The Vacant Lamp
A brick battlements; a dead woman's sarees, the problem with the grief tourism industry; exchanging monkeys for kites; how to starve a genie; a strange umbrella...
Along the edge of the flat roof of the building where many generations of the Chakraborty family have resided, there is a rudimentary battlements. It is a low wall made from crumbling red brick that was salvaged decades before from one of the colonial British outposts. I remember when it was built in the late 1990s by Gourab and Ranjeet. They were both teenagers at the time. Like the rest of the block it is untidy in its construction and is slowly falling to pieces through neglect. Since Abrar died, there has been no-one in the extended family who has stepped up to take charge.
Deepa once complained to me: “All of my sons and daughters are so well educated, not one of them knows how to do anything.”
As her illness made her more infirm, sometimes one of her children would attempt to take charge. Whenever this happened, the others who had shown no interest up until that point would immediately dig their heels in. It may be that, now she is dead, the stalemate will be broken and things will be different, though I foresee more arguments.
Underneath the battlements, on the second floor, there is a row of four tall windows. The one on the far left, as you face towards the building, has been plugged with broken-off pieces of red brick. They have been carelessly mortared-in and the resulting wall is not flush with the façade but rather is sunk a few inches into the frame. The room on the opposite side has no natural light. Abrar used to practice the violin there in the darkness, with his head turned away from the instrument and tilted upright as if he held the source of the music he played in disdain. He attempted to teach me to perform in the same style but I was a poor and undedicated pupil.
The other windows in the row are barred and have no glass. One has a beaded curtain that used to hang over one of the interior doorways. I have seen the children playing with it, standing underneath it, with it draped over them, pretending that the long strings of different-coloured plastic beads are a part of their hair. The window on the far right-hand side is a tall rectangle like the others but it has been framed within a sketch of an arch in the thick stone cladding, that is now starting to come away in patches, revealing the brick underneath.
On the ground floor where a small part of the building juts out into the alleyway, a strip light – the kind that you more commonly see mounted on the ceiling in offices – has been attached to the wall by a bracket and turned at a quizzical angle. The cable has been plastered into a small hole in the wall. The light provides illumination where the pathway has deteriorated and is dangerous to walk on at all hours, but particularly after dark.
The other buildings in the row are similarly ramshackle and go up and down in height, like a makeshift staircase. Here and there, you can see where an additional storey has been added. The roof of one of the taller blocks is almost filled with a white cage. I sometimes see the macaques chasing each other along the outside of the bars.
Today the rooftops are quiet. There are no troupes of monkeys causing mischief or fighting with each other. A row of colourful sarees hang down from the battlements of the Chakraborty household like banners. A few of them I remember Deepa wearing.
Inside, Gourab is raging at the world. I hear his voice even before his older sister, Jannat, has opened the front door.
“It's a bloody bastard infringement. None of these people are from Kashi. They are all opportunists from elsewhere. Fake gurus and their arsehole acolytes from Europe and America.”
Jannat welcomes me inside. She accepts the flowers I have brought.
“It is very thoughtful of you.”
“I did not know what is suitable for funerals. I asked the woman.”
“It is a good choice.”
“I saw the sarees hanging down on the outside. Will they be safe from the monkeys?”
“There has been a round-up, a few days ago,” says Habiba. “The rooftops have been quite. Mahbub saw a bird of prey up there. What is it? – a black kite.”
“I saw it with my telescope, “ says Mahbub. He will be seven in a few weeks. I noticed his birthday on the calendar when I was checking my organiser. “It flew off and perched on top of one of the bodies floating in the river. It was trying to undo the wrapping with its beak.”
Habiba bends down and kisses fondly him on the top of the head where his hair is parted. As she withdraws her mouth, she says to him quietly.
“Please do not talk anymore about the dead bodies.”
“The grief tourists are causing major headaches for me,” says Gourab.
“And Ranjeet has said he will sort it all out. Do you not believe him?” says Jannat. She has taken her mother's seat at the head of the large table, beyond the partition arch of the kitchen. With irritable brute force she makes a ragged tear across the top of an envelope with a butter knife. Turning it over, she shakes out the card of condolence. It falls on to the wooden surface along with a cascade of red/orange blossoms.
“Why do they do this?” she says, exasperated. “What purpose does it serve other than to make more work for me?”
“What is the problem? Maybe I can help.”
“It is the people who practice shok yoga on the Burning Ghat,” says Habiba. “There are so many now. They are obstructing the beach cremations.”
She is a calm presence in the room. I think that, after the dust settles, she will be the one who is most likely to step into Deepa's shoes.
“They are supposed to obtain permits but the system is not enforced,” says Gourab. “It's a travesty. They are putting tourists before residents.”
“I've seen them but I didn't know what they were. To be honest, I thought they were practising Tai Chi.”
“It is a very popular form of yoga that is focused on transitioning a person mentally and physically through the grieving process,” says Habiba. “A teacher called Saumyah Janani is credited in creating it.”
