The Swayam Rites.

The Funeral Cake and the Scotch

Dr. Anna Marie looked at the clock and cursed under her breath. Five minutes had passed. It felt like an eternity in the suffocating, post-monsoon heat of the outpatient department.

The hospital had emptied out, leaving behind the distinct, depressing odor of phenyl and dying institutional light. Her desk was clear, save for the file of one Vijaya—fifty-five, self-sacrificing, and, by all accounts in her notes, utterly unhinged.

Anna Marie poured herself a finger of Amrut from the flask she hid behind the DSM-5 manual. She swallowed it neat, wincing as it burned away the day’s residue of other people’s miseries.

She re-read her own messy handwriting on Vijaya’s file. Patient claims Lord Krishna wants her dead. Plans to take an overdose after her son completes his grand engineering project. Intends to die in her ancestral village.

When Vijaya had sat across from her a month ago, she hadn’t wept or wrung her hands like the usual depressives. She had the smug, terrifying serenity of a woman who had already booked a first-class berth to the next world. She had spent two hours bloating her own resume of suffering: an abusive beast of a husband whose money came from smuggling car parts, an ungrateful wretch of a son building some useless computer engine, a daughter who didn’t bother to call. Vijaya had painted herself as the ultimate Indian mother—a professional martyr, steadfast while surrounded by absolute swine.

Yet, she hadn’t once named them. To Vijaya, they weren’t people; they were merely the stage props required for her grand crucifixion.

Then came the photograph on Anna Marie’s phone an hour ago. No text, just an old, decrepit house under a sky thick with monsoon clouds. A suicide note via WhatsApp. How wonderfully modern.

The door banged open. Inspector Elangovan marched in, bringing with him the smell of Charminar cigarettes, cheap sweat, and wet tarmac. He dropped heavily into the chair, grunting as his belly protested against his uniform belt.

“Doc, if this is another woman complaining that her mother-in-law is practicing black magic, I am going back to the station,” Elangovan grumbled, eyeing her glass. “Pour me one.”

Anna Marie slid the glass over. “Vijaya is missing. And she sent this.” She showed him the photo.

Elangovan squinted, took a swig of the whisky, and smacked his lips. “I know this place. It’s a godforsaken village near the coast. Ruined houses, nosy widows, and too many crows. But what’s the crime, Doc? People kill themselves everyday in this country. Usually because of the electricity bills or their daughters’ dowries.”

“Look at the photos in the file,” Anna Marie said, lighting a cigarette and tossing the match into a metal tray. “Left is Vijaya ten years ago. Right is Vijaya last month. Notice anything?”

Elangovan picked up the glossies, his thick fingers leaving smudges. “On the left, she looks like a decent girl from a good family. On the right… well, she looks like she’s been eating too many ghee laddoos. Her jaw is wide. Like a box.”

“That ‘box’ is a altered skeletal structure, Elangovan. The midface width is completely different. Ten years of marital misery makes you gray, it doesn’t turn your skull from an oval into a pentagon. Either she’s had a very expensive plastic surgeon reshape her face to hide from that criminal husband of hers, or we’ve been talking to a very clever imposter.”

Before Elangovan could formulate a suitably cynical reply, Anna Marie’s desk phone vibrated. The caller ID was blank. She picked it up and held it between them.

“Doctor?”

The voice was Vijaya’s, but the whining, pathetic cadence of the martyr was gone. It was replaced by the robust, throaty laugh of a woman who had just won the lottery.

“Vijaya,” Anna Marie said, her voice dropping into its professional, soothing tone. “Where are you? The Inspector is here. We are trying to help you.”

“Help me? Oh, my dear Doctor, I am far beyond the reach of your tablets and the Inspector’s handcuffs,” Vijaya chuckled. The sound of a temple bell chimed faintly in the background. “I told you Krishna wanted me dead. But you doctors have no imagination. You only think of ropes and poison.”

“What did He mean then, Vijaya?”

“He meant I should stop living their life,” Vijaya said, her voice crackling with a wicked, joyous triumph. “Yesterday, at dawn, I performed my own Swayam Shraddha. BTW thank you for the suggestion… I sat by the river, offered the pinda cakes to my own ancestors, and declared myself dead. I shaved this heavy head of hair, smashed the gold bangles my beast of a husband bought with black money, and wrapped myself in simple, unstitched cotton. In the eyes of the law, the temple, and my miserable family, Vijaya is a ghost. And you cannot beat, rob, or abuse a ghost.”

Elangovan leaned over the desk, his cigar smoke billowing into the receiver. “Listen, lady, faking your death to escape a household is—”

“Is beautiful, Inspector,” Vijaya interrupted smoothly. “My son got his degree yesterday; my duty to the womb is over. Today, I am a sanyasin. I have no name, no ration card, no husband, and no sins. Let the bastards look for my bloated corpse in the village well. They will find nothing but their own guilt.”

The line went dead with a sharp, definitive click.

The office returned to the dull hum of the ceiling fan. Elangovan stared at the phone, then down at the two different photographs. A slow, yellow-toothed grin spread across his mustache. He finished the rest of the Amrut in one gulp.

“Well, Doc,” Elangovan said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he stood up. “The law doesn’t have a warrant for a ghost. If her husband comes crying to the station, I’ll tell him to go hire an exorcist.”

Anna Marie stared at the empty, dark corridor outside her door. She thought of Vijaya out there under the vast, uncaring Indian sky, bald-headed and free, laughing at the wreckage she’d left behind.

“She didn’t just escape, Elangovan,” Anna Marie said, a sharp, rare smile breaking through her own exhaustion. “She managed to commit the perfect murder. She killed the only person she hated, and didn’t even have to hide the body.”