Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer Read Online Free

well.’
    ‘But where to, now?’
    ‘Colaba. Cusrow Baag.’
    ‘Colaba! Oh God. . .!’
    ‘Take the address from my office before you leave. Groaning and moaning won’t help when there’s work to be done.’
    ‘We’ll start straight after lunch, then?’ I asked.
    Was there a hint of assertion in my voice? Perhaps, but it was already a quarter to ten, and I was famished.
    ‘Don’t act cocky with me! Didn’t I just tell you, immediately after this body has been consigned to the tower?’
    I saw him raise his hand, as if to smack me on the head again, but I glared at him so fiercely he checked himself.
    ‘Next funeral has to start at four. If you wait for lunch you’ll never make it back before sunset. It’ll take you two hours just to reach Colaba.’
    ‘This is too much, saheb. . .even we need to eat some time. And rest. It’s heavy work. What’s happened to the hearse?’
    ‘Never mind the hearse. These are trying times for everyone. Just do as you’re told, Piloo. There will be other times, later, for rest. And recreation, too. Don’t you think I, too, could use some of that once in a while? What do you say. . .?’ And he scratched the nape of my neck again.
    Sickened, I walked away without saying another word. Buchia had a reputation for liking boys, of bringing young men up to his quarters at night. If he had touched me again, I swear I would have struck him; but the truth is, I was completely off-colour that morning, ruing my previous night’s indulgence. A pint of country would have served us better than the full bottle that we’d glugged down at top speed: truth to tell, a most dreadful exhaustion had made us greedy for self-effacement.

Three

    ‘Make way! Make way for the corpse. . .’
    By the time we reached Kalbadevi, Rustom’s resounding bass had lost some of its operatic flair, his cries feebler and less frequent. My own legs felt tentative and wobbly. Nonetheless, people stepped aside respectfully, some even muttering to themselves—‘A
Parsi
corpse!’—as though impressed that death had actually touched a member of that privileged and idiosyncratic community.
    This was going to be a long and tedious trudge, we all knew, even though we were taking the straightest possible route—past Flora Fountain and Dhobi Talao, through Girgaum and Hughes Road, then on to the Towers. Once, under the sun, I stumbled, nearly losing my grip on the bier.
    I had had nothing to eat since last night. Just before leaving the house in Cusrow Baag, kindly neighbours of the bereaved family had handed us an earthen pot of fermented toddy—tart as hell, but I drank thirstily, my mouth was parched—and brown lumps of sweet jaggery tucked into rounds of soft white bread; sustenance for the long walk back.
    For a while, the weight of the bier and corpse seemed entirely manageable. In fact there was a spring in our step. On certain streets, which were practically deserted, remembering Buchia’s admonition about the next funeral having to start at four o’clock, we raised the tempo and jogged. There, Rusi’s sporadic, breathless bellow actually helped us find our rhythm, but we couldn’t keep up that pace for long.
    ‘Let’s slow down a bit,’ gasped Boman.
    ‘Slow down, of course, slow down. . .’ seconded Rusi, wheezing and heaving, ‘we’ll make it back in time, not to worry.’
    But it was already half past two. We had lost a lot of time almost at the start of our return journey when we were held up by a commotion in the street caused by a large group of rowdy nationalists, who were yelling anti-imperialist and pro-Swadeshi slogans outside an emporium for clothes near the Army and Navy Stores. It was a place called Crawford and Allen:
Importers of Fine Apparel
. The protestors were taking exception to the dress shirts, jackets, jodhpurs, derbys or whatever was contained in a large number of parcels a wealthy man and his wife had just walked out of the shop with; browbeating them to show allegiance