Short Story: Lodger at the Death Hotel

Ria Chowdhury narrates a captivating tale about the death hotels in Kashi and the mysterious ways in which it connects people.

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This piece is available for free reading this week

“Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”

Throughout school, college, and even now at university, I was led to believe that I am a high-performing individual. Well, academically and Co-curricular activities-wise, with good communication. However, none of these landed me in any goddamn internship, while all my classmates did. Well, not just me, Akshay, and I couldn’t get through any! He is a good friend and a disgustingly well-read person, but he comes from a very privileged background, and I believe that the rich need not worry!

Not landing an internship didn’t feel like a failure for much longer. Instead, it turned out to be an unusual and inexplicable experience of my life. I would also hesitate to call it an experience, as it involves a real human being. Are human beings an experience for each other? Can we call it that? Does it deem the value or increase it? A trip can be an experience, but a person you aren’t going to meet again, an experience?

*-*-*

After the class on Women’s Lit ended, I went up to Akshay and asked, “So what are your plans when everyone else starts their internships?”

“I am actually going to read a lot and volunteer at this NGO that my mother is associated with.” He said. “Hey! You can join too! In case you aren’t doing anything better,” he said.

I said, “Okay! I will think about it”. I am obviously going to forget about it. Working in an NGO is not something I had planned.

I went back to my hostel room, and one phone call with my mother changed it! She was first furious that I landed nowhere in the internship game, and then she was whatever more superlative comes after furious when I told her that I am not considering the NGO thing.

I texted Akshay later at night, asking if he could let me know more about the volunteer thing because it would be fun to be involved in something other than reading and writing.

He called me up and explained pretty much everything, and I decided to give it a shot.

*-*-*

The NGO works for elderly people who do not have family or acquaintances to take care of them. This involved working in association with several other NGO or, health care homes, and hospitals. Interestingly, they were also working with Hospices. Interesting because it included the elderly at Mukti Bhawan, the Death Hotel of Banaras.

“Mukti Bhawan?” – I asked one of the managers who was giving us the brief on my first day.

“Yes!” he replied, “We work with them in their management. People staying in Mukti Bhawan generally do not need much because they already have family members who have been staying along or are aware of them. But we make a weekly check of people who need to be withdrawn, people who have no one and need help with their rent, food, cooking, etc!”

Akshay and I were given duties together every alternate week.

After the session, I asked him, “Hey! You know more about Mukti Bhawan?”

He said, “Yes, but just read on it…okay? And then you’ll find it amusing next weekend?”

*-*-*

AMUSING? What would be amusing about a Hospice?

I started reading about it. Kashi Labh Mukti Bhawan, also known as Moksha Bhawan, operates on a subscription to death. Residents are waiting for their death. I was amused, but what is not amusing about this city anyway?

People are to stay there for 15 days, waiting for their death, and if they don’t die till then, they are to leave, they can come back again if they feel it’s now time…to DIE!

Residents are required to pay 20 INR specifically for electricity charges, but they may also choose not to pay depending on their financial situation. They are also pretty much on their own. They are given a gas stove, and they can cook for themselves, or anybody in the family taking care of them usually cooks for them. For those seeking moksha, it is a hotspot! People who really believe that dying in Kashi will get them Moksh Labh really care about it.

Does this desire come from the Love for one’s life? Or exhaustion of it?

*-*-*

On our first day, we all met at the NGO office first and then set out on our respective duties. On our way to Mukti Bhawan, in the tuk-tuk ride, I asked Akshay, “What is your opinion on Mukti Bhawan, I mean, as a concept?”

I was expecting an intellectual answer, but he said, “You know…not everything needs an opinion. There are certain things to be left on their own; people believe and faith, when it’s not weaponised, can simply be accepted. Kashi and its relationship with Death and Life are all residing in people’s faith…let it be?”- he said.

I was not satisfied; I think I made faces at him (In my mind) and shut my curious mouth till the end. In the few conversations that I had with Akshay; he always came through to me as an intellectual person who always valued his opinion as well as others’. Yet, in Kashi, he surrendered to certain things. Never trying to rationalise. Once, some of our classmates went to the Ghats to watch the Evening Ganga Arti, and his eyes sparkled. At the end, he said, “There are very few things that make me silent, like…from within, perhaps the Ganga Arti is one of them”. In the next sentence, perhaps to counterbalance, he said, “I am an atheist”.

