Shortly before the rabbi and his gang of four showed up, however, Manika had returned with our quartet of eunuchs. They were hanging out with me at the bedside keeping the corpse company, the ends of their saris drawn in a discreet ladylike flip across the lower portion of their faces due to the intensifying stink of decomposition, when the rabbi and his forces charged into the room, pushing the door open so savagely with the metal corner of the stretcher. Our four mighty eunuchs rose at once, positioned themselves silently in a phalanx formation along the bedside facing the invaders, the first line of resistance, their lipstick-stained teeth bared, their arms raised with clawed hands like tigers set to pounce, displaying the long red-lacquered daggers of their fingernails.

The unanticipated presence of the eunuchs along with their menacing maneuver brought the rabbi and his troops to a sudden halt, plunging them into a heated argument, to which, on our side, I alone was privy as it was conducted in Hebrew. The rabbi’s boys were indeed all Israelis, hardened veterans of the Israel Defense Forces morphed into stoned and sexed-out seekers in India, and now, seized by the influence and inspiration of Rabbi Assi himself, newly minted penitents, returnees to the faith. The crux of their debate was whether or not it was permissible for them to engage in battle with an enemy of questionable gender. Were their opponents women or men? If the former, were the laws of negiah applicable, prohibiting the physical contact that would inevitably ensue from hand-to-hand combat? If the latter, would not one be rendered impure simply by touching the perversion of the garb of a woman on the body of a man? And what if parts of their bodies had been altered by surgery or implants or hormones or some other repulsive engineering to resemble the female form? And whether they were male or female, what about the danger of inadvertently being brought to a state of physical arousal by wrestling with these freaks?

Of course they were men, Rabbi Assi contended with exasperation, urging his warriors on, no different from an enemy who confronts you in camouflage or in the disguise of a burqa or chador. It is your duty to fight them, just as it is your duty to rescue a drowning woman regardless of your male status, the prohibition against touching the female does not pertain in such a case involving a threat to life, which trumps even the holy Sabbath. The drowning woman here is the dead body on the bed about to be sunk to the depths of the river in the form of ashes, and the life that is threatened is her afterlife.