The Glorified Untouchables: Dark Dimensions of the Parsi community

ABSTRACT
Based on a true story and set up in the Bombay of pre-independence times, Cyrus Mistry’s
Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer is exactly what the title suggests. Son of a highly respectable
Parsi priest, voluntarily becoming a corpse bearer was not something that was appreciated in
the Parsi community. The novel documents the present life, the echoes of the living past and
the imperfect future of Firoz, who had apparently brought this ‘fate’ upon himself. In the Parsi
community the corpse bearers are a shunned community; a community within a community.
Despite their noble services to the dead by conducting the final rituals with utmost care and
respect, they are considered untouchable to the core. It is ironic how the Parsis fear of
contamination from the nussesalar or a khandhia, but are completely dependent on them to do
the final rites and rituals on their same lifeless bodies. Through he pages of this novel, Mistry
vividly describes the routines and lives of the corpse bearers. In the novel, the narrator, Firoz,
considers himself as a glorified untouchable; but even he, sometimes forget that he is human
because he is seldom treated so. The kind of discrimination, abomination and inhuman
approaches towards the corpse bearers have been lurking behind and justified by the so-called
traditions and politics that has been present in the contemporary Indian scenario. In India, we
do have the habit of behaving in ethically unappealing ways and then blaming it on traditions.
The aim of this essay is to explore, in depth, the lives of the Parsi corpse bearers and the
discrimination they face even today, keeping close reference to the Chronicle of a Corpse
Bearer by Cyrus Mistry.

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The Parsi community came to India in the 7th century after rebelling against the Arab invaders
for over 200 years in Iran. After this Period of Silence, they sought refuge in India to preserve
their cultural and regional identity. Following the Zoroastrian way of life, the Parsi community
in India has been dwindling in number to a point where it has become negligible. It is thus no
wonder that they are a very evident minority community. The Parsi community have a peculiar
standing, they are Indians in terms of nationality but not Indians in terms of cultural ethnicity,
behaviour or religious practises. The Parsis strictly follow their religion and its rules and
regulations. No person can adopt this faith; one is only born into being a Parsi. There are strict
norms that restricts a non Parsi member from entering into their areas or their Fire Temple.
Thus, the integration of the Parsi community into our society is ironical. However, through
Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, Cyrus Mistry portrays the ‘irony in the irony’. The novel has its
strong Parsi roots from the author himself. Just as the title suggests it deals with the life of a
corpse bearer or a khandhia. The significance of the idea of purity in the Parsi ideology is
immense and commendable. From keeping their lineage pure, to personal hygiene, to the
disposal of dead bodies, they have rules and regulations to be followed for invariably
everything.

“There were procedures for everything-- for eating a meal, for pissing, for taking a
crap, for washing one’s arse, for how to wash one’s hands after doing that, for taking
a bath; and above all, for when and how frequently one must recite the prayers”
(CCB, 45)

The Parsis consider the dead bodies as the most impure substance that can contaminate
anything that comes in contact with it. This is the reason why they do not bury their dead, to
save the earth from contamination. The Nussesalar is the one who conducts the rituals and are
the keepers of the unclean, the dead, and the khandhias perform the carrion work from washing
the corpse to being the pallbearers and forms the lowest rung in the community. Rendered as
untouchables, they themselves are considered impure. It had always been a hereditary
profession. For a job where “the smell of sickness and puss endures; the reek of extinction
never leaves the nostril” (CCB, 10), why would anybody choose to do this. The Nussesalars
are supposed to

“shield the community from all that evil and putrefaction by absorbing it into his own
being. In return for which noble service, the scriptures promise, his soul, will not be

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 reborn……. What the scriptures forget to mention, though, is that in this, his final
incarnation, his fellow men will treat him as dirt, the very embodiment of shit.” (CCB,
17-18)

Although the novel talks about the tragic love story between the protagonist, Phiroze, son of a
Fire Temple high priest, and Seppideh, daughter of a khandhia, Cyrus Mistry has used it to
trigger or give a background to emphasise the lives of the pallbearers. Phiroze had voluntarily
become a nussesalar by marrying Seppideh. Apart from the normal quota of discrimination
faced by the corpse bearers, this dull child of a high priest became the victim of much shock
and contempt by volunteering to become ‘impure’ and be looked down by everyone in his own
community.

