Round at my mate’s house, one Saturday morning when I was 17 years old, something astounding appeared on his television. This was 3 November 1984. I know this for sure because I just looked it up. It was the day Indira Gandhi was cremated. Laid out on a sandalwood pyre, her head clearly visible, her body – her actual body – was in plain sight as her son lit the pyre to see his mother, in the words of most newspaper reports, consigned to flames.
I was aghast, horrified. But my friend’s dad said a thing that made me think again. It went something like this: “No, I think it’s very healthy. Death’s too hidden away in our society. I was in my 40s before I saw a dead body, and it was my father’s. What preparation did I have for that?” These words stuck fast in my mind.
