The Cremator
Normally, a man started to weaken as he approached towards the
eighties. Teeth succumbed. Hair greyed or disappeared. The skin, with
wrinkles everywhere, flapped like a silken cloth. Bones became
vulnerable like glass. Fragility prevailed. However, out of all
exceptions, Hari was, probably, the most prominent one. Excepting the
grey hue of his hairy-head and the sparsely scattered snowy hair on his
chest, which looked like ageless creepers, he was quite a young man.
His dark lusty muscles were enough to induce a shudder, even in the
college-goers. He was a benefactor not only for his village Jangar but
also for many of the surrounding villages. When anyone around him died,
he undertook the responsibility of cremation in return of a few
rupees. He did not arrange for the wood and the other necessaries that
were demanded as per rituals and traditions. He had nothing to do with
the priestly activities, which boasted of purging the dead and
repelling the evil spirits with jargonized intonations. In fact, he only
supervised the cremation; the melting of the corpse to a totally
different avatar, crackling at times with terrifying noises, flaring a
few sparks out of nowhere, and breaking into fragments under the
all-encompassing fire. After the fire was lit – preferably by the
eldest son of the deceased – his task was to prod the fire with a
wooden log, moving the woods towards the intensity of the fire, or
shoving the upper half of the body that rebelliously rose after some
time of burning, until the corpse dismantled and transformed to a
deadly spectacle. Quite rightly, he was regarded as the cremator.
He lived in a small hut situated in the vicinity of the
crematorium, the large patch of unoccupied land towards the fringes of
Jangar. In order to pass his time, he had formed a little garden of
flowers and vegetables just adjacent to his hut. Roses, tulips and
lilies of several colours – red, lilac, yellow and white – bloomed in
unison singing eulogies of the majesty of beauty. A few creepers of ivy
gourds – that grew on their own like the bushes that circled his
circumference – climbed the walls of his hut, like reptiles. As many as
ten banana trees stood firmly on one side of the garden like persons
in a queue. A few plants of tomato, onion and brinjal were cultivated
behind the banana leaves. Almost a hundred metres away, opposite of the
crematorium, there was a temporary pond that brimmed in the rainy
season. When the pond was at spate, it harboured a host of frogs, whose
croaking along with the whirring of the crickets stabbed the silence
of the hut at night. After years of patient hearing, Hari had
discovered a soothing melody in the voice of those emotional creatures
as if he understood their language. His faculties of hearing had
reduced abysmally over the years, yet the sounds reached him
impeccably. The rainy season was his favourite. In addition to the
solace that he elicited in rainy nights, there were other reasons too.
The soft drizzle over the banana-leaves produced a spectacle of joy.
The drops atop the leaves sparkled like gems and Hari exulted like a
child just to see the drops falling, glistening, like bounties from
heaven. He wished to see the glitter throughout his life, incessantly. A
few insolent kids – bare bodied and frail - from the nearby villages
roared and frolicked near the pond. They would sit in the bank in the
quest of a rare fish as though they were professional anglers. They
never found one. Hari often screamed at them, scared of the fact that
someone could easily drown in the turbulent waters. He believed that
children had little idea about the transience and importance of life.
He had seen a thousand dead bodies of children who died premature deaths
due to diseases, accidents and, often, ignorance. In the summer, the
pond dried completely and the cracks became visible like a
pencil-sketch, akin to the cracks in the walls of the hut of the old
man. The frogs and their songs disappeared to oblivion. However, adults
and incipient adults (either from Jangar or from the nearby villages)
often visited the place with a bottle of liquor or a few cigarettes or
both. There was an old man, a tad younger to Hari, who illicitly sold
liquor in the village. He charged double the price but his presence did
away with the inconvenience of travelling all the way to the nearby
town for a mere bottle of wine. The villagers preferred his service
unless they had some unavoidable errands in the town or had someone
coming from the town to their village.
More often, Hari slept outside, occasionally watching the
funeral pyres as they illuminated and smouldered endlessly, finally
making space for other bodies. He was often woken by the melancholic
chants of “Ram naam satya hai” by a host of men clad in white, who
carried the corpse in a bamboo-bier, draped with flowers. He never
displayed an ounce of reluctance, no matter what the time was, no issue
how his health was! He involved himself with unmatched fervour –
hiding his fever or the trifling indisposition if that ever existed. He
had no sign of fear. Some people believed that he conversed with ghosts
in the night. Some also opined that he was an exponent of black
magic. Maybe, that is why he had a very few visitors unless his
service was utmost necessary. In other words, only a death in the
family reminded the villagers of Hari. However, there was unanimous
agreement that he was extremely fearless and courageous.
