Jagu Tiadi – an opium addict, lusty drummer and undisputed leader of the Brahmin kirtan singers of Podabasant village – had made a name for himself as a cremator. When it came to burning a body, there was no one, even in the neighbouring villages, who could rival him.
Corpses, you see, can cause plenty of headaches: some slowpokes refuse to catch fire; others, as sly in death as in life, suddenly thrust out a stiff hand or leg, upsetting the carefully arranged pyre; some burst open at the seams at the slightest heat and their abundant body fluids douse the fire. Only a few go without a fuss. Faced with such difficulties, pallbearers would look to Jagu for help and advice. Fighting off sleep and an opium-induced languor, he would struggle to his feet, take out a smoking log and land a couple of hefty blows on the unyielding corpse. “Go quickly, or I’ll hand you a second death,” he would curse, as he saw to it that the skull was smashed to smithereens, the legs broken into splinters, the stomach deflated like a pricked balloon and the body caught fire and turned to ashes.
Until it was all over, Jagu would lumber about the cremation ground littered with ash-heaps, winnowing-fans, broomsticks, shards, rags and knotted balls of hair and nails. A smooth cremation never failed to warm his heart. “Thank God,” he would say, slapping oil on his thighs for the mandatory ritual dip in the village pond. “There, that’s a decent corpse for you.”
When cholera and smallpox struck the village and almost every home had a body to cremate, Jagu was naturally in great demand. If a family tried to reduce his fee by so much as a paisa, he would leave the body to rot in the house. He would not budge an inch unless he was paid a quarter-rupee coin and a tola each of ganja and opium. These, of course, were in addition to the customary offering of rice, new clothes and invitations to three funeral feasts.
For Jagu, the death of a married woman while her husband was still alive was nothing less than a bonanza. If she belonged to a prosperous family, Jagu was entitled to her gold nose-stud or earrings; if she came from a humbler home, he took her silver toe-rings. Before placing the body on the pyre, he himself would remove the jewellery. Sometimes, when the piece did not come off easily, Jagu would impatiently yank it off; if in the process the corpse bled, that did not upset him in the least. Why, he never even hesitated to strip a dead woman just to make sure he had not missed out on anything valuable.
He rejoiced most in the death of a pregnant woman, or better still, a death during childbirth. On such occasions, he would refuse to lift the bier unless he was paid a full rupee. People who haggled with him were damned; he would have nothing to do with the cremation. He could even talk the other pallbearers into a strike. But once he got his silver coin, he would get on with the job with the proficiency of a professional. Belting out lusty shouts in praise of God to the rhythmic beat of drums, he would dance down the village path, his spotless white sacred-thread girdling his black-as-granite body. His big booming voice, echoing through the village, scared the little children off the road. At the cremation ground, once the washerman had slit open the swollen belly of the dead woman, he would pluck the foetus out. Sometimes, he beat the half-formed child into a pulp before unceremoniously throwing it into the fire. No one dared comment upon his outrageous behaviour. After all, there was no one more efficient than Jagu to deal with the dead!
The relish with which Jagu often described his exploits left no one in doubt about the pride he took in his calling. “Who kept Narasingh Mishra’s wife’s pyre going in the pouring rain? Who found the way to reduce Nath Brahma to cinders when the bloated-up old bounder was a wet mass?” he would ask. Even when cremations took a long time and were tiresome, Jagu would linger patiently until the end, sometimes just about the only person around. And the nether world notables he encountered on these ungodly occasions! There was the Headless One roosting at the fringe of the Seven Tree grove; the old witch in the crotch of a mango tree by the Muktajhar stream roasting a newborn baby over a pale cold fire. Pausing only for a deep drag on the chillum to clear his throat, he reeled off his stories so vividly that the listeners in the village bhagavatghara, covered in goose flesh, huddled closer to each other.
One late evening in the month of Ashwin, when the sky hung low with dark clouds, Jagu sat on his veranda, nursing a splitting headache. He had a muffler around his head, his temples smeared with dabs of quicklime. The village priest was reading aloud the holy Harivamsa. Suddenly, a loud wail pierced the stillness of the evening. Somebody had died. Jagu grew restless, wondering who it was. Soon, someone who had gone to the shop at the other end of the village brought the news. It was the young wife Jatia had deserted. Jagu sat up. Here was a big chance for a shiny silver coin. Not often in this sinful world did women predecease their poor husbands. It did not matter that Jatia had long since abandoned his wife.
His joy, however, was short-lived. According to the grapevine, the young woman was pregnant and the local abortionist’s potion had brought on her death. Jagu realised he could cremate her only at the risk of excommunication.
All Jatia’s old mother had been left with in the world was this young daughter-in-law and now she too had died in the most disgraceful of circumstances. Jatia had left home three years ago to seek his fortune in Calcutta and had broken all ties with his family. The rumour had spread that he had taken another wife. Abandoned by her son and now by her daughter-in-law, Jatia’s mother rolled in the dust, bewailing her fate.
