And so it came to pass, that dressed in a bright red sari with a purple blouse that matched my purple earrings and my purple sandals, I arrived in Bengaluru within four hours of Sister Agata’s call. At Saint John’s Hospital I was directed to a tiny, less-than-broom-closet-size room. There I was handed a big black book by a male uniformed security guard. I was thinking this is like the big black book of childhood stories, the one that Saint Peter was supposedly going to consult when I appeared at the gates of Heaven. He was going to check the list inside it and see if a place had been reserved for me to stay; or if I had to go!
(I knew Saint Peter’s big black book didn’t have me listed as a shareholder in Paradise. I knew I’d never be allowed to stay. The Roman Catholic priest who made me do sex to him in the sacristy, in his bed, in his car, in his summer cottage, in hotel rooms, in the woods… he had already told me I would go to Hell. He said I was a sinner. I was nine when he first noticed my peach-colored angora sweater. I was 17 when he paid for the abortion… It’s okay! I ran away when I was 18. I’ve been running ever since.)
The uniformed, security-guard morgue attendant, oblivious to my racing thoughts and panic, opened the Saint John’s Hospital Death Book to the page with Ratna’s name printed on a line underneath the word, “Deceased”. Beside her name, under the word, “Claimant”, I wrote my own name, slowly, deliberately, aware of how fleeting, and often disturbingly purposeless, our lives can be. Maybe God would change my destiny and upgrade my position, because of my name so dutifully and artistically scripted beside the glowing Ratna’s.
When The Death Book was stamped, dated, and then closed and returned to its ominous shelf, the man in the uniform told me to follow him. He was smiling when he said, “It’s almost over, Madam.” We turned a couple of corners and went through a doorway. Then he stopped in front of what looked like a large, white restaurant refrigerator—about seven feet high and five feet wide, with two handles on each side.
“Step aside,” the man said as he pulled on the right-side handle and slowly slid the door fully open. I peeked inside; and then, in front of me, I saw the interior of what was actually a refrigerator with three deep shelves made of steel wires coated in white rubbery plastic. The top shelf and the bottom shelf were empty. But on the middle shelf there was what could have been a large leg of lamb covered with a white sheet. I kept on staring into the refrigerator waiting for that leg of lamb to be a leg of lamb.
That’s when the cold hit me. Icy, unnatural, more like the air inside a freezer; but it was not coming from inside the refrigerator, it was permeating the whole room; I was so cold I couldn’t even shiver. I hunched my shoulders up inside the palu of my sari and clamped my jaws shut.
I watched as the uniformed guard slowly slid out the middle shelf, handling it like a smooth-rolling bureau drawer. Quickly, as though he was a magician about to expose the missing rabbit, he removed the perma-press sheet from the leg of lamb. Holy Little Ratna appeared. She was coiled in a fetal position, dressed in black spandex slacks, a red T-shirt with white piping at the collar and short sleeves, and white cotton ankle socks. She appeared to be fast asleep.
It troubled me that she did not look the least bit dead. As I stood there staring at her closed eyelids, I expected them to roll open. I expected her pretty lips to twitch, and her mouth to suddenly burst into a huge smile. I stood all alone with her like that for a good long time. The attendant had left. The invisible ice covered me with a second coat. Now I was the one who had become paralyzed. Ratna looked so flexible, so warm.
Soon there came the sound of rolling wheels (more rolling wheels! In sickness and in health, until death do us part, they are there!) and the attendant’s footsteps. He was pushing a gurney in front of him. With remarkable grace, he lifted Ratna off the shelf and placed her on the black-vinyl-covered surface of the carriage. I walked the length of another corridor behind him, amazed that my icicle body could actually move. When we came to an elevator, we got on it, and he must have pushed a button to get us to the ground floor. But I only remember staring at Ratna, waiting for her to wake up.
She, who was the bringer of light to the Jyothi Seva Home, was like the great Himalayan Saint from Badrinath I met in Rishikesh one winter whose name was Ever-Smiling Soul. In his company, we only laughed. Life, all of it, was a huge joke. Suddenly, I remembered his thought-transmission teaching on impermanence and I found that even this, this walking beside the body trolley at Saint John’s Hospital was hilarious. This time I let the tears fall.
To the powers that be in Bengaluru, to those that monitor the paperwork of death, and to their unseen, unbounded-by-time masters, I knew that the signing of my name inside the morgue book meant that I was now in charge of Ratna’s body. I was singularly responsible for it until I delivered it to the Jyothi Seva Home where it would again become the property of the Venkateshpuram Franciscan Sisters, Servants of the Cross.
Once off the elevator we go a bit further until we come to a large-swing-open double door. The security-guard attendant pushes the trolley through the door and up alongside another massage-type table, the same height as the gurney. Deftly he lifts Ratna’s body onto what turns out to be the “viewing” table where family and closest friends, or those picking up the body, like me, can spend some private time with the corpse. The “viewing” table is also padded and covered in black vinyl.
“You can wash and dress the body,” the attendant announces, pointing to a sink with soap, sponges, towels, and a bucket on a shelf beside it. “Someone will come and give you further instructions,” he says as he turns to go. Then he pushes the body trolley through the swinging doors, and I am all alone except for the Holy Ghost of Ratna.
Well, maybe not entirely alone with her, as the room is dominated by a giant white marble-like cross that rises nearly to the ceiling. The cross is empty. But, at the foot of the cross a weeping Mary, Mother of Jesus, sits, holding her dead son in her arms. Perhaps this sculpture was placed here to remind us that we are not alone in our grief. But, the fact is, we are.
After waiting quite awhile, no one comes to give me any instructions, so I soap up the sponge and rub it gently over the face and hands of the body. I don’t want to disturb whatever it is that might be disturbed if I am too rough. But it is only when I begin rinsing off the hands that I realize Ratna, Holy Little Ratna, is no longer stiff!
For eight years she was like a plastic doll that could not bend. But suddenly she is loose and feathery. I move her fingers to prove to myself that what I am witnessing is actually happening. I bend her legs, her arms; what is the meaning of this corporeal flexibility at a time when rigor mortis should be setting in?
As I dry her face and hands with a towel I wonder if perhaps Ratna has not entirely left her physical sheath and that she is aware along with me in this tandem instantaneity that flexibility is her new destiny, and that the stiffness she was doomed to live with, up until death, has been cast off. Right now she is, perhaps, preparing her new life as: The Woman who has the power to create an eye lotion which can extend one’s vision.
Before long, Sister Agata arrives with the driver of the black city hearse that will carry us back to Venkateshpurm and the Jyothi Seva Home. For the time being, until we buy a coffin, Ratna is wrapped up in a grey wool blanket and is being carried in Sister Agata’s arms. The nun is not crying and like me she probably does not feel that Ratna is dead.
Once outside the morgue entrance of Saint John’s, the air is thick with the jasmine-like scent of Rain Tree flowers. I reel a bit from the freshness. I did not realize how claustrophobic the atmosphere inside had been. I am happy to climb in through the tail-gate entrance of the hearse and settle myself across from Sister Agata on one of the built-in benches along both sides of the vehicle.
The driver slams the door shut and gets into the front seat, separated from us by wire mesh. As we ride through the streets, heading towards Joythi Seva, Sister Agata asks me to go out later in the evening—after I’ve had tea— go out and buy a child’s coffin. I hear myself agree. After all, I still can’t refuse a nun’s request.
Yes! I have seen—and felt—at least one morgue in the not-so-distant past. But there are many others I remember, like images from certain films. More on that later…..
………to be continued in next instalment of Terry’s Words.
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