A Life Between Pongal and Mortuary Tag

Mortuary...such a dreaded word and place. From body to soul. From colour to wall. From upper class to lower class. From nurse to doctor. From the Sandwich seller to the ambulance driver. From watchman to clark. Every mortuary looks alike. Feels alike.

Inside it, 40 massive drawers, 40 dead bodies lying as if they had finally found peace in this place. Why wouldn't they? Here they enjoy full AC at a steady 16 degrees. No discrimination between class, creed, religion. All dead are equal here. And all corpse have a living companion - Ismile Anna, because he always smiles.

"But how did Ismile Anna become your son-in-law? I asked Hawaldar.

Hawaldar Ganpat replied, “See, talkative Raju tea seller feeds him daily with tea and bun. I share my clothes with him. Sweeper Amarjeet does share his tiny room. Nurse Sheetal Ben gives him love and scold like a sister. Doctor Shambhu manages his expense so in our world of abandoned, he became our son-in-law, no?"

"But Ismail seems Muslim, no?" I demanded.

Raju debated, "Sir, we are uneducated people, and we don't understand these Muslim-Hindu. For poor people like us, poverty itself is a religion.”

I felt embarrassed. I quickly changed the topic: "The mortuary is decorated and lit! Why?"

“Ismail loved his wife Lalita and Lalita loved Pongal.”

“But Pongal passed last month!, I exclaimed.
Raju winked, “Arre, every day Ismail anna celebrate Pongal for his wife and all of us eat the dish like kings.” All slurped in unison.

Sheetal Ben voiced, “Look at Ismail Anna, how much he loves his wife and check my drunkard husband. Saala runs after other women, and beats me.”

Hawaldar Ganpat intervened, “Just command Ben, I’ll put him behind the bar. These days men & women are equal.”
Sheetal replied painfully, “Then where will me and my daughter live? I want my daughter out of this filthy life. I want her to do MBA. They say an MBA gets you a car and a flat.”

Raju joked, “If I had a child, I would have made him double BAM.”
All laughed except Amarjeet. He debated, “But our society is rotten. If she gradutes, dowry will be higher. Bigger degree, bigger dowry.”
I reminded him, “Dowry is a crime.”
Hawaldar Ganpat scoffed, “Crime??? The Law is looser, society always wins.”
Sheetal Ben declared, “I am happy that Ismail anna has no daughter. He would have died worrying like us.”

I looked around, asked, “Where is Lalita, does she work somewhere else?”

Teary eyes, Sheetal replied, “Ismail Anna came years ago searching for Lalita. Even now he seems to search for her in every corpse. His life stopped on that Pongal day.”
Raju laughed proudly, “Everyone’s life should freeze like that - Everybody should have a life like Ismail’s and a wife like Lalita’s.
Just then, a name echoes from hospital speakers: ANSHUMAN SINHA, Dead body Token Number 21.” I get up to collect my wife Sarita’s dead body.
But my eyes fall on the paper tag tied to her toe. In broken English, scribbled in pencil, it reads-
LALITAA.