The day of Ratna’s funeral (Concluding Part 2)

The hearse that was waiting outside the Home was the black city van that we had used to bring Ratna’s body back from the hospital just a couple of days ago.  The driver was the same driver and now there was an attendant with him.  Kaleem, who had been present at the funeral Mass, got the rickshaw ready to drive us to the cemetery.  But I decided I wanted to ride with Sister Agata and the children with Ratna’s body in the van.  I climbed in and the van attendant closed the back door.  We were all jammed inside and the children were amazingly happy.  

Sister Agata led them in several songs, one of them, Ratna’s favorite, “When You’re Happy.”  I found myself singing along too and going through the various motions, “When you’re happy and you know it, stamp your feet.  When you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…”  Even I felt it was an odd thing to be doing inside a Bengaluru city death van and I realized this was definitely some kind of historic moment—a spiritual breakthrough of some sort, maybe. But my panic would not dissolve entirely.

At the cemetery, we walked through un-mowed grass which came up to the tops of some of the children’s heads.  The goats used for eating up the grass had not visited this side of the cemetery for a good long time. When they saw the groups of children tramping along purposefully, the goats began to bleat and they came scampering towards us.  This delighted the children who reached out to pet them.

The closer I got to the open grave, the dizzier I became.  I was the first one standing at the edge of the dug out earth.  I could see, immediately, that the hole was not big enough.  The little casket was not going to fit.  Right away I had the angry thought that these sorts of mistakes happen more frequently than not in India.  Idiots, I puttered aloud!  Then I had to forgive myself for such hateful thinking.

Soon the nuns arrived with Kaleem and they understood my dismay.  How would the whole thing be rectified?  Meantime, Ratna’s body was in its fourth day out of the morgue refrigerator in the unrelenting heat of Bengaluru.  I shudder at the thought.  She must be buried quickly.

In those days we still did not have cell phones so Kaleem was sent to find a grave digger or someone in charge.  After standing in the heat long enough to realize there was no drinking water or toilet facilities, I just sighed.  Amazingly Kaleem returned with two men who both had shovels and the rest of the grave was dug out after a few trips back and forth to the van to see the size of the coffin again.

These same men carried the coffin through the sharp, scraggily grass and the goats bleated as if they were also sad.  By now the children had lost their zip and they were silent as the coffin was lowered into the shallow grave and the priest murmured prayers that I, for one, could not hear.

……to be continued in Final Part of Ratna Series.