She declined on two grounds. First, she was at that very moment engaged in an emergency political action to counteract a string of outrages perpetrated by a radical group that provocatively called itself SS, which stood for Safe Sex, and, to add insult to injury, used the Indian Aryan backward swastika as its symbol. As a Jew she simply could not countenance such Nazi references however much she might be in agreement with this organization’s program to stem the population explosion that dumped more poor people in India than in any other country on the face of the earth, and however deeply she was in accord with its agenda to stop the rampant spread of sexually transmitted diseases and especially AIDS by truck drivers on gouged-out Indian roads whose throbbing vehicles so agitated their groins and sex organs that they had no choice but to seek release with infected prostitutes at rest stops and then bring the disease back home as a present to their own wives in their villages. Moreover, she absolutely could not tolerate the repellent tactics of this group, including its most recent particularly offensive campaign to promote the virtue of protected sex in a startling act of desecration that would make everyone sit up and pay attention—swathing every Shiva linga they could get their hands on, no matter how small or large, with a condom. Just before our arrival, as it happened, she along with a few other Shivaniks, had peeled off an extra-jumbo plus-sized rubberlike condom from this very impressive linga under this pipal tree right here at Assi Ghat. Clearly, it was more vital that she devote her energies to this immediate crisis. A threat to the living always took precedence over attending to the final rites for the departed, who were anyway already no longer players and past caring.

That was the first reason Zehava gave for not being available on such short notice to join our procession. Her second reason, which she stated succinctly since it required no explanation, was that as a matter of principle she boycotted Hindu funerals since they excluded women for sexist reasons. Hysterics, all of us—and she telegraphed a sisterly smile, taking it for granted I was on her wavelength. That was her inner Golda talking, and I told her so. No, it was her outer Zehava, she corrected, the highest articulation of feminism, the most powerful manifestation of liberation—women’s liberation in the full expression of the lived reality of her femaleness. “Your wise mother, may she rest in peace, she understood this. She told me you’d never get it—and she was right.”