PERSONALITY
TREND
FASHION
SPECIAL
CHAT JOCKEYS
ARCHIVES

Kamala Das

Lamps put out

A friend of mine complained to me about her husband's recent behaviour. In the last few months, he has been running around attending funerals of acquaintances or acquaintances of acquaintances.

This, by itself, is not a crime. But he has taken on the role of an undertaker, taking pleasure in washing the cadavers, applying oil and soap and washing each crevice clean. He dresses the dead. On the foreheads of Hindu cadavers, he applies kumkum. He arranges garlands of jasmine around the neck and over the bosom.

He sits with the mourners, helping people place wreaths and replenishing the stock of oil in brass-lamps. He talks in mournful tones about the dear departed, extolling virtues till then not heard of. He comforts widows, bursting into sobs himself and rubbing his reddened eyes with a fist, till a kind person offers him a handkerchief and makes comforting sounds. For a day or two after the burial or cremation, he stays the night with the bereaved family, sleeping on the floor.

"I have come to fear the sound of the phone," said my friend, weeping. "The phone seems only to give messages of death." Most deaths take place around four in the morning, which is known as the Brahma-muhurtam. It's the best time to die. The best time for prayers.

When I was lying in Room 565 of the Bombay Hospital, recovering from a serious illness, the sound of brooms in action and the clatter of buckets used to wake me up around five. A death would have taken place and the subsequent cleaning up would be in progress. The corpse would have been taken home by relatives or deposited in the mortuary. No human voice would be heard in the corridor after a death till at least till six o'clock when the lab boys came pushing their trolleys and crying out for blood; their cries of "Khoon, khoon (blood)" unnerving the affected patients.

My friend said that her husband avoids going to work, for fear that he might miss a phone call informing him of somebody's death. Whenever he talks of the dead, he calls each of them his dearest friend, his soul-mate, his inspiration.

"He is concocting weepy stories," said my friend.

As he is not manifesting sure and conspicuous signs of madness, she cannot take him to a psycho-analyst. He passes off as an intellectual and is constantly being wined and dined for being one.

"Nobody admires me," said the wife. "I am only the provider who earns enough to feed and clothe the great man."

In Kerala, supposedly the most literate state in India, education is inexpensive. Even medical education is inexpensive. Women who have opted for careers that take them away from home require not congratulations, but sympathy. They have to leave their children at the mercy of a domestic servant who lacks the education necessary to look after a child. She passes on superstitions and a horde of terrors that lurked within her from her own childhood days.

The child learns not only from her school but also from within her home. The lessons learnt in childhood remain indelible in its memory. How would the child unlearn the information passed on by the ayah? Religious muck sticks to the subconscious and is very often found difficult to dislodge. This, in course of time, can turn a person into a fanatic.

Career women most often find themselves not making the grade in their career, because a feeling of guilt intrudes upon their working hours. The knowledge that they are imperfect mothers traumatises them. The failure at the area of work makes them disgruntled at home. They make imperfect wives, imperfect lovers imperfect mothers… and life, for them, seems a dim exercise. They cease to radiate happiness. They are like lamps put out.

Illustration: Laura Fernandes