He was reminded of several anecdotes while the corpses crumbled to
ashes. He had seen the decay of generations in his naked eyes. For
instance, he had torched the zamindar, his brothers, his cousins, his
father, his uncles and his grandfather. Unfortunately, the lineage ended
with the demise of the middle-aged Zamindar who had no heir to succeed
him.
The people of Jangar and the nearby villages could hardly
forget that eventful day when the dead body of the ex-MLA was jauntily
set ablaze with the help of the old man's experience. It was raining
relentlessly. The body anointed with pure ghee was placed at the pile
of imported sandalwood. No one had expected the fire to cope up and
stand against the heavy downpour. But Hari had other intentions. He had
mastered the art of burning corpses and the inclement weather was
hardly a challenge for him. He tactfully cloaked one side of the
funeral with a tent-like-structure and allowed the fire to gain
momentum with plenty of kerosene oil. He, in fact, invented the
tent-like-structure with the use of fireproof and waterproof cloth.
Subsequently, he shifted the tent-like-structure to the other directions
and the fire grew in intensity. The onlookers, mostly VIPs, standing
under white umbrellas, stared at him with awe and wonder. Even the
memory of that unforgettable night instigated a smile in the cheeks of
Hari.
Whenever the son of the dead MLA visited the village, he made
it a habit to get a packet of tobacco for Hari. Hari was often seen in
his antique cot – placing a pinch of tobacco in his right palm and
rubbing it gently with his left thumb, making it ready to be gulped. He
was alive for mainly two reasons, according to him – the irreplaceable
service that he provided and tobacco.
A tiny schoolchild, frail and fragile like a raw bamboo, once
visited the old man while he was usually sitting in his string cot,
chewing tobacco, and witnessing the beautiful birds and butterflies.
“Why have you come here? Your parents will kill you if they find you in my place.”
Hari had a very few visitors. Most of the visitors would
approach him for his service of cremation. Hence, he was scandalized to
see the child in his place, that was located at a fair distance from
the village.
“I need your help.”
Startled, Hari asked, “My help?”
As per his belief, he was only meant to help the dead. For a
moment, Hari thought that the child might have lost either of his
parents.
“My teacher has asked me to write an essay on ‘Life and death’”, the child stuttered.
Hari laughed and said, “There are many educated men in our village. You can seek their advice. How can I help you?”
“You are the cremator. You have seen a thousand deaths. Nobody can dictate a better essay than you.”
The chest of the old man swelled with pride. A curve prevailed over his lips.
“What is your name, by the way?” he asked.
“Raju”, the child returned, licking his fingers.
“Nice name. I had a friend named Raju who died a few years ago”, the old man reflected.
“Please help me in my essay”, the child pestered.
The old man cogitated on the crematorium, that was bleak and blank like the skies above.
“Life is a journey and death is the end. But who knows! They say
there is life after death too. I think that death is just an
aberration. A speed-breaker. A reality we do not know. But ignorance is
not non-existence.”
The little kid was flummoxed by the philosophies delineated by
the old man. Even a middle-aged man would have been puzzled at the
tenets preached by him.
The boy – in a bid to drag the topic to understandable terms –
asked, “You were born before independence. You must have done the
cremation of some freedom-fighter.”
Hari contemplated on his garden, displaying a radiant smile.
“Yeah, I have torched some luminaries who lost their lives during the
freedom struggle. Interestingly, I have even burnt the corpses of some
policemen, though clandestinely, to help our brothers in their cause.”
The smile widened as Hari’s mind meandered through the vistas of the past.
After some time, the child left for his village, Wekhuli, leaving
Hari with his delectable pastime of watching the birds and
butterflies. The birds crooned mellifluously. The butterflies – black,
yellow and some black ones neatly specked with yellow dots – hovered
over the flowers and the garden, bidding adieu to the setting sun.
A few days later, the child – befriended by another child of almost the same age – visited the abandoned hut of Hari.
“He is my cousin, Monu. He has come to our house on a vacation. When I
told him about you, he was curious to meet you”, the boy narrated
with a gaping mouth.
The other boy, Monu, smiled coyly from behind.
Looking at the excitement of the boys, Hari thought, “I was never
a watchable object. These kids have made me an animal of the zoo. An
object of the circus.”
Catering to their childish demands, Hari exhibited a smile and asked, “Where do you live, Monu?”
Raju, with his loquaciousness, answered, “He lives in Mumbai”.
Hari, for a moment, thought that the child was either dumb or an
excessively shy fellow because the question was thrown at him and not
on Raju.
Breaking the scepticism of Hari, Monu, the boy from Mumbai, said,
“My father drives an auto-rickshaw in Mumbai. The traffic there is
awful. My father has narrowly missed many accidents by a whisker. But
accidents occur abundantly. If you come to Mumbai, you will get a lot
many corpses to burn everyday.”