Akshay wasn’t always contradicted. Or maybe he wasn’t at that point. I felt he was his truth. Rationality does not dissolve wonder.

After reaching the Mukti Bhawan, we shared a few words with the person in charge, and he showed us around Most of the rooms were full, as I passed the doorway of each room, a faint tremor struck my heart…these are the people, hoping there won’t be a tomorrow and they would die in the embrace of Kashi…and people out these walls, we are trying and fighting desperately to live one more day, one more hour!

Some people were sick, some were not. In the second last room we stood in front of, there was an old lady, bent into a crooked hunch, wrapped in a white sari. She was alone, murmuring into the air, as if speaking to the emptiness of the room. Her words had a direction. With a tender speed, it was reaching someone, someone, invisible.

Akshay moved on with the manager, but I couldn’t. Something in that moment held me. Akshay tugged at my hand, pulling me away from the doorway, but my eyes and mind were transfixed on her as long as I could see. A fragile and uncanny intimacy between the woman and who?

“Ugghh! Why do you have to choose not to be curious at odd moments?”- I said, annoyingly.

I asked the manager about the woman, and he said, “Wo Vimla Maa hain, Baba ka sabse khaas, pyari hone se pehle hi pyaari hogyi hain…” (That is Vimla Maa; she is the most loved child of God even before becoming beloved.)

While walking us down, he explains that Vimla Maa has a week left here at Mukti Bhawan, her daughter left her here and doesn’t visit. She is in a disoriented mental state and talks randomly to Nothing. “Wo aapne Bhagwan se batein karti rehti hain…Mahadev toh sabke khaas hain, unke thode zyada hain, unko Bhole baba dikhte hain…agar saubhagya hua toh khabhi unki kahaniya sunna, Bhole baba k bare mein aise baatein karti hain jaise ki mil kar ayi ho, ya milne jaani wali ho…” (She talks to her God…Mahadev is everyone’s own in this city, but she is special to Him. She talks about Him in a way as if she had just met Him), he said with a gleeful smile on his face.

I didn’t misinterpret the glee of the manager! It’s only in this city that people share a personal relationship with God Shiva. Some through faith, and some, like Vimla Maa, through conditioning, some through illness (maybe).

The entire day, my thoughts kept circling back to her. It’s a little inexplicable. There was something about that moment, about that visual that made a mark in my mind, in my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and could not let it go…

It was like building something out of smoke, like building a sculpture out of it. I texted Akshay quite a few times regarding this, which he clearly ignored. But his silence only deepened my obsession.

*-*-*

On our next visit, Akshay was late, and I was growing impatient. I kept walking to and fro and staring at the wall of the Bhawan that said “kashi Marnam Mukti” All I knew was that I was going to finish my task and then find that woman, Vimla Maa and talk to her.

I went in, and Akshay reached as well. We finished our regular task, that is, taking count and taking account of people who weren’t able to pay their bills and people who needed food. After that, we helped the management gather the resources and then managed the finances that were supplied from the NGO. After our routine work was over, I asked Akshay to wait for me at the Assi Ghat, and I would meet him in some time, as we had plans of going to a nearby Bookshop and browsing, as it was something we both would enjoy.

He said before leaving, “I know you are going to find that woman and ask her a lot of questions”

“No, I won’t”, I replied with a frown and mock annoyance.

He smiled with a softened tone this time and said, “You know, how you get all curious, but please don’t treat her like your project, some things are better left alone…”

I waved him bye…

Vimla Maa was not in her room. After asking around, I realised she was sitting at the ghat. I followed. I found her sitting and talking to the air again. Very silently.

I lowered myself very gently beside her, making sure I was not intruding. She looked at me and smiled. I finally gathered the courage to ask her, “Aap kaise ho?” (How are you?)

“Jaise isne rakhha hain…” (As He has kept me), she murmured and pointed out at the stairs beside her, where there was no one. Then, very naturally pausing the conversation, she resumed her stare back at nothing.

I reached for her hand gently and called her, “Vimla Maa…who are you talking to?”