Although the village elders blamed the old woman for not keeping a strict eye on her daughter-in-law, this was no longer her private misfortune. If the police got to know about it, it would be a slur on the honour of her caste and on the village as well. The body had to be disposed of as quickly as possible, for there was no lack of snitches in the village to carry tales to the police. Jatia’s mother felt so mortified that she held a straw between her toothless gums and prostrated herself before the village elders.
A few young men volunteered to cart the corpse to the cremation ground. Straw ropes were plaited, a bamboo bier was readied and the winnowing fans, broomsticks, pots and their slings were collected from inside the house. The dead woman was wrapped in a sari and tied down to a bier. The cremation seemed far from a tame affair: the rains threatened to come at any moment and if the police arrived before it was over, the whole village could be thrown in the dock. Urgent summons were sent to Jagu.
But Jagu would have none of it. The young woman had died in sin and he did not wish to pollute himself by cremating her. Jagu found his moral qualms too strong to be overcome – until an offer of five big silver coins was made; it was only then that he reluctantly accepted the assignment.
Jatia’s mother dug out her nest egg from a hole in the wall, but it was barely enough for the wood, kerosene, rice and fees for the barber and washerman. So would Jagu kindly relent and have the gold piece the dead woman wore on her nose?
“Jai Hari.” Jagu turned to the pallbearers. “Praise Hari. Ram Naam Satya Hai. God is the only Truth.” The bier was hoisted.
The wind had dropped and a rank smell hung over the cremation ground. Jagu cleared a little space among the debris, dug a pit and filled it with dry wood, stick by stick. The dead body was placed on the pyre.
The moon suddenly broke from behind a bank of clouds as Jagu removed the veil from the woman’s face. The gold nose-stud glittered in the moonlight.
A shiver ran down Jagu’s spine.
The moon disappeared behind a cloud for a moment and sailed out again, the light and shadow playing hide-and-seek on the pale face of the corpse.
Jagu stretched his hand towards the jewel and stopped. The woman’s face was like a wilting blue lily, her thick tresses resembled the clouds the moon was flirting with. Jagu felt a knot in his stomach.
The moon again slipped behind a cloud. Jagu waited. A lump rose in his throat. Why did he feel so sad? Had he not burnt enough young women? Why did he find the job so awful, so difficult this time? Many a woman had been prettier than this one.
He caught himself thinking about her. On her nose, she had a little trinket of gold and in her faintly swollen womb, an unborn child. Another four or five months and she would have become a mother. Why did she have to come to an end like this? It wasn’t her fault her husband had deserted her within a fortnight of their marriage. It wasn’t a crime to be young and vivacious, to thirst for love, to crave male caresses, to exult in the exalting passions of the flesh. Was it her fault that the repressed passion of her starved body had overcome her sense of right and wrong? What was right and what was wrong, anyway? Who could judge?
“Come on, Jagu!” the pallbearers fidgeted. “Hurry up. The red turbans might swoop down on us any moment. Take the nose flower off the corpse and light the pyre. For heaven’s sake, don’t waste time.”
“I don’t want that flower of evil,” Jagu said, coming out of his reverie. “Let it go with her.”
“The golden nose-stud? Are you sure? All right, then torch the bitch. God knows how long she’ll take.”
“Douse her with kerosene. It’ll help.”
“Are you sure you don’t want that piece of gold?” The pallbearers quizzed Jagu. “How come?”
He did not say a thing.
The tongues of fire leaped up. The wood crackled. The body turned and twisted a little. The skin crinkled and turned black. Jagu’s eyes remained riveted on the pyre. After about an hour, he took his stick and probed the lump. Soon it would be time to smash the skull. A sigh escaped him.
An owl began to hoot in the far corner of the cremation ground and vultures flapped their wings; a male jackal set up an eerie howl. The putrid stench of burning flesh hung thick in the air.
The cremation proved a smooth business. The rain held off. The pallbearers chatted gaily among themselves. “Good for him, he didn’t touch the tainted jewel of the whore,” remarked someone. “That gold would have done Jagu no good.”
There was a chorus of agreement. Jagu winced.
“Whoever goes whoring around and killing the fruit of her womb” said someone else, “deserves a miserable end like this. There is dharma, after all, you know. You simply can’t escape it.”
“Aw, shut the hell up,” Jagu Tiadi suddenly barked, a raw edge to his voice. “Do me a favour and shut the hell up.”
Excerpted with permission from ‘Flower of Evil’ by Satchidananda Routray in Maguni’s Bullock Cart and Other Classic Odia Stories’, translated by Leelawati Mohapatra, KK Mohapatra, and Paul St-Pierre, series edited by Mini Krishnan, HarperCollins India.
