“I was relieved then, at the appearance shortly afterward of Poughkeepsie. I’d visited the town, with its merry name that sounds like a cry in a children’s game — Poughkeepsie! — for first time that summer.”
This line occurs on p. 60 of Joseph O’Neill’s marvellous 2008 novel, Netherland .
Poughkeepsie is a small town in upstate New York. For the past 10 years, I have been living here. Hence my interest in finding the name mentioned in O’Neill’s
Cricket! In that, too, I heard the call of home. And in
When I first came to the US, I used to obsessively track the appearance of the name of my hometown Patna in anything I read. As I reported recently in A Matter of Rats , Patna occurs once in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (p. 259). In Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting , the name comes up early (p. 5). In her daughter’s book, The Inheritance of Loss , there’s a “fellow from Meerut” (p. 217) but, alas, not Patna. In his epic novel A Suitable Boy , writing about an India immediately after independence, Vikram Seth describes his elderly character, the politician Mahesh Kapoor as being “pulled towards Patna every second day or so by the momentous events occurring there” (p. 816). Then, Patna fades from view till we come to Siddharth Chowdhury’s fine bildungsroman, Patna Roughcut . “Patna in 2004 is an open city, like Sarajevo in 1992, like Baghdad is right now” (p. 129).
But I’ve been gone from Patna for ages now.
During this time, entire countries have vanished from the map. Homelands have changed. The men and women who dominated world news when I left Patna are now dead and buried. Patna hasn’t gone the way of Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan but it isn’t really my home anymore. I have been living in the US for close to 30 years. I teach at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie and rent an apartment in faculty housing across the street from campus. New York City is a two-hour train ride away. I’d rather be living in New York, but it is more convenient, and certainly cheaper, to remain in Poughkeepsie. I go to the city to do readings or to attend editorial meetings. When I return late at night on Metro North, a few lights shine on the waters of the Hudson from the windows of houses on the opposite hillside. My watch shows that it is past midnight. The idea of home for me is nothing but the image of the two rooms where my children sleep. The map of my belonging is no larger than that. It is dark outside and the train is carrying me back to two faces illuminated by the dim night-light.
Earlier this year, my mother passed away in Patna. When I returned from her funeral I asked myself a question. What would have happened if she had been living with me and died in Poughkeepsie? And somewhere beneath it was another question. Will I die here in this town in America?
A few months ago, a stranger sent me a link to a grave in Poughkeepsie where the ashes of Anandabai Joshee are interred. Joshee was the first Indian woman to obtain a doctor’s degree. Her gravestone, in Poughkeepsie’s Rural Cemetery, reads: “Anandabai Joshee, M.D, 1865-1887 First Brahmin Woman to Leave India to Obtain an Education.”
Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery is a nine-minute drive from my apartment. After my mother’s death, I discovered that the same Rural Cemetery houses the local crematorium. I went to visit it and the receptionist in the small office showed me laminated photographs of the facilities. The crematorium was a bit like a suburban two-car garage with its wide doors. There was a picture of the adjoining “viewing room,” a plain space with three chairs and a painting on the wall that showed a rushing brook in a forest. Only two or three close family members would be allowed to sit with the body; later, they could be present when the body was put in the container that slides into the crematorium.
The receptionist said, “You can stay for about 15 minutes to say your prayers but not longer. Otherwise it ties things up.” The ashes could be collected the next day. I was told that the cost of the cremation was $350 (but only $250 for a child under 10).
I was also informed that the New York State laws require any corpse being cremated to be accompanied by a licensed and registered funeral home director. Two minutes away from my home is a medical clinic where I’ve often gone for small ailments and right next door is the Timothy P Doyle Funeral Home. I drove there next. The funeral director told me that a special casket is used for Hindu cremations. An open casket, with its top off, so that rituals can be performed. He would also arrange for a priest from the local Hindu Samaj. I asked about the cost and the director got up and began typing numbers with both hands on a calculator the way teenagers text fast on their phones. “Between 48 and 51,” he said quickly. So, $5000.
Death can make one anxious; it is good to have some numbers to count its cost. I realised, however, that I hadn’t answered the question of home. Where would I want to die? I will let death decide. At least, it offers the comfort of an eternity to make peace with its choice.
(In this monthly column authors chronicle the cities they call home.)
Amitava Kumar’s next bookLunch with a Bigotreleases in May 2015 >@amitavakumar