Without any hesitation, she said, “To Mahadev”. Her voice was steady and her eyes bright. She was only describing the obvious. No metaphor, no delusion. It was as if her entire existence was an illness and a prayer. At the same time.

“Mahadev comes to me in many ways”, she continued while gazing at something I couldn’t see. “Sometimes he is my Baba.” Her hands softened like a child’s. “He scolds me when I forget my prayers, but he also feeds me when I am hungry. He brings me jaggery sometimes… here, right here.” She patted her lap. Then she turned maternal, “He is my child. My little boy, I braid his hair and scold him for sitting idle…, and he laughs… that laugh is like the conch at the temple gates. Do you know that sound?”

It might be a story. It might be the words of faith, I didn’t know anymore. I do not know if it was her conviction or delusion!

She turned suddenly, cracked lips curling into the faintest smile.
“Vishwas nahi hai?” (You don’t believe me?)

I couldn’t say anything. She smiled, looked at the river and said, “One day you will see Him. You will see him when you need to.”

The wind carried away her words…I felt something unseen but undeniable.

*-*-*

It was time for me to head back, and on my way, I called Akshay and told him the entire thing. “Do you think she needs help? Should we do something for her?” I asked him.

“She might be schizophrenic!” Akshay said very casually, as if name-dropping mental illnesses were just a chill thing to do! He also started explaining to me some articles he had read on Religion and Schizophrenia.

I hung up. Akshay is the person you go to when you want a logical and accurate explanation.

I decided to sit there at Assi Ghat for a while. I couldn’t stop thinking about Vimla Devi. What was she thinking? I tried approaching it from a philosophical and critical angle, but I was so drawn to her that I couldn’t theorise her.

When did her world begin to shift into the dimensions of Gods? Was there ever a time when she was anchored in Reality? Or has she always been meandering through her make-belief world?

Sometimes, the truth is simpler and more dangerous.

After a while, I heard Akshay’s voice cutting through my reverie…

“I knew you would be here!” He spoke. I was sitting at the tea stall where we usually sat, so it wasn’t a hard guess for him.

“Let it out! Tell me whatever you feel like,” he said. I could not say anything. I burst into tears.

For the next few hours, we sat there, and I sobbed while Akshay held my hand and sat beside me, steady. Very unlikely, but for a moment I felt I could take refuge in him. He wasn’t this very rational person.

That night, we walked aimlessly at the Ghats until dawn.

We held hands…

The ghats unfolded in those moments, in that night. The sounds all around faded, the city ceased being the city of pilgrimage, and instead turned into the song a sadhu was humming while he got engulfed in his intoxicated state. Stray dogs find food leftovers like people looking for moksha. Fading temple bells at a distance. No hawkers, only the sound of small waves of the river striking the ghats and moving back. On the right lay Harishchandra ghat, and on the left Manikarnika, burning bodies, burnt, telling silent stories of the purpose of death in Kashi. All my tears dried up like the ghats after monsoon breaks, and when Akshay kissed my forehead, my soul curled up in itself like the bodies shrink to rest upon the pyre.

While the city was turning its blank pages in me, I was writing my love for Akshay. Our hands lingered in silence. Death and dying witnessed that I held his hand tighter. The silence of Kashi, however, could not unfold the same way for Akshay.

I left it at that!

*-*-*

With sunrise, he left, and I sat there for a while. Children from their Sanskrit classes were returning. A pandit sat meditating at the top of one of the pillars. I took my phone out, opened my notepad and wrote-

The monster, as my friend, addresses him

Always notifying of the earliness of the oldest

The downpour of the poetry

The madman walks to and fro

In madness and not in starvation

All melts down on my desire to live

In times to come, the dying shall cease.

*-*-*

For the next few weeks during my visit to the Mukti Bhawan, Akshay didn’t visit. He was either busy with other NGO duties or simply uninterested in getting into what he called “attachments”. Human beings are weird. Some make humans out of experiences, and some treat a real human with flesh and blood as a fleeting experience.

I didn’t mind. I went on with my ritual to know more about Vimla Devi.

