The Death of Vishnu Read online

  What would he do, she wondered, if she went over and sat next to him, and took his hand in hers? Or pressed her lips to his. Ran her hand down his stomach to his thigh as Salim had taught her to do. She captured the giggle in her throat before it could escape. She could have him stretched out helplessly next to her on the sofa in a minute. “No, let me go,” she could cry to bring the adults running back in.

  “Are you two talking to each other, or what?” Mrs. Asrani called from the other room. “Don’t feel shy, now—talk.”

  Since Pran wasn’t about to say anything, there was nothing to do but take the initiative herself. “I like the furniture in Lalwani aunty’s drawing room. Especially the wall hangings. Is that from Kashmir, do you think?”

  Again, she saw the blush spread from his cheeks down to his neck and up his ears. She got up to inspect the tapestry. “The border, especially, it’s so intricately woven.”

  Pran mumbled something behind her, and she turned around.

  “Hmm? What did you say?” Kavita asked, eager to hear something, anything, from him.

  “I hope you say yes,” Pran said, his brown eyes lifting to her face.

  “What?”

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said, just as Mrs. Asrani, unable to contain herself any more, burst through the door.

  THEY ARE AT the outskirts of Lonavala. Vishnu sees himself at the wheel of the Fiat, sees Padmini beginning to stir by his side. By the time they reach the city center, she is wide awake and hungry. “Let’s stop for some bhajia, hot-hot,” she says, as they pass a halwai shop.

  The bhajia are, indeed, hot—the halwai is ladling a fresh batch of the fritters out of an enormous cauldron of oil. He mixes them with salt and wraps a handful in newspaper for Vishnu.

  “Did you get the chili ones?” Padmini asks, poking around in the newspaper. She pulls out a chili by the stem and takes a large bite. “Ah,” she says, closing her eyes, “there’s nothing like a chili bhajia. My mother had to fry up an extra batch every time, just for me, because otherwise nobody else would get any.”

  “Where is she now, your mother?” Vishnu asks, and Padmini looks up sharply. He realizes he has said the wrong thing.

  “I haven’t come here to relate my Ramayana to you,” she says, her face tight.

  But later, at the market, she volunteers matter-of-factly, “She lives near Ratnagiri. She thinks I make dresses for a living.”

  Padmini laughs. “Can you imagine? Me, a seamstress? I couldn’t sew a diaper for an infant, much less a dress. But at least this way she doesn’t expect any money from me. Let her sons support her.”

  There are so many questions in Vishnu’s mind. He is hungry for information about Padmini. Every bit she opens up is a step towards the chance that she will love him. “Do you ever see your mother?” he asks.

  But Padmini is not listening, distracted by a man selling toys. “Buy this for me,” she commands, pointing to a doll made of cloth stuffed with cotton.

  They drive to Sunset Point. The overlook is high enough that mist hovers in patches, even though sunlight sweeps down from the sky to dissipate it. Mountains stretch from east to west in a solid wall, their slopes lush with the green of jambul trees. Cutting through the vegetation are the fine white lines of waterfalls, emanating from springs high above. A koyal sings somewhere, its notes resonating clearly in the crispness of the air.

  “Can you hear him? I wonder where he’s hiding,” Padmini says, running to the railing. “Koo-koo, koo-koo,” she cries to the mountains, cupping her hands. She cocks her head to listen for an echo, an answer. “Koo-koo,” she repeats, but there is no response. The only sound they hear is the rush of water spouting unseen from somewhere below.

  She turns around and poses against the railing. “I wish you had a camera,” she pouts, stretching out against the poles and rubbing her body against them.

  The wind picks up and drapes her dupatta around her head. She looks up, the yellow silk veiling her face, and Vishnu thinks she might have just emerged from a temple.

  “It’s so nice that there’s no one here,” she says, and Vishnu moves to the railing next to her. All night, he has looked at her lying so close next to him, wanting to touch her, to taste her, to breathe her in.

  “So beautiful,” Padmini says, and stops, as Vishnu positions his lips next to hers. Before she can draw back, he kisses her through her veil. She looks down at the ground as he picks up the edges of the dupatta and raises it slowly up her face.

  “Am I your bride?” she asks, as he kisses her on the forehead, then on the lips again.

  “You ran away with me, remember,” he says.

  “Then how many of these would you like?” Padmini asks, holding up the cloth doll. She waves it in his face.

