Abstract
On a recent fieldwork excursion to West Bengal, India, a region I have studied as a cultural anthropologist for the past twenty-five years, I was struck by how elders so readily spoke of their readiness for death. Virtually every older person I encountered talked about being ready to die, or remarked that they were going to die soon, or queried, “Who knows if I will still be here the next time you come back?” I had noticed this way of speaking for years, but this time it caught my attention more keenly, as it seemed a striking contrast to what