"'Too old,' muttered the attendant, but my friend had taken five quick steps to the corner. He leaned over to look at the face. The raised white fist of the corpse brushed against Sanjay's lifted shirt and bare belly.

"'Cousin Samar!' cried Sanjay with a half-sob. He clutched at the stiffened hand.

"'No, no, no,' said the morgue man. He blew his nose into the tail of his stained tunic. 'He came in only yesterday. Too new.'

"'Nonetheless, it is poor Cousin Samar,' said Sanjay in a choked voice. I saw real tears in his eyes.

"The morgue attendant shrugged and checked his clipboard. He had to look through several layers of forms. 'No identification. Brought in Tuesday morning. Found naked on Sudder Street . . . appropriate, yes? Estimated cause of death — broken neck resulting from fall or strangulation. Possibly robbed for his clothes. Estimated age, sixty-five.'

"'Cousin Samar was forty-nine,' said Sanjay. He dabbed at his eyes and returned the shirt to his nose. Again the attendant shrugged.

"'Jayaprakesh, why don't you look for Cousin Kamila?" said Sanjay. 'I will make arrangements for the transporting of Cousin Samar.'

"'No, no,' said the morgue man.

"'No?' Sanjay and I said together.

"'No.' The man frowned down at his clipboard. 'You cannot transport this body until it is identified.'

"'But I just identified him. It is Cousin Samar,' said Sanjay, still clutching the corpse's gnarled fist.

"'No, no. I mean officially identified it. That must be done at the post office.'

"'The post office?' I said.

"'Yes, yes, yes. The city administration has its Office of Missing Persons and Unclaimed Bodies there. Third floor. After proof of identification is made, there is a two-hundred-rupee fee to the city. Two hundred rupees for each identified loved one, that is.'

"'Ayeeh!' cried Sanjay. Two hundred rupees for what?'

"'For the official identification and certification, of course. Then you must go to the Municipal Corporation offices on Waterloo Street. They are open to the public only on Saturdays.'

"'That is three days away!' I cried.

"'Why must we go there?' asked Sanjay.

"'To pay the collection fee of five hundred rupees, of course. For their transporting service.' The attendant sighed. 'So, before releasing the body, I must have the identification certificate, the identification payment receipt, the collection payment receipt, and of course, a copy of your License to Transport Deceased Persons.'

"'Ahhh,' said Sanjay. He released Cousin Samar's hand. 'And where do we get such a license?'

"'From the Bureau of Licenses in the State Administrative Offices near Raj Bhavan.'

"'Of course,' said Sanjay. 'And it costs — '

"'Eight hundred rupees per deceased person you wish to transport. There is a group rate for more than five.'

"'Is that all we need?' asked Sanjay, and his voice held the edge to it that I often had heard just before he struck out at walls or kicked the little Burmese children who cluttered our courtyard and stairways.

"'Yes, yes,' said the attendant. 'Except the death certificate. I can make that out.'

"'Aghhh,' breathed Sanjay. 'The cost?'

"'A mere fifty rupees,' smiled the attendant. 'Then there is the matter of the rent.'

"'Rent?' I repeated, speaking through my shirt.

"'Yes, yes, yes. We are very crowded, as you can see. There is a fifteen-rupee per day rental fee for space provided.' He consulted the clipboard. 'Your cousin Samar's rent comes to 105 rupees.'

"'But he's only been here one day!' I cried.

" True, true. But I fear we must charge for the entire week because he received special facilities because of his . . . ah . . . advanced stage. Shall we look to your Cousin Kamila now?'

" This will cost us almost two thousand rupees!' exploded Sanjay. 'For each body!'

"'Oh yes, yes,' said the morgue man with a smile. 'I trust that the rug business in Varanasi is healthy these days?'

"'Come along, Jayaprakesh,' said Sanjay as he turned to leave.

"'But what about Cousin Kamila?' I cried.

"'Come along!' Sanjay said and pulled me from the room.

"There was a white truck outside the morgue. Sanjay approached the driver. "The bodies,' he said. 'Where do they go?'

"'What?'

"'Where do the unclaimed bodies go when they're taken from here?'

"The driver sat up and frowned. 'To Naidu Infectious Diseases Hospital. Most of them. They dispose of them.'

"'Where is that?'

"'Way out on Upper Chitpur Road.'

"It took us an hour to get there by streetcar through heavy traffic. The old hospital was crowded with people hoping to recover or waiting to die. The long hallways, overflowing with beds, reminded me of the morgue. Birds came in through the bars on the windows and hopped among the tousled sheets, hoping to find stray crumbs. Lizards skittered across the cracked walls and I saw a rodent scurry under a bed as we passed.

"A mustached intern suddenly blocked our path. 'Who are you?'

"Sanjay, taken by surprise, gave our names. I could tell that his mind was working furiously to concoct an adequate story.

"'You're here about the bodies, aren't you?' demanded the intern.

"We both blinked.

"'You're reporters, aren't you?' asked the man.

"'Yes,' agreed Sanjay.

"'Damn. We knew this would get out,' growled the intern. 'Well, it's not our fault!'

"'Why not?' asked Sanjay. From his skirt pocket he removed the battered old notebook in which he kept records of the Beggarmasters' payments, our laundry bills, and our market lists. 'Would you care to make a statement?' He licked the end of a broken pencil.

"'Come this way,' snapped the intern. He led us through a ward of typhoid patients, into an adjoining kitchen, and outside past heaps of garbage. Behind the hospital there was an empty weeded field that covered several acres. In the distance were visible the burlap lean-tos and tin roofs of a growing chawl. A rusting bulldozer sat in the weeds and against it leaned an old man with baggy shorts and an ancient bolt-action rifle.

"'Heeyah!' screamed the intern. The old man jumped and shouldered the rifle. 'There! There!' cried the intern and pointed out into the weeds. The old man fired and the sound of the shot echoed off the tall building behind us.

"'Shit, shit, shit!' yelled the intern and bent quickly to rise with a large stone in his hand. Out in the weeds, a gray dog with prominent ribs had raised its head at the sound of the gunshot and now stared at us. The scrawny beast turned and loped off with its tail between its legs and something pink in its mouth. The intern threw his stone, and it dropped into the weeds halfway between him and the dog. The old man at the bulldozer was wrestling with the bolt of the rifle.

"'Damn,' said the intern and led us out across the field. There were scars and mounds of dirt everywhere, as if the bulldozer had pawed at the earth here for years like a huge house cat. We stopped at the edge of a shallow pit where we had first seen the dog.

"'Ay!' I said and backed away. The rotting human hand that rose out of the moist soil had brushed against my sandal and touched my bare foot. Other things were visible. Then I noticed the other pits, the other dogs in the distance.

"'It was all right ten years ago,' said the intern, 'but now, with that industrial basti coming so close . . .' He broke off to throw another rock at another pack of dogs. The animals calmly trotted into the bushes. Behind us, the old man had succeeded in ejecting the spent cartridge and was levering another bullet in.

"'Were these Muslims or Christians?' asked Sanjay. His pencil was poised.

"'Hindus, most likely. Who knows?' the intern spat. The crematoria do not wish to have unpaying customers. But the damned dogs have been digging them up like this for months now. We were willing to pay until . . . Wait. You have heard about what happened today? That is why you're here, is it not?'