  For a moment, Vishnu thinks that here they are, the two of them, or maybe a family of three. They have come up to Lonavala, like other people, for a long-awaited holiday. Back in Bombay, they are a real couple, and real lives await them. Not rich ones, necessarily, just ordinary lives. A flat or even only a room, with a cupboard and a bed. A toilet that is probably shared, a kerosene stove like the one his mother had. An address and a ration card, a postman who brings them mail. A job to go to every morning, a woman to whom he is wed.

  Perhaps it shows in his face, because Padmini stops smiling. For an instant, he thinks he glimpses concern mixed in with the confusion in her expression.

  Then the absurdity of the situation strikes him. The preposterousness of his images, the foolishness of his feelings, the comicality of chasing currents that skim across Padmini’s face. He thinks how absurd this whole trip has been, how absurd is the presence of the two of them in Lonavala, how absurd is the scenery itself that stretches before them. He thinks of poor, ridiculous Mr. Jalal, waiting back in Bombay for his Fiat, and of how Padmini will react when he asks her to buy them petrol so they can get back. Relief comes pouring in, and he begins to laugh; laugh at the veil still covering Padmini’s head, laugh at the doll dangling by her side, laugh at the reassurance his laughter brings to her eyes. Padmini begins to laugh as well, and from somewhere in the faraway trees, the koyal joins in with its mocking call, and as the peals of their mirth get louder, Vishnu hears them sound through the valley, echo across the mountains, and reverberate up into the sky.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT WAS DARK by the time the taxi reached Dongri. The call to the evening prayer was echoing from the buildings, and Mrs. Jalal cocked her ear and listened to the familiar sound. She missed having the masjid with the peacock-green tiles just around the corner, missed the summons from the prayer tower that marked each day into regular segments. Down the road, she knew the women in their black burkhas would be haggling with the butcher from behind their veils at the Rahim Meat Shop, and next to it, old Anwar chacha might still be sitting at the register of the Allah Ijazat Hotel, calling out orders for fish fry and lamb’s feet to the workers in the kitchen. She wondered if he would recognize her now, if he would offer her a sweet from the jar he kept at his elbow, as he did every time her mother sent her down to fetch cold drinks from him.

  She walked down Jail Road and turned into the market street. The corridor was as crowded as ever, with throngs of people milling around and arguing with the vendors squatting on the ground. Everywhere were piles of fruits and vegetables, mounds of glossy black brinjals, pyramids of carefully stacked oranges, baskets of ripe red tomatoes, and most precious of all, crates filled with green and yellow mangoes, still partially wrapped in tissue to protect them from bruising. There was a man hawking kerosene stove parts, another with tubes of insect repellent (except the brand read Odomol, not Odomos), and outside the Indore Sweetmeat Store, a boy standing over dozens of identical plastic dolls spread out on a sheet, like babies arranged in orderly rows in an orphanage. “Two for three, two for three,” the tout yelled out, and Mrs. Jalal felt a hundred eyes peering up at her from the ground, reproaching her for not saving them at such a bargain.

  At the corner
of Nawoji Hill Road, she paused. Down the street, next to the bus stop around the bend, used to be the chaatwalla stand where she had first met Ahmed. She wondered if it would still be there, if she should walk down and check for it. All those evenings that Nafeesa and she had succumbed to the promise of chili on their palates, the anticipation of tamarind tickling their throats, hooking them and reeling them in as surely as fish at the end of a line. The dark winter evenings, the hot and listless summers, even the rainiest days of the monsoons, when they huddled next to the chaatwalla under the bus stop shelter, and the wind tried to pluck away the leaves folded into cups from their hands.

  And that one moonlit starry night—or perhaps it was cloudy and starless—when she crushed that first golgappa in her mouth, felt the crisp papdi shards and the soft yielding chickpeas between her teeth, tasted the sweet and fiery chutneys on her tongue, closed her eyes as the gush of tamarind water exploded down her throat. The initial dose of acid and spice always brought tears to her eyes. As she dabbed at them, she was dimly aware of Ahmed smiling at her from the other end of the semicircle of customers. He raised his leaf to her, and when the chaatwalla doled out a golgappa into it, scooped the papdi out and closed his mouth around it with an expression of such luxuriant satisfaction it could have only been for her benefit.

  She looked away at once, not wanting to acknowledge his expression. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the large steel vessels and earthenware pots rising from the red cloth covering the stand. She watched intently as each golgappa was created: the tap to make the hole in the top of the papdi, the scoops to fill it with chickpeas and chutney, the final immersion into the pot of tamarind water, the chaatwalla’s hand disappearing almost to the elbow. She had been determined to keep her attention thus occupied, but then her second golgappa developed a leak, and as she tilted her head to swallow the water spilt into the leaf, her vision got entangled in Ahmed’s smile again.

