Words for the Dead

“Chai ya paani?” the clerk asked me, drumming his scrawny fingers along the rough, unpolished edges of the metal table separating us. He ran his right hand along the faded red stripes of his shirt and slowly slipped them inside to rub his chest voraciously. His other hand, meanwhile, amused itself by rummaging through the teeth he flashed at me in his broadened grin. Seeing the quizzical look drawn over my face, he quickly repeated himself. “Tea or water?” he asked.

“Coffee,” I replied as the clerk pursed his lips and nodded. “Inkeliye ek coffee.” He waved at the peon with the physique of a lamppost. “Ok, sir,” said the peon softly as he marched nimbly towards the other side of the room behind me. I twisted my neck to watch the peon disappear behind pink curtains into what I presumed was the kitchen. When I returned my attention to the clerk, I found him craning his neck circularly, busy in his thoughts. And so, a delicate silence hung between us, interrupted only by the incessant sound of the ceiling fan lugubriously dragging itself in screeching cycles.

When his tea and my coffee were finally placed on our tables, the clerk slurped his tea in one gulp, not leaving the vapors any time to dissipate. He wiped his face with his shirt’s sleeves and sighed in satisfaction. Then, rocking behind in his chair, he asked, “Aap karoge? Will you do it?”

“Yes,” I replied to his amusement.

“Why?” he asked, inching forward. I shrugged. I did not know why I was here at all. Maybe it was because I found this eccentric request genuinely bemusing. Or perhaps it was merely for the money. “I will take you there,” the clerk smirked. “After lunch.” Swiftly, he grabbed a placard from his drawer and slammed it on the table. ‘ON BREAK!’ the placard screamed.

I had my umbrella braced like a sword against the onslaught of torrential rain, my back slightly arched in support, and my legs loudly stomping onto the tiniest cracks I found on the rocky terrain. The leaves sporadically rustled as heavy gusts of wind carrying the smell of wet soil veered my umbrella the other way, leaving me feeling like a sinking ship. “Almost reached,” the clerk said as he sloshed ahead of me, joyously clinging on to a newspaper as his makeshift rain hat, muttering the tunes of an old Bollywood with the energy of a drenched rat with misplaced dignity. Resentfully, I followed him.

“Here,” the clerk said once we reached the hilltop. He’d stopped in front of the most peculiar gate I had ever seen; teapots, spoons, stones, sticks, and even hair were feebly held together by a barbed wire. A small nameplate hung somewhere in that chaos with the words ‘Manmohan’ etched on it. What was most baffling about this mishap of a gate was that it had no reason to be there. It only rose to my knees, and there was space on either side of it to avoid it altogether. I stepped over it and followed a rocky trail all the way up to a brick house buried under fresh green vines. There was a porch with a thatched blue shed, and I slipped under that to get away from the rain.

The clerk, choosing to stay outside the shed, yawned loudly, riveting my attention. I watched him curiously peek at a shed adjacent to the house with two cows mooing. “What happens to the cows?” I asked.

“Rajneesh will take them,” the clerk answered.

“Did Manmohan have a will?” I asked, pointing at the brick house behind me.

“No. But Rajneesh is the most senior person in the village.”

“What time is the ceremony? When will the body be burned?”

“Panditji told us to do it at 7 pm. You have three hours. Aap karloge?”

“Three hours should be fine.”

“I have to go back to the office. I will leave you to it,” the clerk said as he started walking back before I had time to say goodbye or ask him any questions about Manmohan. With the clerk gone, I turned my back against the brick house. Though the floor was a bit moist, I dropped down and folded my legs. I pulled my tiny notebook out of my shirt’s pocket, clicked my pen, and began working.

I did not know Manmohan, and apparently, neither did anyone else. How do you write a poem for someone who you do not know? Someone who is dead, and someone who was so isolated from the world around him that when he died, the villagers who’d lived around him for fifty years did not realize he was dead for an entire week. Someone who was so shut off that the government office processing the burial decided to call a poet – me – to give a proper mukti.

I pulled out the faded, yellow-stained, creased, palm-sized photo of Manmohan that had arrived with the mail for me to accept this job. A grumpy, black-and-white Manmohan gaped back at me, and so did the tips of his neatly brushed mustache that twisted sharply around the corners of his ears and ran back up to his nose. A white oversized turban rested on his head, trying to hide the massive fissure of wrinkles that commenced from his head, pouring down to his desolate eyes and dripping down to his mouth into a forlorn frown.

To write a poem mourning this stranger felt like weeping for the death of a star in a galaxy much farther away from me. Is this how Manmohan wanted to be remembered? Did Manmohan even enjoy poetry? Perhaps, when Manmohan was young, under a remote banyan tree in this village, a young poet had broken his heart, rendering Manmohan to this life of seclusion. And when the newspaper dropped off at Manmohan’s gate would occasionally contain a small poem, the first thing Manmohan would do is tear everything apart into shreds.