Her shadow has clouded over the muted reflections that have gathered in the glass of a framed photo of Suraj, who drowned in the Ganges when he was thirteen.
“She claims to have grown up in Kashi, but nobody here remembers her,” snipes Jannat.
“Now she is moving into politics,” says Gourab. “There is no escape from the bloody woman.”
Habiba bends down and whispers to Mahbub: “Go upstairs to your room and play. Do not look at things floating past in the river. Don't point your telescope at the sun, or into any windows.”
“Where am I supposed to point it?” protests the boy as he gets to his feet.
“It is suddenly a very popular form of yoga all across the world,” says Habiba. “An American couple, from California – Kenneth and Sheila Banda – have turned it into an international business.”
“Let the Burning Ghat be for funerals and let them take their grief elsewhere,” says Gourab. “It is all a performance anyway.”
Mahbub has come to a rest halfway up the stairs. He sits with his face pushed partway through the balusters, making lazy faces.
“The genie left last year,” says Jannat. “First amma pretended it was still there. She scrimped money to buy us small gifts. After it all came out, she said it is like a hermit crab. When it gets too big it goes looking for a new shell. I know the truth. No genie gets fat on the small wishes amma used to make. A man with a gilded music box stood in the alleyway outside her window, three nights in a row. He lured the genie away with him. We sold the empty lamp to pay for her medical bills. There was some residual magic still inside.”
“Nani should have used the genie to get better,” says Mahbub who sits at the centre of a circle of toy cars.
“Mahbub, please, we are talking,” says Habiba.
Jannat, now in the role of auntie, leans forward in her chair towards the boy
“If your wishes are too selfish or too big, then they start to rot away your soul until there is nothing left. When nani wished for a bit more life, it was so she could do something good for her family, like when she helped you with your violin recital. When she died, her soul was still pure.”
None of us have noticed Ranjeet enter the room. Suddenly he is standing there in his grey suit.
“I have solved our problem with the grief tourists,” he announces. “Angela is going to clear the way for us, ahead of the funeral procession.”
“This is the African girl I have been seeing around. Where is she from?” inquires Jannat.
“She is American, from Detroit. She used to be in the marines. Now she works for a foreign telephone company. They have her managing one of the legitimate call centres. When she tells people to get out the way, they obey her without question. It is something in the tone of her voice that tells you, you do not want to mess with her.”
“Americans,” says Jannat, shaking her head over her tea.
“I do not like the idea of somebody going ahead of Deepa, shouting,” says Habiba.
“Well, we must do something,” says Ranjeet. “This is the best solution I can dream up.”
“If any of the grief tourists try to get involved and make themselves a part of it, then I will slap them in their face,” says Jannat.
“You will do no such thing. You will be dignified,” says Habiba. For a moment it is as if Deepa has be reincarnated in the body of her daughter.
“They would like it anyway, if you slapped them,” says Ranjeet.
Habiba and me are on the roof, where we have taken shelter from the sun behind the brick battlement that was built by Gourab and Ranjeet. Up here, I can get a better view of the white cage on the nearby rooftop. It is completely empty. It's purpose is a mystery.
I have reached that state of being stoned where shadows become fascinating. I am watching the pinched thumb and fingers of Habiba's right hand idly massaging the fabric of one of the sarees that are draped over the low wall. At her side, a half-brick anchors the garment in place. The trapped cloth billows slightly in the wind as she reminisces:
“Deepa always wore such nice clothes. She made them all herself. Until a few years ago, she even dyed the materials.”
“You should take some for yourself.”
“No, they will all go to the poor. That was her wish.”
She hands me the joint. I pinch it between my finger and my thumb, the same way she pinched the red/orange silk of her mother's robe.
“When Suraj died it destabilised the rest of us,” she says. “He was the oldest boy, the leader. After he drowned in the river, none of us knew how to step into that role. I don't think we as a family have ever recovered from his death.”
I offer her back the joint but she waves it away, glassy eyed, an involuntary smile creeping in from the nearside of her mouth.
“When you gave Jannat the flowers earlier, I was trying so hard not to laugh. They sold you a bridal bouquet. The combined perfumes are supposed to have a calming effect on the bride on her wedding day, if she is pure and nervous about what is to come in the bedroom.”
“There weren't that many left when I got there, I'm sorry.”
“It is okay. Jannat will probably make you pay somehow.”
She takes back the joint, allowing it to smoulder to one side of her.
“In her last weeks, Deepa became very frank about sex. I don't think she was aware that she was doing it. I had to protect the others from hearing her. One time, I had to put my hands over Mahbub's ears. She told me that she would not wish baba's penis on any woman.”
“It was too small? Or too big?”
“She said that it was normal sized, but the head was like a large, flat mushroom. It was like pushing in an umbrella.”
She takes a drag on the joint. The light breeze blows away a crumb of salt and pepper ash, sending it tumbling across the stone roof, scattering embers.
“It's silly,” she says, her words invisible, trailing her exhalation.
The smoke, now caught on the wind is carried towards the river, where a grey haze rising over the rooftops signals that a cremation is underway.