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Mysteries of Clay

Wrishi Thakur Rafael

Oh! Come on! Don't just stand there like a nincompoop, exclaimed my teacher of the Forensic Science Department.

"For the last time a straight incision (a sharp cut made into something) all the way from the symphysis menti (chin) to the symphysis publis (a bony landmark 5 inches beneath the naval in adults) around the umbilicus (naval).

Yeah sure! I had done it once or twice before on other cadavers (corpses), but this time things were different. What lay before me was an aborted dead foetus which was probably in its last or second last month of intravulterine life (time before birth) before it ended up here. What we had on the autopsy table was an abomination; an extension of our treachery; an outcome of all our freakish desires.

The cops brought in the corpse a few hours back. According to the police inquest the corpse had been found among a heap of garbage inside a plastic bag in Dhanmondi earlier this morning. When the neighbours started to complain of the ghastly smell a few cops discovered the corpse inside the bag.

Now here I was accosted once again by the cruelest inevitability of life. It was my turn once again among 75 students, to help the department deduce a probable cause of death. I was standing with a knife in one hand which I will soon have to thrust into another mans flesh; to reveal the mystery of clay.

'Who could do such a thing?'
'Why didn't the mother wait till the time of birth, and then turn the baby over to an orphanage?"
'If death was accidental, (probably not) why didn't he receive a proper burial'?

I could almost hear myself think out loud. I was probably in a vindictive frame of mind when I heard myself say, 'The child deserves justice irrespective of legitimacy.'

I grasped the steely knife and went for it. At times I doubt the level of my sanity -- when I think over the things I see and do. They say this is just the start.

After a few shaky attempts, I was awed by the precision with which my hand cut through the corpse's skin, to disrupt the shiny glistening continuity.

The next hour or so ellapsed as we isolated his organs and butchered them to pieces for toxicological examination.
The gross examination of organs in the thoracic (chest) and abdominal cavities didn't show anything abnormal. It's customary now to open the cranial cavity (skull).

Now it was Shahana's turn to remove the scalp and expose the skull. Shahana is well known to be a bundle of nerves. But to everyone's surprise she carried out her task, which was to cut the scalp along a line joining the back of each ear. It was as if everyone in the morgue that day was doing there best to make sure this child receives some justice.

The two folds of skin were then pulled off to expose the skull. N.B. Human bones especially those of the skull are very soft until a few years after birth.
And Voila! The occipital bone (the bone on the back of the skull which is attached to the spine) had suffered a fracture and there was profuse brain hemorrhage.

"We may conclude that the death of our friend here occurred due to severe skull injury which occurred during the unskilled, possibly forcible abortion of the foetus during the eight month of intrauterine life," Remarked Bashar Sir.

Why should legitimacy, be the decisive factor for a person's existence?
Has the child's mother suffered as untimely demise as a consequence of abortion?
When will our libido stop getting in the way of other peoples lives?
How many like this kid are rotting in our gutters?

These questions will forever go unanswered because there are strict social taboos on such "sins". But unfortunately these "sins" are age-old religions with the most devotees. Only when the blood of our illegitimate kids stain our hands will we know the price of being born without a shred of conscience.