She stumbled, almost fell against one of the bodies. I’ll have to be careful, she thought. I mustn’t jostle them even in death. Perhaps, some of them still have that last breath … the soul that’s reluctant to leave the body. No funeral orations for any of them. Individual burials are no longer practicable. It is within our minds that we carry those reminders of what each man was to each woman. Till each one is claimed, if ever they are claimed, they are anonymous. It’s happening elsewhere too, perhaps at this very moment …. Soon there’ll be no birds left in the village. Startled by gunshot, they’ll fly away to another village. Who’s going to start life here all over again …

Her movements now became mechanical. But she wove her way through, a searcher who could never give up the search.

Where would the pyres be lit? And where the secret graves? They would be silently carried away, secretly buried. Their names would be mentioned only in whispers. So this was the journey that Yama took daily? Difficult. But she had the strength.

She flicked at a fly with a towel. They were already there, the bluebottles. The smell of death, it was choking her. She felt suffocated but could not stop. She would go on till she found him.

Could this be Sena …? She peered into a face, called his name softly: ‘Sena, Sena, Sena.’ It could be Sena—a young body, but the face all smeared with blood. If she wiped the blood off she might recognize him. She wiped his face gently with the end of her towel and gazed into the face.

No, this was not him. Resembled him …

She stroked his head, caressingly. A woman’s gesture. Her towel was sodden. Her clothes felt damp.

He is still warm, she told herself. My towel is soaked with blood. My clothes too … damp, stained. She felt dead, her limbs numbed. She stumbled against yet another body.

There must be so many … so many of them …. Forgive me, she whispered softly …. Respect for the dead, incantations, prayers … I can’t forget it. Forgive me, son, brother, father, husband, forgive me for touching your sleeping body with my foot, it is not that I mean to insult you …

No, not this one either. Where was he? And such a silence in the village. Where was everybody? Asleep? Awake? Afraid to come out? All the women, the children? Such a silence in the village.