How far does one go to preserve a custom? If it’s a religious one there appears to be no bounds. Faced with aging pallbearers, the Karachi Parsi Anjuman Trust Fund has introduced an electronically operated lifter to raise the body to the entrance door of the port city’s tower of silence (see "Lifting up the dead," pg 14). The equipment that cost Rs 1.28 million (USD 17,128) will be utilized for the 30 to 40 Parsis corpses consigned to the dakhma annually.
Aside from a perennial shortage of priests, the pallbearers are also an endangered species. The present four aging pallbearers in Karachi find it "very difficult" to carry the corpse up the steep steps of the dakhma, states the Anjuman chairman. When they are indisposed volunteers assist.
So far the Karachi Parsis have the services of priests. What happens when the present priests retire or are unable to perform ceremonies and no suitable replacements are found? Will members of athornan families come forward? Will there be any behdin pasbaans to shoulder the responsibility? Will women be permitted to undertake priestly duties? Will a priest from another faith officiate? Or will, as one boiwalla joked, a robot perform the duties? How long will the community be able to continue with dakhmenashini? Will burial or cremation prove a more convenient and timely option? These are uncomfortable questions but they have to be asked and answered. One must prepare for all eventualities.
The Supreme Court of India has permitted Covid-afflicted corpses to be consigned to the towers of silence provided metal netting covers the dakhma top; the intention is to prevent birds entering and exiting the dakhma and thereby possibly spreading infection (see "Dakhma reprieve," pg 10). Can metal be permitted to touch the dakhma walls? Will the netting have to be supported from the exterior?
What happens when the iron netting rusts, especially during the monsoons? Will the brownish rainwater flow on the corpses? If the net is made of stainless steel, the weight will prove excessive, not to mention the cost and the possibility of theft? How effective will the solar panels prove if the metallic net partially blocks the rays of the sun from entering the tower? Is this the final resting place we wish for our loved ones?
The pallbearers will have to wear protective suits and gloves made of plastic. The corpse will have to be enclosed in a zipped, plastic body bag. How will a body enclosed in a plastic body bag decompose, especially during the monsoons? Is all this scripturally permitted? Or will we make exceptions, as we always do, to adapt to ground realities? The Vendidad states the body must be disposed of by scavengers. Nature’s most effective scavengers, the vultures, were killed by humans. Pain killing drugs ingested by cattle and humans proved fatal to the raptors who fed on cattle and human carcasses. In the absence of birds of prey, we are told the body is to be dehydrated by the sun’s rays; the decomposed, dried, shrunken corpses are later buried in the earth. The Vendidad does not sanction such a system of disposal. The scripture also emphasizes no water may touch a corpse; yet even during the monsoons bodies are consigned to the dakhmas.
When the solar panels were first suggested, the high priests agreed on condition the gear did not touch the dakhma. Hence the panels were erected independently of the structures, a few feet away from the towers. To operate and maintain the panels, technicians had to be hired, full or part-time. Many of these personnel are non-Parsis as are the gardeners, the sweepers, the security staff... It appears non-Parsis may move in the vicinity of the towers but not non-Parsi family members and friends of the deceased. They are even barred from seeing the face of their loved ones and friends once the sachkar is done, and they may not accompany the body to its final resting place. In Delhi and Ooty, where corpses are buried, non-Parsis may be present for the funerary prayers, as is the custom in other religious faiths.
At one time bodies were carried by pallbearers from a person’s residence to the doongerwadi. Now motorized hearses are used. Vehicles are purchased, drivers are employed. The costs mount as the customs are modified. The Bombay Doongerwadi has a deficit of three to four crore rupees (USD 397,923 to 530,565) annually. The cost to the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) for disposing of a single corpse is between Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 (USD 666 to 796). If a body is cremated in a municipal crematorium, the charge is Rs 200 (USD 2.65). The cost is subsidized by the residents of the city. The Hiralal Parekh Parivar Charity Trust’s Antim Samskar Seva has raised Rs 40 crores (USD 5,305,649) to renovate the nine to 10-acre municipal crematorium at Worli which also houses the Prayer Hall used almost exclusively by Parsis. Other communities follow different funerary rituals and ceremonies. The services of the hearse are provided free of cost by the Trust.
If the BPP had surplus funds one might not grudge the crores spent on the 700 or so corpses that are consigned to the dakhmas annually. But when that money is spent at the expense of providing doles to the living, the disadvantaged, the needy, the elderly, the priests, the parents whose second and third child costs are to be subsidized and salaries are delayed, one has to re-examine the economies and priorities. Why was a bungli not given for performing the last rites of those who wish to be cremated? Could not close to two crore rupees of community funds used to build the Prayer Hall at Worli have been utilized for other welfare purposes? When the Covid afflicted bodies had by law to be cremated, the three majority BPP trustees denied the grieving families even token prayers being recited at Doongerwadi, this despite the high priests giving their assent to the practice. To add insult to injury, some traditionalists likened the gesture to a priest in Bombay reciting the marriage vows for a couple seated in the United States of America. Such perversity displayed by both institutions and individuals, at a time of such great sorrow!
One has to approach the problem objectively. It is a complex issue and one has to keep in mind the community’s sensibilities. Agreeable solutions are not easy to find. If one’s thinking is clouded by prejudices and personal enmities, the community will continue to flounder.