She looked at him closely and said, ‘Thank you for coming.’

He still wasn’t sure if she recognised him. ‘Vani, I’ve come to take you back to Colombo.’

‘Colombo?’ she repeated. ‘No, no, I’m waiting for Mohan.’

Rajan blinked back his tears. ‘Come, Vani, I’ll take you to him.’ He reached out his arms to her.

•

The mourners gathered at the small field next to the hospital. The dead had been brought there, their mangled bodies piled together, like siblings sharing a bed. Vani was a small woman, about the same age as Nala. Rajan didn’t hold anyone in public, with the occasional exception of his wife, but he held Vani awkwardly as she cried.

There were too many bodies and not enough facilities, so the best that could be done was mass cremation. Many of the bodies had already been burned, some recognisable, others not: cremation of the living followed by cremation of the dead. Mohan was recognisable to Rajan, but he thought it best if Vani didn’t see his face. She should remember him differently, as he was.

The priest had been forced to change the funeral ritual and he called on someone from the gathering to act as the son for all of the dead. He needed one man to perform the rites on behalf of them all.

Rajan gently helped Vani to the ground where she sat, like an injured bird, her arms occasionally flapping at her sides. He controlled the rising emotion and stepped forward.

The rites began. The priest poured rice into a large mortar made of stone. The rice had been husked and was ready to cook, not paddy rice that was still wrapped in its husk. Paddy rice was used at weddings.

‘If you sow paddy rice it will grow fields and fields of more rice: paddy rice is living. Husked rice, like this, is dead,’ the priest said as he asked Rajan to pound the husked rice with the heavy pestle.

‘The body is dead and the soul needs to be released.’

Rajan wondered if Mohan had been pounded by stone.

The priest then lifted a clay pot onto Rajan’s shoulder and told him to walk slowly, anti-clockwise around the enormous pyre. Somewhere in the crowd, a man began to sing, his voice cascading over the tones and semi-tones of prayers, descending in mourning and ascending in worship. Rajan walked and the priest followed him, hitting the pot two times from behind, with a small scythe.

‘The body is only a vessel, a pot that holds our souls until we are liberated by death,’ the priest intoned. The holes in the pot symbolised the release of man’s three desires for wealth, property, and carnal love.

‘These desires should not tie the soul to its body,’ the priest said as he hit the pot with his scythe one last time.

Rajan wondered if Mohan had been touched by a scythe.