Set in the Mumbai of the pre-independence days, most of the action in the novel takes place in
and around the Tower of Silence, situated in the Malabar Hill region. It is a place where the
corpses are taken for their final rites so as to isolate the evil and impure spirits it emanates and
then be fed to the vultures, thus assuring the dead, a safe passage to the afterlife. Becoming the
untouchables of an otherwise casteless community does a lot to the psyche of the oppressed.
Through Phiroze’s life we get a peek into the lives of the corpse bearers during that period.
Life was not easy for them, not inside or outside of their quarters. When they are treated as
impure for long enough, it comes with a sense of self-imposed and socially enforced isolation.
Do the job for long enough and one tends to forget to feel human and alive. Affection and
concern are stuff of the past and prospect of any other occupation is a myth. The faith and rules
are so strict and unbreeched that even family bonds and blood ties are questionable. The
instance of Phiroze visiting his father proves this.

“…but I’m glad I held myself back; for as I entered he stepped aside, rather
deliberately, ensuring no physical contact was made between us.” (CCB, 202)

Their sense of belonging and emotions become so jarred that when Buchia, the contractor,
molested Phiroze, he just stood there, frozen solid. He then goes on to say that,

“Strangely, I felt, after a very long time, human again; living again, grateful to Buchia
that he saw me as more than some cadaverous, unclean thing whose very breath it was
undesirable to commingle with.” (CCB, 165)

It was a test of life for Phiroze; a widower with a young daughter, following the profession of
a corpse bearer, he had to face many difficulties and financial issues that a khandhia would

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come across which were mostly overlooked by the Trustees. With the meagre returns and the
inhuman working hours, for a ling time they had felt helpless, until Phiroze helped organise a
strike that did bring some relief to their lives. Such torture along with the constant touch of
death in such a setting does attract the reader’s attention.

Situations were definitely more conservative and orthodox as compared to now. In a 2015 news
article, we read how they had a strike for better working conditons, the union helped them in
acheieving this. Althuigh with the vultures vanishing rapidly, cremation did become one mode
of burial, the number of dead bodies that are being taken to the Tower of Silence vannot be
deemed insignificant. The strike by this Class IV wokers sought to bring an end to the terrible
condition of the corpses being left partially decomposed and be subjected to maghots and flies
which can cause serious harm to those living in close quarters. Violating such code of conducts,
the Trustees had to make some changes. The poor social status of the pallbearers within the
community that has been lauded for many of its progressive thoughts is ironical. The strike of
1942 by the khandhias does have a place in Mistry’s novel.

It is important to note the parallel that can be drawn between the Dalits and the corpse bearers,
sharing almost the same fate of being shunned by the society either passively or quite blatantly.
Made to feel inferior, intellectually deficient and as outcasts, they have to bear with life’s
unfairness and insults, while occasionally finding a window of strike where their voices are
heard. Their inability to climb the social ladder by adopting any other profession can be
evidently seen in the following excerpt.

“I suppose the truth was the centuries of oppression and indoctrination had effectively
robbed them of the imagination required to conceive of a different order of life, or to
question a creed according to which the Almighty Creator had relegated them to such
a lowly, depraved existence.” (CCB, 110-111)

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer gave voice to a minority within a minority. If it wasn’t for Cyrus
Mistry’s literature, the chances of the world knowing about the plights of the corpse bearers of
the Parsi community in such detail, would be very less. The novel beautifully expresses the
religious hypocrisy within the community. Living the life of an untouchable, being treated as
low as the dirt, all for doing a ‘noble service’ with the scripture promising eternal relief from
the cycle of rebirth, decrepitude and death, all the while working for a meagre wage in
unimaginable conditions. Living such a life in the hope of dying and not being born again.
Seems kind of pointless, doesn’t it?

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WORKS CITED

Mistry, Cyrus. Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer. Delhi: Aleph, 2012. Print.

REFERENCES

Johki, Piroja. The Parsi Times: Another Mess in the Parsi Panchayat, 2015. http://parsi-
times.com/archives/Volume%2005%20(2015-2016)/ParsiTimes_Vol5-
Iss12_2015.07.11jq.pdf

Jijina, Farrokh. The Wire: A Protest by Pallbearers Opens Old Faultlines Among Parsis,
2015. https://thewire.in/7026/a-protest-by-pallbearers-opens-old-faultlines-among-parsis/

Kumar Singh, Prabhat. Random Thoughts: Essays in Criticism, 2015.

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=iYDWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=khan
dhias&source=bl&ots=v3imVnle8g&sig=fPQ_uqGt0Cc86ITCm_F_uJB_0yM&hl=en&sa=X
&ved=0ahUKEwjB_9nn_N7YAhVKy7wKHTi1A4wQ6AEIVTAI#v=onepage&q=khandhia
s&f=false