Hari laughed at the suggestion as if it were a joke.
He was also happy for the fact that Monu spoke many sentences uninterruptedly.
“I have lived all my life in Jangar. Mumbai is far away. I
have not been to Srabanpur. To be candid, I am happy here. This place
suits me. The hut, the garden with flowers and vegetables, that field
which becomes a pond during the rains and homes the frogs, the birds
and butterflies, the crematorium, and the corpses that I burn, are my
own. I have a deep sense of ownership on all these things. Leaving them
will be a death for me!”
The boys stared at him, unblinkingly, unable to decipher the degree of his nostalgia.
The philosopher in Hari possibly bored them. After answering to
their queries, that moved from the freedom struggle to the cremation
of the MLA, Hari asked them to leave. He never wanted the kids to stay
with him till the sunset. Wekhuli was a couple of kilometres away and
the kids had to reach home early to evade the ire of their parents.
Hari was slowly becoming fond of Raju’s company. The frequency
of the visits increased over the period of time. It so happened that
every afternoon, Raju arrived at Hari’s place, after returning from
school, and accompanied the old man in viewing the birds and
butterflies. He watered the plants in the garden with clinical
attention, allowing the old man to take rest. He lambasted the old man
for his inveterate habit of consuming tobacco and the latter promised
to give up the addiction, someday. On some occasions, he brought
mangoes for the old man. These were mostly stolen from the backyard of
the school. Hari castigated him, initially refusing to accept them, but
finally gave up to the diffidence of the little kid. He often bestowed
the child with flowers and vegetables. For all these years, Hari was
lonely in the abandoned place. He sought solace in the birds, the
butterflies, the frogs and the other inanimate things. For the first
time, he was close to a human being. The influx of Raju to his life
generated a strange kind of happiness that he was not aware of, since
his birth. He understood the importance of human presence, the
necessity of a family. Despite the differences of age, he regarded the
child as his friend. His best friend.
Hari enjoyed a sense of ownership over Raju. He even went to
the extent of slapping the boy on his cheeks on one occasion when the
tender boy was attempting to annihilate a beehive located just outside
the fence of his hut. Raju responded with tears but he did not utter a
word of objection.
“The bees will attack you. That is one thing. Most importantly, their
homes will be destroyed. How will you react when your own home is
obliterated?”
Raju had no answer to the inquisition. He realized that he was
at fault. However, the old man hugged him with his lusty muscles and
apologized for his anger. Raju promised not to repeat his insolence.
Meanwhile, the favourite season of Hari arrived with the
advent of the monsoons. The earth was embellished like a bride with the
chandelier of lush verdure all around. Some drops shone over the
leaves. Some trickled from them. Together, they added aesthetics to the
panorama of beauty.
Raju was not seen for a week or more. Initially, Hari believed
that the relentless rains that accentuated in the afternoon might have
hindered the arrival of his little friend.
“He must be returning to his home directly from the school. How can he come to me during heavy downpour?” he thought.
He sought solace in the beauty of the aura, amidst the myriad
worms and insects (that cropped up exclusively during the rains), the
familiar birds, butterflies, and the mellifluous frogs. After all,
these were the sources of ecstasy, long before he met Raju.
Days passed. The impact of the rains somewhat dwindled. It had
been a month since he last saw his little friend. Unable to contain
his impatience, he ventured into Wekhuli, which was a different
spectacle of what he had conjectured. Colourful houses had replaced the
old-modelled-clay-clad huts that he had seen a long time ago. He did
not remember when he last saw the place. He never had the urge to visit
this village. Things essential for a living were available to him in
his solitary world. If necessary, he travelled to the main market of
Jangar that was half a kilometre away from the crematorium.
There was a big playground in the centre of the village. It
was a wasteland with unwanted trees and bushes at some point of time.
People were scared of it as it sheltered a variety of venomous snakes.
However, time triggered the unexpected transitions.
“Even the crematorium will become a colony of the new generation someday”, he thought.
He beckoned a kid from the playground and asked him about Raju.
“He is ill. He is suffering from fever since a month”, the kid replied.
“Where do they live?” he quizzed.
The boy pointed his finger to a house at a fair distance and said, “That one”.
Hari ambled as per the direction of the little boy to the house in red.
He stood outside the door. Before he could knock the door, he was pulled back by a strange kind of hesitation.
“What will his parents say? I belong to the world of the dead. Even my shadow is considered to be inauspicious by them.”
Restraining himself, he decided to return.
However, his desire to see Raju was intense.
He, therefore, surreptitiously glanced through the window at the bed where poor Raju was lying like an inanimate object.
“Get well soon, my friend! I am missing you”, he whispered, before returning to his world.
