.
I opened the cupboard next to the bed. The shelf at the top was stuffed with colourful stacks of silk saris; the shelves in the middle had dozens of blue hospital gowns and bedsheets and pillowcases; and the shelf at the bottom had columns of office files, each neatly labelled and overflowing with medical reports and scans and invoices. I pulled all the clothes down to the floor shelf by shelf and tied them into three big bundles using bedsheets. I got a cardboard box from the storeroom and dumped all the files in it.
I heard the turn of a key from the front door just as the sun was coming up. My brother walked in dressed in a sleeveless t-shirt, gym shorts, and running shoes.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ I said. ‘When did you start running?’
‘What’s up?’ he said, looking around.
‘Just cleaning up a bit. The bedsheets needed a wash, and no one’s going to wear these clothes anymore, so I thought I’d pack them up and store them somewhere or maybe give them away.’ I waited a few seconds and pointed to the stain on the wall and said ‘I can’t say I did a great job of cleaning that stain. I’ll call a painter later today and get it fixed.’
‘Later today! You know papa will lose it. Give it a few days. We’ll get it fixed.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I said, ‘Look at this place. It’s a mess! Dust everywhere. Cobwebs in every fucking corner. Have you seen that storeroom?’ My chest was heaving under my black t-shirt. ‘Anyway, where is he?’
‘He went to bring the pandit. We still have twelve days of rituals left, you know.’
‘I told him I won’t go through that bullshit. There was enough of it at the funeral. Why doesn’t he fucking get it!’
‘Do it, bhai. Everyone does it.’
‘Then you do it!’
‘You know it has to be the elder son.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t fucking know, alright. It’s my first funeral too,’ he said, massaging his forehead ‘I need to shower and get ready before papa comes back. Can you please put everything back in the cupboard for now?’
He headed for his room without waiting for an answer.
I looked up Bengali in my phonebook. I could not remember his name. Everyone called him Bengali. One Diwali when he was painting our house, my mother insisted he tell her his actual name or else start calling her Hyderabadi. ‘The one thing I have learnt after moving to this city,’ my mother told him, ‘is that your origin becomes your identity, and the only way to make friends is to give it up and start acting like everyone else. I’m not ready to do that yet, but at least us outsiders can get to know each other.’ In response, he flashed his tobacco-stained teeth, gums and all, and told her his name. Now all I remembered were the teeth. I wasn’t sure if he still used the same number, but the phone rang and he answered. He said he would be at the house in thirty minutes. Ten minutes later, he was at the front door.
I showed him the stain and asked him if he could fix it. He sandpapered it for a full minute and said, ‘The wall has caught the stain, sir’. Whatever that meant.
‘What do you suggest?’, I said.
‘It needs a little more sandpapering. I can then smooth it over with some putty and paint it, but it will stand out.’ He looked around the room and said, ‘It’s like washing one hand but not the other, sir.’ He did not wait for me to respond and continued, ‘I know Didi just passed away so I won’t suggest painting the house, but the house needs it. I don’t know the rituals on your side, but whenever you think is the right time, call me. I won’t have any work in the next few weeks anyway. Everyone got their house painted during Diwali. It’s sad what…’
‘Can you get started today?’ I said, looking at the clock.
‘Today! I can, but Didi….’
‘Don’t worry about it. The rituals are over.’
Bengali called out to one of his boys standing outside and asked him to sandpaper the drawing room while he went out and got supplies.
Around midday I heard the stutter of my father’s Maruti 800. The smell of petrol preceded the rattle of the car. I heard the engine splutter to a halt, and then the thud of the closing door. My brother came out of his room and looked at me with the expression of a bystander witnessing a man about to jump off a bridge. Bengali and his boy froze mid-step and put their brushes into the cans of paint hanging on their bamboo ladders.
I heard the words first, and then saw my father storm in.
‘What in God’s name is happening here!’ he shouted
‘Fixing a few things,’ I said, looking him in the eye.
