Notes on Death I saw Guru Yama and his wife one last time at Kalighat. I went there to tell him he had the mother’s consent to keep the body. I had ad hoc legal papers from her lawyer giving the guru “official” custody of the walking cadaver. The guru thanked me, but his enthusiasm had turned to sadness, because his wife was on the verge of falling apart. She was attracting rats and other vermin into the temple, and dangerously close to liquefying. “I do have to burn her,” the Guru told me, dishevelled and weak, scratching at his bandages. “You can give her to the hospitals, the research institutes, if you want to keep her from the police,” I said. “They can put her in cold storage.” He shook his head. “No, Miss Sen. Maybe if she was younger. The dead have short lives. This I know now. She would suffer a lot if they tried to freeze her now.” He had decided. Perhaps because of his meeting with the mother. Perhaps not. He used her rope leash to lead her from the altar to a hired lorry.
