Space Funerals

by Sameer Kulkarni

The headlines in The Times, these days, aren’t for the unenlightened souls. Even as I opened the pages fronting the Lifestyle section this morning, there still was nothing that brought me out of my hebetude, but then I was awed with this gem: “Why Bury Grandpa Underground When You Could Launch Him Into Space?” It was about a company that was making space funerals a thing, and it promptly reminded me of the derring-do tales of our innovative times.

Although most of the enlightened thoughts behind the insemination of such enterprises stay hidden behind the shroud, the least we can do is speculate on what must have caused it.

* * *

In the Essex & Wessex Investments office, the CEO, Mr. Shackleton moseyed over his Chief Accountant, Anthony Bodkin’s cubicle, with a furrowed brow. “Heigh ho! Bodkin, heigh ho!” Shackleton said.

“Sir?”

“Alas! This day had to come.”

Thinking that his boss was infected with black bile, Bodkin started with T.S. Eliot: “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams...”

“All right, enough! Here’s the pickle: I have got a million dollars on my hand, and tax day is approaching. I want you to figure out a way to put it down as a write-off.”

“But, sir, we will have to invest the money first and take some losses.”

“Invest it then, but get me a write-off.”

“At such a short notice?”

“Blackmail, eh? Is it not safer to rob me in the old wonted fashion, a pen here and a notebook there? All right! If you figure it out, you will get a 50% bonus and you will get to park in front of the main door.”

“But aren’t those front slots supposed to be reserved for handicaps?”

“Ah, good point! I knew I was missing something. Marvin, I say, what is the handicap for Sunday’s golf tourney?”

* * *

Bodkin was at his barber’s reading a newspaper. The chaired incumbent left with a white sticking plaster on his right ear.

“Hey ho, Antoine!” Bodkin greeted his barber.

“Monsieur Bodkin! I am sorry you had to wait.”

“That’s quite all right, Antoine! We must all wait for our turn, eh?”

While in lather, Bodkin blathered a little about mundane things, and then inquired after Antoine’s recent writing project. Antoine was a closet novelist, who specialized in macabre tales of the night.

“Anything new leaked from your pen, Antoine?”

Antoine nodded but then hesitated, with an embarrassing gleam in his eyes, and continued to shave Bodkin.

“What is it, Antoine?”

“Well, monsieur, only if you won’t laugh...”

Bodkin, looking at the blade that was so near his right ear and remembering the earlier customer who had left in a plaster, said, “What, me joke about literature?”

“My new story is about a mortician, a murderer by night, who invents space funerals. No bodies, no evidence. He sends the ashes on a plane that his friend owns and has them strewn in outer space.”

Bodkin was amazed but didn’t say anything. When he paid for his shave, his ears still intact, he realized that this would be an excellent idea for that million-dollar investment.

* * *

At Bodkin’s brother-in-law’s dinner party, quite a lot of esteemed people were on the roster, amongst them the Chief Scientific Advisor to the White House, Bert Perkins.

“How’s work, Bodkin?”

“Bert Perkins! How’s it hanging?”

“Anything new at the office?”

“Oh, did you hear about the Space Funerals?” Bodkin slipped it in, realizing this was a perfect opportunity.

Bodkin then proceeded to narrate Perkins a story about how Russia was arranging space funerals so that even the proletariat, willingly or unwillingly, would be sent to space. If the U.S. didn’t act immediately, they would surely lose their edge in the space race.

Perkins gasped at the news and, a little goggly-eyed, blurted, “Dammit!”

“This is a secret but, just because it’s you, Perkins, I will spill. I have an investor lined up for this, my boss, coincidentally. So if the White House is interested...”

Realizing this was a real deal and Bodkin was now an ally, Perkins realized it was safe to switch to acronyms. “WH will be interested when I inform them about the RSP, and I am sure POTUS will want to start something immediately.”

“There is one small problem though. Shackleton will invest a million dollars in this, but his pockets are one-way. Unless he gets a tax write-off for this project, he won’t sign the check.”

“Don’t you worry about that. You get things done your end, I will manage mine.”

* * *

Space Funerals Inc. had been growing since its launch three months previously. Shackleton ended up hiring scam artists who were good at tampering the space-funeral video, and he was saving money like Portuguese salt sardines. However, a brouhaha occurred under the offices of Space Funerals Inc. which Bodkin and Shackleton were visiting. Shackleton asked Bodkin to go down and sniff.