‘Don’t you have any shame! Have you forgotten it was your mother’s funeral yesterday? First, you refuse to do the full rituals, and now this drama.’
He pointed his finger at Bengali and then at the front door, and said, ‘Madarchod get out of this house or I’ll break your legs. She fed you so many times and this is how you repay her after she’s dead. You are a grown-ass man. Why would you listen to this stupid boy!’ He picked up a can of paint and was about to hurl it at them when both of them hurried down their ladders. He saw Bengali nod at me from the front door, and flung the can at him. Bengali dodged it and ran away.
My father turned to me and said, ‘Why do you have to act this way on every pious occasion?’
‘It’s about time we got this house fixed,’ I said.
‘And who are you to decide that?’
‘Someone’s got to take the responsibility.’
‘Your only responsibility right now is your mother’s last rites. This is my house, it stays this way. If you want to stay here…’
‘I know, I live by your rules. I’m tired of listening to that same old ‘my house, my rules’ bullshit. All you fucking fathers should stop watching those stupid Boll…’
He pinned me against the wall, grabbed a fistful of hair on the back of my head, and said, ‘You shameless bastard, you did not even shave your head.’
My brother got between us and pushed us apart.
‘Hit me,’ I said. ‘I fucking dare you. Hit me.’
He looked down at my clenched fists. His small chest rose and fell under his white shirt. In between long breaths he said, ‘If you can’t even perform the rituals for your dead mother, what use are you? Don’t you dare touch anything that belongs to her!’
‘Fuck your god and your rituals.’
He punched me in the mouth. It felt good.
He grabbed one of the big bundles of clothes and dragged it into his room; my brother picked up another. Together they moved the three bundles and the cardboard box to his room. He then threw himself against the cupboard and tried to push it but to no avail; my brother pulled on the cupboard from the other end and dragged it into my father’s room. My father then squatted next to the bed, grabbed on to one of its legs, and pulled on it.
‘There isn’t enough space, papa,’ my brother said.
‘Where is the bedsheet?’ my father asked me.
‘I threw it away,’ I said.
‘Are you mad! How dare you! You basta…’
‘It’s in my cupboard, I’ll get it,’ said my brother, frowning at me.
My father brought a big rusty padlock from the storeroom, locked his room, and walked out of the house.
My brother turned to me, and said, ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘Yes, put me in a fucking mental hospital.’
‘It’s hard for him too.’
‘It fucking should be.’
‘He isn’t wrong, you know. I’m sure Mummy would have wanted this too. She believed in all of this.’
‘It was her damn Megalomania.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘As if you know what she was like,’ I said, instantly regretting it.
‘You’re right. What do you want to do then?’
‘I’m just trying to fix this house, so that we can stop living like pigs.’
‘Give it a few days. He’ll be fine.’
‘How much longer do you want to wait?’
‘You know it wasn’t easy all these years. There was nothing we could have done.’
‘Well, I guess, then we deserve to live in this dump,’ I said, and went into my room and listened to In Utero on repeat.
My father returned late in the evening bearing two big plastic bags filled with what looked like things for the rituals. He did not so much as look at me, and said to my brother, ‘Pandit ji will be here tomorrow morning. I told him you will do the remaining rituals.’ He then went to his room and locked the door behind him.
‘Will you at least sit through it?’ my brother asked.
‘Do you really think any of this makes any difference?’
‘I do.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
That night I dreamt of my mother. She was inside a glass box, banging on its walls, and screaming. I could not hear her. I watched her scream soundlessly and pound the glass walls with her fists until she got exhausted and collapsed on her knees, begging and crying. I woke up drenched in sweat, and got out of bed to get a glass of water from the kitchen. In the drawing room my father was asleep in my mother’s bed, flat on his back, hands on his chest, buried deep in the hollow. I’d not noticed until now that Bengali had managed to paint the stain. It was gone. I tiptoed to the bed. The light from the street lamps streamed in through the windows and fell on my father’s face just as it did on my mother’s that night as she lay in bed, caressing her left breast in circular motions, the way she had been caressing it for months. She called out ‘kanna’ when she heard me walk toward the kitchen. She hadn’t called me that in years. I walked over to her, accidentally kicking the bedpan under the bed. ‘Could you please help me sit up?’ she said. I mustered all my strength and helped her into her usual position, back against the wall, head on the stain. Her right arm and leg dangled at the edge of the bed. The doctor said she was lucky the stroke paralysed her on the right; her heart could have given in if it had been on the left. ‘I’m turning into stone, kanna’, she said, still caressing her breast.