I made sure that I found her at the end of every day’s work. I stole a conversation with her, sometimes in her room, sometimes at the ghats and sometimes in the hallway. Sometimes she smiled at me, not exactly because she recognised me, but the way you smile at someone who matches the rhythm of your daily life.

Nothing she ever said made any sense to the rational mind. Once, she told me Mahadev was sitting with her a while ago, and they shared a bowl of puffed rice. Neither was there anybody’s presence, nor could I see the bowl. Once, she mentioned that she scolded her God while braiding his hair, speaking as if he were her child. Her hands were moving like making braids in the air.

Every time I listened to her, I couldn’t resist slipping away into her stories. The images she drew were always textured so that I could almost touch them. At the end, I always found myself believing in her, perhaps not in the literal sense, but in the way a child believes in the stories that are told to them. I become a child when she speaks about her relationship with her God.

Some days were unsettling. When I left the Bhawan after talking to her, getting into the hullabaloo of the city, and my Real life within the premises of the University seemed overwhelming and draining. Something about my life felt trivial.

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”- Virginia Woolf.

Everything in my life felt very, very trivial.

Her world was intoxicating. A place where Gods walked as fathers and mothers, a place where death did not wait at the end of one’s life but shared an intimate affair with life in a waiting room. Through reason, I was aware that her mind was disoriented or perhaps she was sick, but I couldn’t take my mind off the fact that she had access to something. Something greater, something I could not perhaps see through her.

Often, I wondered if I was too attached. Akshay’s voice would ring in my mind, “DON’T TREAT HER LIKE YOUR PROJECT”.

*-*-*

Before the last day of my duty, late at night, I got a call from the manager at Mukti Bhawan, the person in charge and our POC (Point of Contact) called me. It was unusual, since it was 2:30 am.

“Vimla Maa toh chal basi…” (Vimla Maa has passed away) He said. He had tried calling her daughter, but there was no response. So, the person decided to call me because my closeness with her didn’t go unnoticed by him.

I cut the call and sat on the bed, dazed, like I was dropped into the screens of a Wong Kar-wai movie. All blurred out and my grief painted in sickly neon street lights.

*-*-*

I called Akshay. After multiple trials, he picked up. I asked him to accompany me to Mukti Bhawan. He gave in and agreed.

On my way, I cried and cried, I don’t know why, she is no one to me, it hasn’t been very long since I shared a relationship with her. But she left me in a hollowed silence.

Reaching there, I saw that she was being prepared for her cremation. My eyes couldn’t move from her right palm, fallen like a dried leaf, letting go of her branch.

I watched her burn. I saw the smoke. The smoke rose like a sculpture. I only prayed. I do not know what I prayed to. But I prayed for her Moksha, whatever that is, as if I were going to borrow it from her. Selfishly. Selflessly.

To me, Moksha will be something that I borrowed from her. Perhaps just as an experience! In a person who was never fully there, never fully gone.

To me, she remains. Partly in memory, partly in apparition, partly in question. Is this what people desire? To live as an unfinished desire in someone else’s story?

She became my borrowed Self. Perhaps that is all we are to one another.

*-*-*

I returned once again to Kashi, years later, after years of yearning and restlessness to be back. I went to see the Mukti Bhawan, it stood the same, squeezed between the lanes of the city. Kashi Marnam Mukti. Death might really be the liberation here!

I stood across the Bhawan, people entering with their clothes wrapped in bundles and small pots. Time really stops here. The growing infrastructure does not affect the essence of Kashi. Kashi has its own clock.

I walked down to the Ghats, took a boat ride across Manikarnika, and the strong smell reached me, notifying multiple liberations. A closed room like a living soul cannot encompass. It gets heavy. In every burning pyre I saw her. All the smoke, the smell had as if dissolved her.

In memory, madness and grace, I held her presence so tight that her liberation resides with mine.

As the evening Arti began, I left. The chants started, and all I could hear was, “One day you will see Him, you will see Him when you need to”.

There stood Akshay, waiting for me, withholding the patience of an unturned rock, letting me visit the part of me that still resides in Kashi. He held my hand, reminding me of the flight back home. Our Home, in a city where people don’t worry about Kashi and Moksh. A home where Kashi is found in old Polaroids. I always know that a part of me, a part of us, resides here, tuned into the eternal clock of Kashi.