Prakash bought the blade and said, “Do it carefully da. If you cut a vital nerve, you’ll have to live as a khosa for the rest of your life.” So, I took the soap and the blade, stole Naina’s shaving brush and went to the cremation ground.
Because I have Telugu, Burmese, and Tamil ancestry, my East Asian friends often inquire whether I am from Thailand or Burma. Perhaps in my face they see the images of all these dead.
So the death of my father is now fodder for a story. This is the story of the writer in me walking all over my Naina’s life, and maybe his corpse too, and putting the journey into words. ‘Ordinary’ ethical frameworks can’t apply to a writer who walks on the ‘corpses’ of others.
The Asian Review 