Laughing with the Corpse

Disclaimer: My family, of which I will be talking here, is quite deranged in its sense of humour, treatment of death and, most importantly, in mixing the two. So if you are priggish, faint-hearted or have just had a tooth removed, kindly refrain from proceeding further.

I wonder if death has ever fazed my family--I mean my extended family--as much as it does me every day. Probably it has but I can never tell given my dad's--and his brothers'--behaviour at funerals or repeated references to the subject in passing.

Let's start with my paternal grandpa's demise. It happened sometime in 1984 and he died a natural death. I guess he died late evening. His sons cried--in fact wept--for a while. Of course they did. Neither my dad nor any of my uncles is Meursault enough to say, "What if my dad's dead? I won't cry just because the world expects me to," and smoke cigarettes beside the corpse. Also, unfortunately, Camus did not create them. However, they did the next best thing when their tears ran out. To keep themselves awake through the night (and particulalrly, to ensure my grandpa does not run away) they started a game of cards. And the grapevine has it that my grandpa got up, much to my grandma's dismay, joined them, beat them hollow, took a dump, came back and stuck back the two small balls of cotton up his nostrils (as is the custom) and resumed his slumber. Such insensitive brutes, you say? Common, falling asleep over your dad's body is worse, especially when my dad has a tendency to actually fall on the person sitting closest to him while sleeping sitting which, if it had happened, would have made my grandpa cough incessantly.

Talking of my dad, he is a bonafide sadist who has escaped seeing a shrink so far. I will tell you why. I must have been seven or eight and he was cleaning our refrigerator. He had taken all the trays out which made the appliance all the more appealing to me. He told me it would be really chilly inside and asked me if I wanted to get in. I readily agreed. I went in (it had been switched off fortunately) and the next thing I knew was the door had slammed shut and would not open. I banged the door for a good ten seconds before being welcomed into the world of light with the evil force--my father that is--laughing unstoppably with his eye balls literally a foot in front of him. This was to be expected of a man who loves terrifying kids by turning off the lights and lighting up a torch below his chin to make his big lips and monstrous teeth seem more horrifying than they already are. The exercise always ended with two distinct shrieks--one of cries from the kid and the other of chortle from my dad.

The man is impossible. Here is another instance why. There was once a powercut at home at around 9 p.m. and my dad, as is his wont, was snoring so loud so as to make me call out to my mom to get a pillow so that we could press it on his face and squeeze every last breath out of him. My mom lighted a candle and handed it to me. I asked her where I should place it, and she, being the absent-minded soul she is, said, "Keep it next to your dad's head." Remember that back home a corpse should have a lamp next to its head. My dad, who we thought had been sleeping, got the topic for his daily discussion for the following day. He told every relative that came his way that his son and wife had been plotting to kill him and that he feared being poisoned in a short while.

If this is my dad, can his brothers be very different? His eldest brother, who was a toned-down version of Mickey Sabbath--don't tell my aunt about the comparison, she is no Anne Frank and might just swat you with a non-stick pan--spared no one from his biting jokes. One of his uncles was suffering from Parkinson's Syndrome and used to take two hours to take ten steps, which made Mr.Sabbath name him Armstrong chithappa--Armstrong a reference to Neil Armstrong walking as he did on moon and chithappa is what you call your dad's younger brother in Tamil. Whenever Armstrong chithappa passed Mr.Sabbath by, the latter said his sacred thread was quite old and he would soon get an opportunity to change it (it is a religious custom for Brahmin men to change their thread when someone closely related to them dies). Mr.Sabbath meted out the same treatment to his other uncle too, but the unfortunate and really funny part is he croaked before the uncle did and the uncle got an opportunity to change his thread, old or not.

At his funeral, when his dear friend Sundaram walked in to pay his respects, Mr.Sabbath's cousin told him, "It's ok. Don't worry, you are next in line." I was on the floor writhing from the pain of giggling too much. And when Mr.Sabbath was about to be taken to the crematorium, his daughter refused to let go of him. The same cousin, quite enraged with the daughter's shenanigans, told her to keep her dad with herself and started walking off, sending some gathered there into a laughing fit. At the electric crematorium, to break the gloomy monotony, the cousin said, "Sundaram, this is the first time we are using the electric crematorium. I am not too sure of the contraption. Please get in and if you burn good, I will send my brother in." Picture the scene: Mr.Sabbath lying supine with his nostrils blocked and a coin on his forehead, and his brothers, cousins and nephews falling over each other cackling. Considering Mr.Sabbath's proclivity to macabre humour, a subtle smile escaped his lips too as a sign of his joining the jamboree.

Coming from a family like this, am I to blame if I can't stand the twits around me spouting something incredibly insipid that they classify under 'humour'? Will those with at least a funny cell, if not a bone, in their body please stand up?