Or maybe, Manmohan was a poet himself? A silent observer, scribbling day-and-night in a tiny notepad buried somewhere in the decrepit house behind me. And whenever the poet in Manmohan would beg to flourish, he would sing his melodies to his…to who? His cows?

Focus, I reminded myself.

I did not have to make something up about Manmohan to mourn his passing. I had to bring a respectful conclusion to the end of this stranger’s life. After all, he was a human. Just like the rest of us. I scrubbed off the two lines I had written on my notepad about how Manmohan’s eyes would spark every time he saw the night sky. Or how his laugh amazed everyone around him. Lies have no place in mourning. Or poetry.

The clerk lazily held onto my notepad, scrutinizing my poetry from behind his reading glasses. The rain had stopped, and though the air was still fresh with mist, we stood outside the thatched shed with Manmohan’s house to our backs. Through a tiny crack in the clouds, I watched the Sun slowly ebb towards the horizon. “Tsk tsk,” the clerk said, pulling out a red pen and, to my dismay, scratching comments on my notepad. “This line has to go.”

I looked over and read the line: ’A man without borders and a man without papers.’ “Manmohan was documented,” the clerk said. My mind wavered to the letter I had received in the mail. The letter clearly stated that Manmohan had no one to remember his birth, and so those in charge of the burial wanted Manmohan to at least be remembered for his death. “But the letter said that Manmohan did not have a birth certificate,” I pointed out to the clerk.

“He has now,” the clerk answered dismally, clearing his throat. “And I would add a line here or there about how we at the government office promised Manmohan a new land to settle his dispute with Gigi Bhai.”

“What land dispute?”

“Gigi Bhai and Manmohan had a land dispute here in our village. The land was three acres and is quite close to the office. Manmohan claimed that his ancestors had passed the land on to him. Gigi Bhai instead had legal documents to claim the land. Manmohan claimed the documents were forged and said he had proof to back him up. Out of respect, Gigi Bhai wanted to forego the entire dispute and promised Manmohan three acres of land nearby. Manmohan passed away before anything could happen.”

I ruminated over this. “Where is the new land?” I asked.

“In Jamnapur,” the clerk sighed.

“How far is Jamnapur from here?”

“Eight hours,” the clerk answered.

“By car?”

“Yes.”

“Did Manmohan have a car?”

“No,” the clerk said coyly. “You don’t worry about it! You change the poetry, and I’ll handle the dispute.” The clerk folded the notebook and thrust it back into my arms. The clerk was asking me to lie. I grasped my notepad with shame.

I stood beside the burning pyre, watching the large crowd gathered before me. The ashes from the pyre prickled my skin but did not hurt. What hurt was realizing that the ashes settling on my skin were Manmohan himself. A dead stranger now rested on my skin and would soon be remembered by the words I made up for him.

Not one of these strangers knew Manmohan, yet they all gathered here in anticipation. I doubt any of them were here to mourn Manmohan. The clerk had enthusiastically announced to everyone that there would be a poet performing in English at the mukti ceremony, and my brief conversation with the villagers had assured me that, for some reason, these villagers adored anyone who could converse in fluent English.

Each tiny move that the assembled crowd made seemed to hit me like shards of shattered glass. These people would finally get to know something about Manmohan through me. And yet, with the changes the clerk had forced upon my poetry, all I would do was add to the lie of who Manmohan was. I hated it. I hated that the person in my poetry was no longer Manmohan.

Apprehension was rising amongst the crowd, and the whispers intertwined like tree vines. I let it all die down into a distant echo. I looked at my notepad, my hands shivering and attempting their best to stop me from reading the poem aloud. The clerk leaned in and whispered, “Say something. Read it.”

“Are you sure I cannot read the original poem without your changes?” I asked, but the clerk looked back at me with a spiteful glance. “Keep this,” the clerk said, patting my back. “Also, only a few here will understand your English poem. All you need to do is impress that man – my supervisor – over there. If you do that, I get a promotion, and you get this.” The clerk pulled out his wallet and slyly snuck out a two-thousand rupee note, trying to shove it into my palms. The clerk chuckled. That was why the poem was important to him, not because of Manmohan.

And so, I knew what I must do. I must come up with a new poem. I returned the two-thousand rupee note to the clerk and smiled at him. “If the villagers don’t understand what I am about to say, let my words not be for you, them, or anyone else,” I said, eyeing the clerk’s supervisor. “Let my words be for Manmohan and Manmohan only.”

‘A blooming flower sulking in the molten ashes of your skin

is the kind touch of grace darling death gifts.

When the birds come bearing hopes of a nest for their kin,

the flickering flower on your corpse will make it swift.’