Orpheus in Madras I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a dead body. Not the bodies that are unfolding daily on our screens, being killed elsewhere on a scale that is terrifying. Not genocidal death, but singular death. Death next door, in the flesh, so to speak. It was April 2023. A friend’s aunt had suffered a long illness and it was with some relief and sadness that a few of us gathered at the local crematorium, where the body was brought first to an outdoor hall in the presence of a statue of Kal Bhairav and his...