Dirge

To get to one of the Internet Cafes here, you can take the road just past the hospital, pass the graveyard and continue through a neighborhood up a hill to Gokulam Road. Today the street outside the graveyard had many bicycles and motor bikes and many of the graves had groups of men or families sitting on them and people were milling around in the street - men with men - and women with women. Since the people were all over the graveyard I thought perhaps it was some sort of memorial for the dead rather than a specific person's funeral. The street itself had many women walking towards me talking to each other - some were wearing their good saree - some may not have a good saree. None of them looked sad or bereaved which added to my feeling that it was not a funeral.

I started up the hill with the houses on both sides of the narrow street and about 2 blocks up the people walking towards me thinned out and up ahead about 300 meters the entire street was filled from one house to the other with men coming towards me, several of them in the front were playing drums. Funeral. I parked my motor bike next to a house and tried to disappear by standing in the doorway. When they went by the men all stared at me - an angry stare - even the men banging drums. What did they want? I had gotten out of the street before they arrived, was not on my bike, respectfully still and solemn, modestly wearing a long skirt, long sleeves, a scarf and a hat, waiting for them to pass.

Behind the drummers were a mob of men carrying a bier covered with flowers. Sitting on the bier was a man in his sixties, sitting cross legged, his legs visible from the knees down, white and yellow silk draped across his chest, head hanging loose to the side, hands swaying off the bier and it ran through me with a shiver - dead but propped up - and not yet in rigor mortus. The men carrying his bier also did not look bereaved but angry and the bier and the departed were being jostled such that I knew he must have been tied on under his clothes or he would have fallen off in from of me.

Once the men passed, women came - all together with no men and talking to each other. In all over a thousand people were at the graveyard and in this procession. After they had all passed, I got on my motor bike and drove away.

Later a local man told me that after the procession passed me they had gone past the graveyard and up to the hospital and made a lot of noise and got into a brawl with some people at the hospital because they believed that the hospital's poor care was responsible for the man's death. During this, he said, the body was left to fend for itself. Then the crowd went back to the graveyard.