Visitor:

Rahim received an average of six visitors daily. On Fridays and Sundays there would be more. Red eyed, sniffy nosed and leaving a strong trail of ittar wherever they went, his visitors would be new and old, but the same every time.

They say a graveyard is a dark place, after all it’s the home of decomposing carcasses. It’s supposed to smell of putrid and decay. But Rahim’s home smells amazing to him. Long garlands of Rajniganda and piles of withering roses would be scattered everywhere. Add to that some strong sandalwood incense and a graveyard smells no different than a perfume aisle. Rahim was so accustomed to this mesmerizing smell; he couldn’t go to sleep unless there was sandalwood in the air. So, every night, he would promptly light a stick of the same incense before retiring for bed, much to the chagrin of his wife, who preferred the smell of jasmines.

But Rahim carried the smells of his workplace on his white kurta, on his henna-ed beard and for the past forty-seven years in his modest bedroom too. As much as his wife detested it, she bore it without too many complaints. After all she was married to a graveyard’s gatekeeper. There were other things to worry about.

Like how Rahim’s kurta sleeve would always be damp, being a shoulder to weepy mourners. How his slippers would be crusted with dark soil, always walking on freshly dug dirt and how death to him was a daily affair. Nusrat hated the graveyard. It kept her husband away from him. But for Rahim his graveyard was his home and the mourners his visitors.

Sometimes there would be children, running from the bees and skipping across tombstones, sometimes a young couple, trying to get some privacy behind the huge sheesham tree and most days there would be the usual mourners. Rahim has perfected his face of grief and his sympathetic smile and after resisting it for 15 years now allowed the visitors to call him ‘Qabristan Dada’.

But today Rahim had a new visitor. As he stared at her, he didn’t have his face of grief on or his usual sympathetic smile. Rahim had a new visitor, someone he wished he didn’t have to entertain in his home. Today too his sleeve was damp and the dirty clung firmly to his sandals. As the crowds dispersed, Rahim stood there, at his usual spot, near the rusty gate and stared. Something struck him as he walked towards the new caller. Nusrat had visited his home finally.

He bent down and swept off the rose and sandalwood incense from her grave. Smiling softly, he got out a newspaper potli, full of fresh jasmine flowers and scattered them across her grave. He lights a single stick of jasmine incense and a sharp gust of wind spreads it across the whole graveyard. Tonight, Rahim’s home will finally smell the way Nusrat wanted it to. Because after tonight it’ll be Nusrat’s home too.