Society Of Zombies

Legally dead due to clerical error or greedy relatives, thousands live in limbo

- Ushinor Majumdar

Baijnath grins broadly when you ask him if he’s still alive. You must be saving a lot on food bills? The grin nearly stretches from ear to ear. Even in legal death, he cannot fail to see the humour in his situation. In Azamgarh, paying respects to the dead will elicit a pleasant thank you in response—from the dead.  No, not from the beyond. And no, Phan­tom, the Ghost Who Walks, hasn’t relo­cated from Africa. Nor is it a script for a B­grade flick. But of course, legal death means you’re in for a life of horror.

Wait…legal death? Yes. On paper, it’s a kind of limbo—a trishanku state between those still breathing and those who have attained nirvana. De facto, you’re alive—so, sorry, no, not much savings on the overheads. But de jure, you’re dead meat. And the sheer effort it takes to get yourself declared alive is anything but funny. Not to speak of the implications of failing.

But how are living, breathing people legally bumped off? Well, as it happens, some time before computers took over lives, human existence and its cessation was certified on paper. The fact that people were born and lived was recorded in various registers. And title deeds certifying their ownership of properties were locked into apparently sacrosanct vaults of hardbound paper. These entries could be erased by the scratch of a pen by a powerful man called the ‘lekhpal’. He was the scribe for local land records and revenue office. But ever so often, he also doubled up as the angel of death.