The book forces one to ask, ?What is love? Sacrifice? A corpse??, and ?How does one hold onto faith in the reality of death??
?…if the dead are really and truly dead, null and void, snuffed out without a trace ? then everything we grow up believing in is a lie. All religion, theology, my father?s life and beliefs and prayers, the pumped-up ?power of faith??everything is simply wishful fantasy.?
Phiroze Elchidana poses this fundamental crisis in Cyrus Mistry?s The Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer. As the son of a priest at the fire temple, and married into a family of Parsi corpse bearers (the khandhias) Phiroze is perhaps best suited to grapple with questions of life, faith and ultimately, death. The book forces one to ask, ?What is love?? Sacrifice? A corpse??, ?What is clean, what is unclean??, ?How does one hold onto faith in the reality of death??
In the author?s note, playwright and journalist, Mistry reveals that a true incident inspired this book. While working on a proposal, for a documentary, on corpse bearers in the Bombay Parsi community he came across the story of a middle-class Parsi dockworker who married a khandhia?s daughter. This story, which he heard from the dockworker?s son, provided the kernel of the novel.
Set in pre-Independence Bombay, and told through Phiroze, it delves into the relatively unknown world of the khandhias. Love takes a rebellious Phiroze from the cloistered world of the fire temple into the ostracised Tower of Silence. After days of confinement and rituals he is anointed a nussesalar or Lord of the Unclean. Nussesalars are corpse bearers whose responsibility includes protecting the living from the supposed contamination of the corpse through a series of rites and rituals.
To Mistry?s credit the book deals with the bane of untouchability though a personal narrative rather than social posturing. When Phiroze?s shin accidentally grazes against the leather shoe of a devout mourner, he erupts into rage and chants at this ?despoilment? and ?desecration?. While Phiroze apologises contritely he laughs to himself because he knows that this man will need him one day. He knows that when the bawaji?s body turns cold, his family will not tend to it, but that he will have to wash and cleanse it and touch it all over. Phiroze?s keen self-awareness and ability to laugh at himself and the world, ensures that a grim subject never becomes onerous and remains relevant. This isn?t a victim?s story, it is the story of a son betrayed by a father, a husband who finds salvation in love, a father who strives for his daughter and a man who stands by his friends.
The novel, however, operates at the personal level at the expense of political ferment. It makes cursory references to the pro-Swadeshi and anti-imperialist ethos of the time. The Quit India movement is only fleetingly mentioned. Partition is summarily dismissed in less than a sentence. This absence of history and time somewhat enervates the novel. As if aware of these omissions, the narrator towards the end, says, ?I have lived through almost sixty years of what was probably a historically significant century, and sometimes I do wish I had taken better notes, paid greater heed to Temoo’s radio for the news of the world it gave me. But I never cared to: the torrent of human suffering ran unabated, shutting out every glimmer of hope.? In the Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, hope is only found in love, however ephemeral it might be.
The Chronicle of a
Corpse Bearer
Cyrus Mistry
Aleph Book Company
Rs. 495
Pg: 247
