Free Tales From Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry Page A

She came back and said to me, don’t worry about broken scissors, come, bring your mug, I’m making teafor both of us, forget about
soopra
and ghost for now. So I removed my
mathoobanoo
and went with her.
    Jaakaylee, O Jaakaylee, she is calling from dining-room. They must want more curry. Good thing I took some out for my dinner, they will finish the whole pot. Whenever I make Goan curry, nothing is left over. At the end
seth
always takes a piece of bread and rubs it round and round in the pot, wiping every little bit. They always joke, Jaakaylee, no need today for washing pot, all cleaned out. Yes, it is one thing I really enjoy, cooking my Goan curry, stirring and stirring, taking the aroma as it boils and cooks, stirring it again and again, watching it bubbling and steaming, stirring and stirring till it is ready to eat
.

Condolence Visit

    Y esterday had been the tenth day, dusmoo, after the funeral of Minocher Mirza. Dusmoo prayers were prayed at the fire-temple, and the widow Mirza awaited with apprehension the visitors who would troop into the house over the next few weeks. They would come to offer their condolence, share her grief, poke and pry into her life and Minocher’s with a thousand questions. And to gratify them with answers she would have to relive the anguish of the most trying days of her life.
    The more tactful ones would wait for the first month,
maasiso
, to elapse before besieging her with sympathy and comfort. But not the early birds; they would come flocking from today. It was open season, and Minocher Mirza had been well-known in the Parsi community of Bombay.
    After a long and troubled illness, Minocher had suddenly eased into a condition resembling a state of convalescence. Minocher and Daulat had both understood that it was only a spurious convalescence, there would be no real recovery. All the same, they were thankful his days and nights passed in relative comfort. He was able to wait for death freed from the agony which had racked his body for the past several months.
    And, as it so often happens in such cases, along with relief from physical torment, the doubts and fears which had tortured his mind released their hold as well. He was at peace with his being which was soon to be snuffed out.
    Daulat, too, felt at peace because her one fervent prayer was being answered. Minocher would be allowed to die with dignity, without being reduced to something less than human; she would not have to witness any more of his suffering.
    Thus Minocher had passed away in his sleep after six days spent in an inexplicable state of grace and tranquillity. Daulat had cried for the briefest period; she felt it would be sinful to show anything but gladness when he had been so fortunate in his final days.
    Now, however, the inescapable condolence visits would make her regurgitate months of endless pain, nights spent sleeplessly, while she listened for his breath, his sighs, his groans, his vocalization of the agony within. For bearers of condolences and sympathies she would have to answer questions about the illness, about doctors and hospitals, about nurses and medicines, about X-rays and blood reports. She would be requested (tenderly but tenaciously, as though it was their rightful entitlement) to recreate the hell her beloved Minocher had suffered, instead of being allowed to hold on to the memory of those final blessed six days. The worst of it would be the repetition of details for different visitors at different hours on different days, until that intensely emotional time she had been through with Minocher would be reduced to a dry and dull lesson learned from a textbook which she would parrot like a schoolgirl.
    Last year, Daulat’s nephew Sarosh, the Canadian immigrant who now answered to the name of Sid, had arrived from Toronto for a visit, after ten years. Why he had never gone back he would not say, nor did he come to see her any more. After all that she and Minocher had done for him. But he did bring