At least five different groups of people were shouting, with boards in their hands, half of the heads down in their phones, busy taking videos rather than protesting.

A busty woman of about fifty, who looked like she was about to split in half, appeared to be leading a woman’s group, with a t-shirt emblazoned with “Women who funerate in Space.” Realizing there was a silence to fill, she shouted, “Hire more women pilots!”

A right-wing Thomistic group leader with a hoodie followed: “Only Catholics should be funerated up there. We believe in Heaven!”

A cheeky girl in her baby brother’s t-shirt and cute suspenders raised her hand, and several butterflies fluttered out of her armpit. She shouted, “You capitalistic pigs! Lower the prices!”

There were others who had nothing to say but were sufficiently interested in what others had to say. They were alternately joining the woman’s group or the Thomistic one, but they all agreed that communism was bad. In the process, the girl was soon trampled on but escaped by rolling into a roadside gutter.

Bodkin was getting weary of it all when an ash-blonde with eyes the colour of the Sargasso Sea sidled up next to him. As a true accountant, his brain was busy putting together the number of years she had been on this planet.

Before he could say anything, she turned and slid her hand through his blazer and reached for his flask. She took a quick swig and gave it back to him. A certain moistness appeared in the Sargasso Sea, as if the rye had anchored in her eyes. She said, “The black dress, the veils, the umbrellas, the unexpected rain, the rotten leaves, the moist soil, the withered flowers, the flourishing moss on the tombstone.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bodkin said, in some shock.

Pointing to a woman in the crowd, the girl said, “That’s my grandma right there. Both my parents died when I was very young, and I was raised by my grandparents. My grandpa died a few months ago. I talk to him now when I visit him at his grave. I miss him. You know how many people visit the cemetery on a weekend? I have counted twenty myself, and I failed high school math.”

Bodkin had always thought smartness was overrated, and those lush, red lips and blue eyes did things to him. Besides, she had seen through him and had known that he couldn’t swing it on his own; the flask was his emancipator. He took another swig from his flask and handed it over to her. She took a pull, and the trickle of rye rolled over from the edge of her lips melted his liver.

Before he could recite her some Byron and pass it off as his own, her grandma walked over and asked him if he knew what floor the Space Funerals Inc. was on. He said he could show her, and they walked inside the building

Bodkin looked over his shoulder at the girl as she stayed put. There was something real about her; he thought he would run upstairs, tell his boss he was quitting, and ask the girl to share his flask for the rest of her life.

Inside the office, Shackleton was brushing his secretary’s B-52 as she sat on the floor, cigarettes dangling from both their mouths. But the moment Bodkin and the old woman entered, Shackleton panicked and stubbed his cigarette in his secretary’s B-52 without her feeling anything.

Before they could be introduced, the old woman realized who the boss was and went straight to Shackleton. “Listen, buster. What is this nonsense with space funerals?’

“It’s a novel concept, you see...” he said, trying at the same time to extinguish smoke from his secretary’s coiffure.

“I buried my husband of forty years three months ago. I go to his grave on the weekends with my granddaughter, and she likes it. She talks to him. Now, this nonsense business of yours—”

“Well, if it’s a sentimental thing with you, we could—’

“Who said anything about sentiments? I couldn’t give a damn about my dead husband. He was a conniving bastard, a libertine, if you ever met one. Even now if you dig him up, you will find him in a neighborly woman’s grave, cozying up to her, giving her the same flowers I put at the foot of his grave and wishing he had three hands.”

“Then, what...’

“It’s about my business. I am an undertaker, and I arrange everything for funerals. From flowers to urns, you name it and I will provide. And my business was booming until your stupid idea came along. Do you understand what I am saying, you knucklehead?”

“Well...”

Bodkin had never seen his boss so thoroughly get owned by someone else. The woman wouldn’t let even a word slip in sideways.

By the time their conversation was over, Shackleton had agreed to shut down his operation and still get a tax write-off through the old woman’s connections, which apparently were better and higher than his.

Shackleton’s secretary, who was now at her desk, took out a backscratcher from one of the shelves and looked at Shackleton, roguishly. Shackleton, having already forgotten about the old woman’s episode, happily walked over while Bodkin hurried downstairs to check on the Sargasso Sea.