A couple of weeks passed and there was no news on Raju. The
rains intensified once again. The croaking of the frogs escalated with
every passing night. On one such night, while Hari was attuned to their
passionate songs, he was interrupted by fervent knocks at the door.
“Perhaps someone has left this world. Oh God!" He said to himself.
A visitor in the night to his hut was, unmistakably, a member or a delegate from the family of the bereaved.
When Hari opened the door, he saw a throng of sinewy men, each
with a lantern in hand, standing on the other side. A few of them
carried umbrellas. The others, vulnerably exposed to the relentless
rains, stood helplessly while the faint light of the lanterns fell on
their faces and manifested the dripping of the raindrops, one by one,
from their wet and dishevelled hairs.
“What happened? Who has expired?” Hari asked with utter dismay.
He could surmise that something was wrong. This was not a usual
death. Such a throng was only expected in connection to the demise of
an influential personality like a Zamindar or a MLA.
“The one you had plotted for”, a man from within the mob grunted
loudly, pointing to a corpse that was laid amid an array of wooden logs
in the crematorium. A few tearful faces, clad in white, circled the
pyre, while the priest was carrying on his intonations.
“What?” Hari asked in surprise.
“Your black magic has yielded fruits. Raju is dead”, someone mumbled.
A moment later, a man from within the crowd broke down and lost his
senses. The others rushed him into the hut. He was Raju’s father.
The earth below the feet of Hari quaked for a moment. A
lightning flashed in the skies in consistence with the tempestuous
interior of the cremator. His heart skipped a beat or two.
“What are you saying?” the old man asked, in a tone gravid
with angst, shock and disbelief, refusing to believe his ears. It seemed
as though the tears were held back in the brink of his eyes.
Another man returned, “Some people had seen the kid in your hut
on myriad occasions. The village folk saw even your entry to the
village in search of Raju. You cannot deny the fact that Raju was a
victim of your black magic”.
Abuses were hurled in unison.
“Why did you kill the small boy? What harm did he cause to you?” another irate villager asked.
“Black magic! What are you saying? I loved Raju. He was like my son”,
Hari averred, as his voice started to smart, his eyes glistened like
stars.
“How did you know him?” someone quizzed.
“He had first come to my place to seek my help for his essay. Then,
he came after some days on his own. I never invited him. Gradually, I
was fond of his company. The visits increased. He watered my plants,
nourished my garden and heard my stories… And then when he did not come
for a month or so, I went to the village to see what had happened!”
The irksome mob paid no heed to his explanation.
“So you will guide the children of our village for their studies.
What will the teachers like me do then?” an angry man, with thick
glasses, cried tersely.
Before Hari could respond, they dragged him to the outside as
the skies continued to pour relentlessly. Someone punched him on his
face and he fell on the ground. The angry men beat him mercilessly with
wooden sticks. Some of them kicked him vigorously. Some pounded him
with lusty blows. A thin stream of blood emanated from a corner of his
head. Hari was helpless. He did not retaliate. But the venom of the
villagers was uncompromising. After an hour of brutal assault, they went
away. The rains had subsided and the corpse of Raju was set ablaze
with plenty of kerosene fuelling the fire. Strange! The villagers so
easily did a task for which, Hari thought, he was indispensable.
He crawled towards the crematorium with dying intensity,
inching ahead with all his force, leaving behind a trail of red all
along his path. The frogs from the nearby pond croaked again. But this
time, their songs sounded like an elegy. A requiem.
“This might be a punishment for Raju’s attempt to destroy the beehive”, Hari pondered.
He had lost ample blood in the commotion. The stream of blood
refused to stop. It flew endlessly… as though it was destined to end
with the last trickle. Hari believed that he would never see the
morning. He would never meet those birds and butterflies again!
After reaching the crematorium, he sat prostrate, with his knee
kissing his chin, and wistfully stared at the funeral pyre, while the
hundred memories of Raju flashed before his eyes. He was occupied by a
strange mix of sorrow and regret.
The next day, the hut of Hari was torched by the villagers.
The garden of beautiful flowers and vegetables was obliterated. The
birds and butterflies were displaced. But the villagers did not find
him. In fact, they never found him again! Some believed that he left the
place. Some thought that the old man had succumbed to the injuries and
was therefore buried somewhere with the fear of the MLA’s son who
happened to be a loyal partisan of the old man. Some people also
conjectured that his apparition was seen near the pond in the dead of
the night exclusively in the rainy season, relishing the songs of the
frogs. In fact, the disappearance of the cremator became a mystery, a
mystery that was never unravelled!
An year later, Monu, who had been to the village on a vacation,
came to the abandoned area with a group of his friends. He pointed a
finger at the debris and said to them like a professional guide, “There
lived the cremator!”
