Undertakers carry out funeral rites which impart to them a certain weird aura. Their death, therefore, is an equally weird happening. The undertakers who buried the emperors of India, right from the time of Qutubuddin Aibak to Akbar Shah Sani (1210 to 1837), got preference even over immediate family members and nobles at the entombment. In the case of the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar the burial was a hush-hush affair in Rangoon, where a British officer supervised the funeral by lantern light. Zafar was buried in an unmarked grave sans the customary mourning in 1862. He was of course not the only emperor to end up like this.
There are quite a few other examples, including those of Razia Sultan, hastily buried in a remote grave in Bulbulikhana, far away from the imperial seat of power in Mehrauli. That was in 1240, the daughter and successor of Iltutmish the second Slave emperor, was killed by a group of rebel villagers. Kaikobad, grandson of Balban, of the same dynasty was murdered and his body thrown into the Jamuna. Dara Shikoh had an undignified burial, so also Jahandar Shah, Farrukhsiyar and Mohammad Shah’s son Ahmed Shah. Before his father three others met the same fate after brief reigns. In all these cases the traditional role of the gorkand (undertaker) and the gusal (corpse bather) was either absent or just limited to the bare minimum.
The gorkands are or were a separate community among the Muslims who intermarried among themselves as it was considered inauspicious for others to seek matrimony with them. Sometimes gorkands were involved in plots as accomplices in cases of murder. There’s the story of a pubescent girl who returned from school, complained of headache and died. She belonged to the Teli (oil seller) community and was buried with much grief. Three days later when the family members visited her grave (as per custom) it was found dug-up with the heart missing and blood marks all around. The question arose how could an unwounded body bleed and that too outside the grave? The concerned gorkands were brought to trial but were acquitted for lack of evidence. It was conjectured that either the girl was intoxicated in a love-pact or that she was the victim of witchcraft or some animal had mauled the body. This happened in the early 1940s and the trial (attended by father) was conducted in Agra.
Karol Bagh couple
On January 25 Esther Browne, the only woman undertaker of Delhi died. She died comparatively young of a heart problem and among the undertakers was her husband, Peter Lunn. They both lived in Christian Colony. The sad part was that just a month earlier Esther was the undertaker at the funeral of her mother-in-law. One interviewed Esther in 2005 and this is what one learnt about her work: A Karol Bagh couple, they had their office in a graveyard. The reason was that they were undertakers whose job it is to get coffins made, graves dug and generally take care of burials. As a mater of fact, the Browne and Lunn families have been undertakers since 1920 or so. When Esther and Peter decided to get married they sealed a bond of friendship that had existed for about 70 years between the two families.
November was a particularly busy month for them as it is dedicated to the dead. So the couple remained busy getting old graves repaired, new tombstones erected and other tombs repainted as per the wishes of the near and dear ones of the deceased. Their home hardly gave the impression that the two were engaged in such an unusual profession. When people were heading for offices in posh places the two were on their way to their business point in a dreary graveyard, where they were surrounded by the dead all around.
Esther said that even when they were at home calls were received at odd hours about arrangements to be made for someone who had died. “Even if it’s midnight, we just have to go and get things done so that the final rites could be performed the next morning,” disclosed the young woman and her husband nodded in agreement. Having spent hours and hours in the cemetery had they seen any ghosts? “Well queer happenings sometimes but no apparitions,” they said. “We are not easily scared. If we were, then how will we carry on with our profession,” asked Esther. What others find morbid was a matter of bread and butter for them. And Esther and Peter had no regrets about it. Just imagine what will happen if people like them are not around?
Esther’s endearing memory four years later was of the event in which seven descendants of Brig Gen Nicholson attended a commemoration for him at St James’ Church, Kashmere Gate and then at the cemetery named after him. Though Nicholson died a bachelor his siblings did get married and it was their great-great grandchildren who came all the way to Delhi from abroad to mark the occasion.
Esther Browne undertook many funerals in this cemetery too, along with her husband, sometimes late in the evening. But she shook her head to deny the proposition of her ever seeing Nicholson’s ghost going up to the Kashmere Gate as per popular superstition. Now that she is gone Peter Lunn will have to team up with another undertaker but with grim memories.
