A death in India
McGowan, Jo
JO McGOWAN A DEATH IN INDIA Priestcraft & usurers Sat Pal is an office assistant in the school where I work here in India. He has an eighth-grade education and limited intelligence. When his...
...As the oldest man in his extended family, he makes most of the major decisions and bears whatever financial burdens occur...
...The Hindu priest to whom Sat Pal had gone to get instructions for the rituals had told him that Jai Prakash's death had occurred at a most inauspicious time...
...It is not a new tactic for making money...
...Sat Pal was then busy arranging the ceremonies that mark the end of the thirteen-day mourning period...
...His condition then deteriorated until, now desperate, Sat Pal again appealed to me for help...
...By day thirteen, however, the vultures have moved in...
...We pointed out that the priests only tried such stunts with people like him: when my husband's father died, no one had even mentioned beds, cloth, or carpets...
...Now Sat Pal has a bigger debt than ever, plus two more children to bring up...
...When his brother died two weeks ago, we all knew how difficult his life would now become...
...This is what the priest told me...
...He was also newly responsible for his niece and nephew, as Jai Prakash's young widow, just twenty-two years old, had announced her plans to return to her parents (presumably to remarry), leaving the children with Sat Pal...
...We told Sat Pal that a God so unkind as to take five people from one family would hardly be appeased by gifts made to a ravenous priest...
...the rest, no doubt, came from the local usurer, who charges a modest 110 percent...
...And the meek shall inherit the earth.t the earth...
...Many of us took turns trying to reason with him...
...The total bill would come to at least 5,000 rupees, almost double Sat Pal's monthly income...
...I was irritated (doctor shopping is an old pattern of Sat Pal's), but called my friend again who arranged a new round of ultrasounds, x-rays, and drug therapy...
...I was out of town when it happened, and by the time I returned, the funeral was over...
...His brother had been ill for some time before death and a doctor friend and I had helped Sat Pal get medical care for him...
...Now the expenses will be double or triple...
...This one was no exception...
...Funerals are simple and inexpensive, since there is no time to make elaborate arrangements...
...In the end, Sat Pal did as the priest told him to do...
...Sat Pal listened carefully to everything we said, agreed, then shook his head in resignation: "What can I do...
...Jessica Mitford made her name with The American Way of Death, an expose of the funeral industry in the United States which detailed the lengths to which undertakers would go to lure mourners to spend on caskets, cemetery plots, and other funeral necessities...
...Unscrupulous people in every culture take advantage of families made weak and vulnerable by grief...
...He died at such a dangerous time, didi," he told me...
...When I met Sat Pal to express my condolences, he was not only grief-stricken at the loss of his brother, but also distracted with worry about how to meet the new expenses of the thirteen-day ceremonies...
...There, they would also have to provide a meal for eleven other Hindu priests...
...Here in India, because of the hot climate and the scarcity of embalming, the body is cremated within twenty-four hours of death...
...He had borrowed heavily to pay for Jai Prakash's treatment, and the funeral expenses had put him further into debt...
...As his employer, I am often involved in his family crises...
...Then Sat Pal showed me the list of things he had to buy: a bed, a set of sheets, a rug, a pair of shoes, five meters of cloth, various kitchen utensils, clarified butter, almonds, flowers, and wood from a mango tree...
...It is only with poor, uneducated people, those who can ill afford any extra expenses, that such callous games are played...
...Panchma laga hai," he said, meaning that unless Sat Pal followed his orders precisely, four more people in the family would die as well...
...Jai Prakash was finally admitted to the hospital but by then it was too late...
...In spite of the doctor's best efforts, he died just two days later...
...In addition, five family members would have to travel to the holy city of Haridwar, on the banks of the Ganges, an hour and a half away, to conduct the ceremonies...
...Some of the money he borrowed from me...
...And now he was expected to purchase his brother's salvation and his family's safety by shopping for the priest...
...Jai Prakash was improving rapidly when his in-laws arrived on the scene and insisted on taking him to another doctor and starting a whole new treatment...
Vol. 130 • August 2003 • No. 14
