Our blind date with the Grim Reaper

It was a warm, sultry afternoon, and I was scared witless. 

It was a warm, sultry afternoon, and I was scared witless. Calcutta, late October 1978. The city was recovering from a devastating flood that had left the ground floors of most houses under water. In some areas, corpses floated on the streets. Hundreds had died, and many more had gone missing, including a youngster from our neighbourhood. 

I was among the few teenagers tasked by neighbourhood seniors to search for him at local hospitals and morgues. The morgue at Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital, built in 1707 by the British and also known as the Presidency General or PG Hospital, comprised a long corridor with unidentified corpses stacked on either side, with an autopsy room at the end. Formaldehyde had fought a spirited battle against the stench of decaying flesh, and lost. A bored attendant randomly poked at a few shrouds with a stick, asking, “Does he look like your friend? How about this one?” The condition of some made recognition impossible. We didn’t stay long. 

The next stop was Mominpur, a morgue in the middle of a large field, parts of which were still submerged. The tiny hut masquerading as a morgue could not accommodate all the bodies, so many had been left outside, wrapped in what used to be white shrouds, now stained with various bodily fluids and damp earth. Some just had the white cloth thrown over them, weighed down at corners with bricks to prevent them from being blown away. The smell was gut-wrenching. 

I had slowed down to adjust the handkerchief held tightly against my nose when I saw a shroud sit up, stretch and yawn. My muffled scream made the two older boys turn around, to see me frozen stiff, while an unkempt man who had shrugged off the shroud was looking at me in equal alarm. My legs turned to jelly, and I sat down among the dead while the man explained to my friends that he was just a morgue ‘attendant’ taking a nap after a drink or seven, using a corpse as a pillow and a shroud as a cover to “keep away the flies”. 

Realising the futility of identifying anyone among the heap of rotting bodies, we left. The missing youngster turned up days later, only to get run over by a speeding bus en route to school a month later. If there was one lesson I learnt from that day, it was that we may go through life pretending we are immortal, but all of us have a blind date with the Grim Reaper.

Ramananda Sengupta

Email: ramananda.sengupta@gmail.com

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