My father brought home strange things: a crumpled five-rupee note, a nose stud, a baby’s anklet. Things the dead no longer need, my mother muttered while grinding rice for idlis. She steadied the pestle, afraid it might slip and bruise her thigh.
We lived near Canal Road — canal on one side, and houses and shops on the other. My father’s job was to ferry dead bodies from the government hospital to the crematorium at the other end of the road. “Easy job,” he said — hospital to crematorium and back in the vandi. He had to cross the railway tracks before the gate closed and reach the crematorium before dark — as it was inauspicious to cremate after the sun set.
“Appa, can I ride in your vandi?” I asked him. He flicked my ear. “No — you aren’t dead yet!”
Every day, my father staggered home and, like a drunken shaman in a trance, muttered about dead people and their sins. Once the arrack had done its thing, he collapsed onto the broken chair and slept, snoring like a lorry belching smoke down the ghat road.
One evening, I sneaked off to Canal Road, hoping to see the van my father was driving. Children played by the sidewalk. I ducked behind the bus stop, humming a radio jingle.
“Deadman’s coming! Deadman’s coming!” the children shouted as they lined the sidewalk, ready
to play their favourite guessing game.
“Quick, quick — Is it a man or a woman?”
The factory siren wailed the end of the shift, and as the sun set, an orange glow enveloped Canal Road like a shroud. In the distance, a man dragging a donkey cart came towards the bus-stop. But I was looking past him, for a big white van.
“My turn today,” shouted a boy. I turned and watched them. The children were pushing each other and passing a small ball around. One boy ran towards the cart as it levelled with him. “It is a woman. I can see toe rings.”
I looked. And froze.
Appa?
Why was he pulling a cart and not driving a van?
Sweat trickled down his torso. His calloused feet shuffled on the scorching asphalt. He pulled the cart forward, his eyes fixed ahead. The humped cart had flapping curtains that barely hid the body. A pair of legs was sticking out of the cart, silver toe rings catching the light. I blinked hard and bit my lip. Won’t cry.
I watched the boy take aim at Appa’s feet and hurl the ball, giggling, as if it were another toy. They wanted him to trip, to make the body slide out. Appa sidestepped and the ball hit the canal wall. He didn’t stop — just kept going as the boys groaned with disappointment and stomped the sidewalk. I ran home as fast as my seven-year-old legs could carry me, my face was wet, and my eyes blurred.
Some days, he walked alone with the cart. Other days, a group of women followed, ululating and beating their chests, with drummers pounding behind them. The wailing and the tuneless rhythm made my brain feel like it would burst and spill on the road.
People ran out from nearby houses to watch the death parade.
“Look at them crying,” I heard one of the boys say.
“That must be his wife,” another said. “She’s pulling her hair out.”
Mothers shooed their sons back into their homes. Bad luck, bad luck, they muttered as it was inauspicious to see a dead body.
On some days, I saw my father running with the cart. It seemed light — like empty. The curtains sucked in with the wind. A child. Canal Road went quiet then. On those days, he would come back mumbling a lot more than usual and falling over his broken chair. The air was heavy with the smell of arrack and something burnt — flesh? Maybe. My mother would shake her head and say, that his eyes had dulled with the smoke of a thousand pyres, and she couldn’t look into his eyes anymore. I didn’t understand her words.
On one of those days, he sat bolt upright, calling out to me.
“Kanna… when you meet those boys from Canal Road, tell them about the wailing women. All paid criers only. Only noise. And, when it is my turn, put me in the white vandi and cover my feet.” And he slumped back to sleep.
All these years later, the cries of the wailing women still echo. Money could buy the dead their mourners. For us, death paid — Appa earned by the body count. When his time came, he finally rode the white vandi. Feet covered.