Breaking Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

things like this. All this work, all this energy, when the whole world’s going mad. You should be very proud.”
    â€œThank you,” I said, my ears going hot. I felt suddenly ashamed to be alive in front of her, despite her kindness.
    She took a crumpled handkerchief from her handbag and wiped her nose. “The person who killed my daughter, that person was unkind to her. Horrible to her. I don’t know … whatever animal her body has become, I don’t know what it feels. If it’s walking, eating, maybe it’ll feel the flames. I won’t be that unkind. I won’t, in my daughter’s honour. That man can keep the body, or whatever it is now. You’ll tell the police?”
    â€œI will. They’ll call you and probably ask if you identified her. You’ll probably have to talk to your lawyer and get a death certificate. But I’ll tell them.”
    I smiled, though she didn’t look at me, instead staring straight ahead through the windshield. “Thank you, Paromita. For everything you’ve done, are doing, for me, and for my daughter.”
    I nodded, but found myself too choked up on my words to reply at first. I barely managed to say “You’re welcome” before she took her handbag and got out of the car. I’ve talked to her a few times on the phone since, to organize a meeting with her lawyer and the police, but that was the last time I saw her.

4. Notes on Death
    I saw Guru Yama and his wife one last time at Kalighat. I went there to tell him he had the mother’s consent to keep the body. I had ad hoc legal papers from her lawyer giving the guru “official” custody of the walking cadaver. The guru thanked me, but his enthusiasm had turned to sadness, because his wife was on the verge of falling apart. She was attracting rats and other vermin into the temple, and dangerously close to liquefying. “I do have to burn her,” the Guru told me, dishevelled and weak, scratching at his bandages.
    â€œYou can give her to the hospitals, the research institutes, if you want to keep her from the police,” I said. “They can put her in cold storage.”
    He shook his head. “No, Miss Sen. Maybe if she was younger. The dead have short lives. This I know now. She would suffer a lot if they tried to freeze her now.” He had decided. Perhaps because of his meeting with the mother. Perhaps not.
    He used her rope leash to lead her from the altar to a hired lorry. By now, she was barely able to walk, waddling slowly and leaving a trail of dark brown droplets that her garlands dragged into smears. Men with mops swept the trail away as she was led across the courtyard. The walk took half an hour. The guru draped a cloth over her face so all the people they passed didn’t panic her. Dragging her flower garlands, she was lifted into the back of the lorry in a large blanket, five sweating men heaving at its sides and rolling her in with no dignity. I followed the lorry to the Garia crematorium.
    I waited in the crematorium’s cold, shadowy halls as the guru’s wife was taken in for incineration.
    The worst thing I have ever heard in my life was the brief scream that rang out through the crematorium, sharp and human, before being lost in the hum of the ovens. I went outside to find a dog barking furiously in the courtyard, drool flying into the dirt. I leaned against the yellow walls of the building and waited.
    The guru emerged and thanked me again.
    â€œThat scream—was that her?” I asked.
    He nodded. “It’s good. It’s good that her mother wasn’t here.” I saw his hands shaking like the mother’s had.
    â€œWhat’ll you do now?” I asked.
    â€œI’ll find more of the dead who need my help. Other people want to give me their dead, to take care of, to speak to in my visions. I have followers. I’ll never let one of the dead down like this again. One day, Miss