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"This is a 'Dakhma'. Its roof is medium high. There are three circles on the roof. The corpse of a man is placed in the outer circle, the corpse of a woman in the middle circle and the corpse of children is placed in the inner circle so that the strong sun shines on them and the vultures can see them from afar... and it is called 'Sag Deed', The four-eyed dog... It is this vision that decides whether a man will be virtuous."
"But uncle, where do these vultures come from?"
"If the sugar falls on the floor, where do the ants come from?"
Uncle asked and went inside.
The Parsis were coming out. Sohrab's naked body must have been left on the roof of the 'Dakhma'. I started looking at the sky again and again. Many Parsis also stopped. If the vultures do not come?
Will Sohrab's body continue to dry in the sun?
I involuntarily looked at the sky. A flock of vultures was coming fast towards 'Dakhma'. The faces of the Persians were happy. Twenty years later, this scene returned.
I don't know where they came from. They were asking each other.
"If sugar falls on the floor..."
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Baig Ehsaas is a short-story writer whose work is mainly concerned with chronicling the life of his native Hyderabad and its composite multilingual, multi-religious culture. He has written three short-story collections - Khusha-e-gandum, Hanzal, and Dukhma. The last work, centered around the lives of people living near a Parsi cemetery in Secunderabad, he won the 2017 Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu.