‘Stop it, maa. I’m too tired for this.’ I said.
‘Why won’t you believe me?’
‘I don’t want to listen to this shit again, please,’ I joined my palms.
‘See, touch it’, she said pointing to her breast.
‘You’ve lost your fucking mind. I’ll lose mine too if I live here any longer.’
‘Don’t say that, kanna. I’ll heal myself soon.’ She raised her left hand and said, ‘See this hand? This is the hand of god. It has a healing touch,’ and continued caressing her breast.
‘I’m starting my first job tomorrow. Don’t screw this up too, please. I need to sleep. Do you need anything?’
‘No, just put me back down.’
I gently lay her down.
‘Do you want me to tell you the story about the king and his seven daughters?,’ she said ‘It used to put you to sleep in seconds.’
‘No, maa. I’m sleepy enough. Please!’
‘You’ll sleep really well, I promise.’ She patted the spot beside her with her left hand and motioned me to lay down.
As I was lying down, I accidentally elbowed her breast. She let out a yelp, clamped her eyes shut, and began whimpering. I tried to calm her down. I held her head in my arms and kissed her forehead and apologised. She picked up my hand and gently placed it on her breast. I felt a rock the size of a ping pong ball protruding out of it.
The doctors said the tumour had broken out of her skin, and the cancer, most likely, had already spread. They asked us how we had not noticed her yellow eyes. The tests confirmed the metastasis. The doctors gave her a few weeks; she passed away in two.
I ran my hand over the wall, not entirely sure where the stain was, but I could feel it cold against my palm. I brought my palm up to my nose, it reeked of coconut oil.
The next morning my brother came to my room dressed in a new pair of white kurta pyjamas, ready for whatever the pandit wanted him to do. He looked at the zipped suitcase and the backpack in the corner.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, sitting on my bed, clothes and shoes on.
‘Things will get better, bhai. Give it some time.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We can get started right after the rituals, I promise. I’ll convince papa,’ he said, and got down on his knees, his hands on mine. ‘I promise.’
I held his head in my lap, his prickly hair poking my face.
The cab arrived ten minutes earlier than the scheduled time. I dumped the bags in the trunk, hugged my brother, and got in the front with the driver. We waved at each other until the cab turned around the corner and we could no longer see each other.
*
My brother and his wife took turns driving the car back from Haridwar. I sat in the back, still jet-lagged, with a claypot full of my father’s ashes. The pandit asked us to cast the last ashes into a waterbody of our choice. My brother chose a lake near our house where we used to go for picnics when we were kids.
‘You look like Sudama,’ I said, playing with the tuft of hair snaking out of his otherwise bald head. He moved his head in circles, rotating his hair to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ playing in the car. His wife couldn’t stop laughing.
Later that night, in the kitchen, he proudly declared, ‘I figured out mummy’s tamata pappu recipe’
‘No way!’, I said.
‘Do you want to know the secret ingredient?’
‘What?’
‘There is none. She actually skipped one ingredient.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The traditional recipe has tamarind. She skipped it.’
‘Really? It was that simple all along?’
‘I guess so. Taste it and tell me.’
‘How in the hell did you figure it out?’
‘You always hated tamarind.’
*
Bhargava Gade grew up in India and is now based in London. He writes about the everyday lives of people in India. Many of his stories are grounded in his experience of growing up as a Telugu boy in Gurgaon in the nineties.