Reporter’s notebook

They say there can be no smoke without a pyre; but death in its wake always doesn’t bring melancholy and gloom, cliched phrases like "pall of gloom" notwithstanding. There is a flip side that conforms to the lofty thought that the ones with a real sense of humour are those who can smile at a corpse.

It was one of those languorous afternoons and I had just started biting into a reporter’s copy as I heard the familiar sound of a funeral band. The mourners, who looked famished alright — and they must have been carrying the body for a long distance — offloaded the body on to the ground for the ritualistic minute’s rest. And then, instead of marching towards the crematorium, they launched themselves straight into an adjacent canteen. For good or for worse, the corpse was a mute witness to the assault on its non-existent sensitivity, as the mourners braced themselves for the ensuing rites with liberal helpings of samosas and steaming cuppas. Replenished, they then set out for the cremation. For the journalist in me, this was food for thought and I quickly fine-tuned my sensibilities with the idea that somewhere down the line, emotions had to be blended with expediencies.

I’ve been a student of science and I could clearly see that death, which could unmask its different faces and dimensions, was something akin to Einstein’s intriguing time-space continuum. But I had not bargained for death as an occasion to celebrate. This jarring piece of testimony came to the fore on another afternoon when a posse of men in khaki descended on the place asking all and sundry around to close shop. Within a few minutes, the place wore the deserted and funeral look it eminently deserved. But even in the midst of this eerie calm, the truth came out so resonantly. A long-winding procession appeared in sight and, as it drew closer, I could also hear the strains of a new film song.

The mist cleared when I realised it was not a baraat but a funeral procession where the mourners seemed to pay their obeisance with a weird candour. My journalistic instincts egged me to make inquiries and what I found left me utterly non-plussed. A notorious criminal had died and his die-hard fans thought that the best tribute they could pay him was by bursting a garland of crackers. I also found that the length of the garland was commensurate with the status a criminal would enjoy in the netherworld. Even the staccato blast was less shattering than this idea of paying homage. After all, don’t they salute martyrs with gunshots, I reasoned.

But philosophically speaking, the final destination is some kind of a reward in this strife-torn world — peace. As one who must play with words often, I now don’t think that the phrase "rest in peace" is cliched.