Burying My Dead Eye

By Dr. Ivy George

PROMPT—No one noticed ...

It is high noon, and the South Indian sun is relentless. The morning paper, “The Hindu” has announced that the mercury will hold steady around 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I am outside in our garden to bury my eye.

The crows are mobbing. Frantically flapping, they feed their young, some even snatching tidbits from other beaks.

After their daily offering to the ancestors, my Hindu neighbors are sitting down to lunch. The cawing settles down as each bird takes its share with some house sparrows and a mynah showing up for the remains. The scraps are quickly devoured and the place falls bare and silent.

Palm fronds float above me among the banana leaves and custard apples. The chickoo and papaya trees return to their sullen states after the recent feeding frenzy. Under the blistering pall some of the younger bougainvillea, crossandrum and pink jasmine are wilting. They will rise at sunset after the maid gets to them.

I find this time reassuring, as if cloaked in a midnight pall. The kitchen gardens and the miniature front lawns of our concrete terraced houses lie still. The noon heat provides me with the cover I need. Far off I hear the rhythmic clapping of clothes, a maid at work with her Surf soap powder and water. Beat, beat, beat, and beat the dirt out on the granite block. Nearer, within view, starched bed sheets, saris and house linens have turned stiff, hanging like toy soldiers on clothes’ lines. The last stray dog, and slow-moving cow, have disappeared from the pan-hot turf. Our servants have turned to their usual nooks for a snooze.

I fiddle in the dusty crust when the cry of a woman startles me, though she always comes around this time. “Josium,” I hear, the nasal drone streaming and alternating with, “Josium, kai Josium” a variation that only emphasizes the monotone of her hawking. Then, a pause. Perhaps some prospective customer’s door is ajar, and she is peeking eagerly for some movement inside. She plies her wares again, “Josium, ma, Josium.” Her pitch gets louder as she closes the distance between herself and where I squat. The arrival of this astrologer in the late afternoon carries a weight adding to heaviness of the air. All the houses are empty of its men. I picture the occasional old man napping on a bamboo mat or easy chair with his leg splayed and mouth open, hosting and swatting houseflies. Toddlers would be napping, oblivious. This is the first time many of the women in the houses get a break since waking before sunrise. For a few paisas some will sit down on the cool verandahs and extend their callused palms to have their futures forecast. Not at our home, though. It would be considered a sin for Christians to submit to astrologers.

Now is my time. I take a quick look around this paint worn, moss covered concrete skyscape mottled by treetops. I remember when the houses were younger and fewer. The walls demarcating our properties were higher then. Close to a wall I shift my weight, pivoting furtively, trying to avoid some accidental neighbor above the parapet or at a window beneath. This burial feels intensely personal, something never to be shared or explained. But there is another reason to pass undetected. I fear that some inquisitive neighbor will take note and come to desecrate this site, my very own.

Swiftly I take the fork and knife that I spirited from the kitchen, and I start to dig as quietly as possible in short pricks and stabs. The parched black clay is stubborn and unyielding. Chickens and even dogs would find this hard terrain, I think. All life has been stilled in the noontime heat. I must hurry. I cut the earth with the knife, its hardness doing as much damage to the knife as the knife does to the soil. I anticipate my mother scolding the servant for the disfigured knife and scrape on, adding a fork to my arsenal of attack. I manage a small mound shadowing a shallow pit. I worry about nocturnal predators like mongoose and rats. It will have to do. I look at the sky and take a deep breath, sad for myself. But this has come to me. I cup the tin in my hands. I bless the eye and bid a reluctant goodbye. In great haste and sorrow, I lower the cardboard tin. I close my good eye and release the dead one. There is a Massachusetts General Hospital label with a serial number on it. I swallow hard and begin to fill in the hole.

I level the mound and pit back to normal, then slowly rise to stand on the spot. I squish a bit this way and that, and then walk over the grave with straight ahead steps, back and forth. I settle the earth. My soles are dusty, and my rubber slippers are turning soft in the heat. I will have to take them into the shade soon.

Only hours back I had fled with the tin container and my missing eye from the Madras airport, having arrived from Boston. I managed to escape detection by the Customs officials. The thought of having it impounded was unbearable. Besides, how would I explain this macabre but treasured cargo in my possession? I had been anxious that the smell of rot would escape en route. Upon arrival at home, I promptly placed it in the back of the fridge. The relief of that lucky exit has been overshadowed by what I had determined to do. I have never felt so keenly alone, very alone. I have been plotting this farewell for a long while.

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Dr. Ivy George teaches sociology at Gordon College in Massachusetts. She hails from Madras (Chennai), India, and was trained at the University of Madras, Bryn Mawr, Brandeis, and Harvard in economics, social work, social policy, and religion. She has written two books: From Child Labour to Child Work (1990) about child labor, and An Uncommon Correspondence – East West Conversations on Friendship, Intimacy and Love (1998) on the cross-cultural comparisons of romance and marriage (co-authored with Margaret Masson). Ivy has published articles and contributed book chapters, as well as lectured on a wide variety of crucially important topics including masculinity, feminism, the impact of globalization on social inequalities, and international adoptions. She has completed the manuscript for a memoir entitled, “Blind Sight: A Memoir of India and America – Tradition, Rebellion and Revelation,” that explores the formation of her transnational identity in the twentieth century. Ivy writes from Beverly, MA.