From the memoir: A corpse collector in Kerala buries those who have died an ‘unnatural death’

They are omnipresent at night. In the farms, gulleys, rail tracks, banana groves, rubber plantations, pala trees, everywhere … They can enter any house effortlessly. If you see a movement where the darkness is profuse, be afraid! Some take the guise of a woman wearing a white sari, her feet not touching the ground. Others may be that of a man with hooves of a buffalo, asking you for a box of matches, or even a bat or an amorphous flicker of light … They can appear in front of us in multifarious ways: Yakshi, Maruta, Arumkola, Chattan, Rakshas. They have many names and forms. As a child, I referred to all those spectres as pretam or ghosts.

The stories of ghosts were widespread in those days. The children suffered the most. The spirits of the dead haunted them at night. When we lived near the Chovvara railway gate – between 1990, when I was five, and 1994, when I turned nine – the bloodied remains of those who jumped in front of trains would be scattered around our front yard. Though I had never seen a corpse shattered to smithereens, the dead ones would loiter around me in the form of nightmarish stories. I was a boy spooked by ghost tales from childhood.

There was a man called Kartikeyan who was our neighbour at Ashokapuram. He was an early riser. Kartikeyan Chettan was very friendly towards all. Many students would visit him for tuition lessons. Amma would chat with him while setting off early to sell fish. He passed away when I was studying in the seventh standard. My mother started seeing Kartikeyan’s apparition on the road after his demise. She was badly frightened.

In those days, I would paste the insignias of all religions – the Cross, the sign of Om, crescent moon of Allah – on the lintel, jambs and sill of the entrance door of the house. No ghost, belonging to any religion, should trespass into my house! Once night fell, I would not stroll in the yard. I did not dare to step out of the door even to urinate; I preferred to open the window for the task. Despite all my precautions, all those corpses wrapped in white, the ghosts of those who killed themselves under trains, would come marching into my house at night. They would surround my bed. Some lacked limbs, some were decapitated. How could I sleep peaceably then?

My fear of dead bodies began at a young age. Any news of death petrified me. My fertile imagination and the endless ghost stories I had heard, added fuel to the flame. “Never get out of the house in the afternoon. The devil will bash your head!” “Be wary of Friday afternoons. If you go near a pala tree, only your nails and teeth shall remain.” “The Yakshi shall make mincemeat out of you. Beware of the banana groves!”

Snakes never frightened me. I was terrified only of ghosts. My elder brother used to eat snakes. Once, when I visited my mother’s family house, I saw him hack off the hood of a manja chera (Indian rat snake) and cook its flesh. A snake simply meant good meat for the cooking pot.

There was a girl near my house, allegedly possessed by an evil spirit. Apparently a Yakshi had infested her, as she crossed a pala tree at night. On certain occasions, the girl would loosen her hair and start spouting gibberish. Then she would start howling eerily. Whenever I saw her, I would feel chilled to the bones. I shared her story with my classmates and they regaled me with more. A Tamil woman’s spirit had purportedly set up residence inside someone’s aunt. Every day, at twilight, she would gather soiled clothes and move to the washing stone in the compound. All the while, the woman, who hardly knew proper Malayalam, would jabber in Tamil!

By the time, I finished ninth standard, I had become mature. The niggling fear of ghosts had abated a bit. Then, one day at school, someone said that six people were murdered in a neighbouring house. We used to pluck mangoes from that yard. Later, the incident was referred to as the “notorious Aluva mass murder case”. One victim was a girl my age. It was the first murder I had encountered in my life.

St Mary’s did not have any boundary walls. We could see the house from our classroom. A massive crowd thronged the place. Though I wished to take a look at the victims, I did not have the courage. How could someone scared of ghosts bring himself to look at the dead? I saw a photographer for the first time in my life in the middle of the pandemonium. His name was Tomy and he worked at Photonics Studio. Someone whispered that he was the official police photographer. Leaving aside the horror and mystery of the murder case, our attention was drawn to the photographer.

While he was busy taking photographs, we timidly approached him. “Chetta, can you please click our photo?”

“Let me finish my work first.”

We went to his side intermittently. “Chetta, a photo please.”

He would tactfully send us away. As mentioned earlier, the students of St Mary’s were infamous those days. At the slightest provocation, we would pelt an offender with stones! But we liked Tomy Chettan. He had such wondrous equipment in his hands! Besides, he was very friendly with the cops. Tomy Chettan became my hero from that day. Tired of our constant cajoling, he tricked us by clicking a photograph without inserting film in his camera.

Namboodiri Sir taught us in the ninth standard. Everybody liked him. He would not abuse, hit or beat any student. Instead, Sir would render kind advice. In those days, the other teachers believed in beating the hell out of us. Many students would tie thick areca leaves – kamukin pala – beneath their trousers. But the wily teachers would force the students to remove the protective layers and dole out extra hidings to them! Some kids would wear multiple layers of clothes in terror. It was a troublesome time. Beating at school, thrashing at home. The teacher might stop at three lashes with his cane, but my mother would not stop so easily! She would grab whatever was near her hand and start hitting me. I remember often being chased around the house by my incensed Amma.

Everyone had a nickname at school. Once a moniker was given, it usually stuck forever. The dark-skinned one was mocked cruelly as Marappatti, toddy cat or the palm civet with its peculiar black face; and the fair-skinned kid was taunted as Vellappatta, white cockroach. The flabby boy was mocked as a Veepakkutti or bulging barrel; the thin lad was a compass. I had protruding teeth at that time. By sheer luck, nobody teased me for that. But when I reached the fourth standard, I got my nickname: Peppatti, rabid dog.

I had been bitten by a mad dog that year and the dog had died on the tenth day. I almost lost my left eye in that mauling. I was given fourteen injections near my navel. The doctors managed to save my vision. They had tied me up before administering the shots. The treatment was at Ernakulam General Hospital. I developed breathing trouble afterwards. Even now, I wheeze a lot.

Excerpted with permission from The Corpse Collector: A True Story, Vinu P and Niyas Karem. translated from the Malayalam by Ministhy S, Juggernaut.