  She almost smiled back. But she caught herself in time, summoning up a glare instead. A glare, she hoped, that would burn with the same intensity as that of the kerosene lamp blazing at the center of the stand. It worked—not only did Ahmed look away, but he motioned to the chaatwalla that he had had enough, and was ready to pay.

  As they searched for turnips in the market afterwards, she told Nafeesa what had happened.

  “The nerve of these hooligans,” her sister responded. “They grow more audacious day by day. Just imagine, while eating pani-puri, no less!” Nafeesa shook her head. “But tell me, Arifa, what did he look like—was he at least handsome, this Romeo of yours?”

  “He wasn’t my Romeo,” Arifa snapped, “and I was only trying to eat my golgappas, not be a judge in some beauty contest.”

  “Of course you did the right thing. But such severity? He was only smiling at you after all, the bechara.”

  She had been about to berate her sister for being so naive when suddenly there was Ahmed, at the Ijazat Hotel counter.

  “Oh my God, it’s him,” she whispered. “And he’s talking to Anwar chacha.”

  What her sister did next was supposed to have been a prank. But it changed everything, it changed her life.

  “Let’s have some fun,” Nafeesa said, and holding her by the wrist, pulled her to Ahmed.

  She had never quite decided how much gratitude and how much resentment to feel towards her sister. Over the years, she had felt both, maybe even in equal measure. Ahmed turned out to be the son of a friend of Anwar chacha, and with his credentials thus established, acquired an immediate sheen of respectability—and eligibility. Nafeesa quickly pronounced him too ugly, and was surprised that the meeting developed into anything more. (“All those scars on his face—so unfortunate he had smallpox, but does that mean one has to marry him out of pity?”) But Arifa looked beyond the face, beyond the scars, into the intensity burning in his eyes. She was fascinated by it, fascinated and a little frightened, because she could not tell from where it sprang, or how deep one would have to delve to find its source.

  And she was flattered. Here was someone who was interested in her. Not Nafeesa, the glamorous one, but her, Arifa, the one with the awkward limbs and the gawky body, the one whose face, according to her aunt, so serenely radiated its plainness, the one with the personality, she had been advised, that could only aspire to pleasantness. A man, a suitor, who wanted to know what she thought, what she felt; who gave the promise, so recklessly professed, that he would carry her away and change her world. She had trembled in the little green tract near the masjid, as Ahmed had held her hand and said this. The buildings behind them had listened on in silence, the windows all around had borne witness.

  She would always remember that pouring July afternoon, not too many days later, when they sneaked upstairs to the third-floor verandah. She had spent all morning experimenting with Nafeesa’s makeup, and as Ahmed led her through the doorway, she wondered if the rain was going to wash it all off. He pulled her to him and embraced her, and she felt the heat of his skin through the wetness of his shirt. The flower pots on the ledge began to fill, and she watched the water, red with earth, run over the rims and disappear down to the street below. Drops of rain splashed off his face onto hers, and she was surprised to find her mouth seeking his. Their lips, amazingly, made contact, and she stood there, riveted by the shock of the kiss.

  Ahmed did keep his promise, taking her away from her world—from the masjid, the market, from her house, her family. She had felt so strange moving into his flat, sandwiched as it was between Hindu families both above and below. Instead of a masjid, there was a church across the street, the tip of its white cross visible when she lay down and stared through her bedroom window. She had missed the market the most, the fruitwalla here next to Variety Stores being overpriced and arrogant, the meat shop too far to walk to, and no Anwar chacha to greet her at the Irani hotel downstairs.

  It had taken some time before she had learnt to listen for the vendors carrying meat and produce from house to house, shouting the names of their wares and looking at the balconies for customers. Mrs. Taneja, from upstairs, had shown her where the chaatwallas sat near Breach Candy, and she had found she could take the 81 bus all the way to the mosque near Metro. Downstairs, the paanwalla started greeting her with a “Namaste, Jalal memsahib,” and the cigarettewalla started doing the same. And every time Vishnu saw her on the steps, he inquired if memsahib needed a taxi, and ran down ahead to flag one down if she nodded.

  She had never been able to solve the puzzle of what Ahmed had seen in her, why he had married her in the first place. After all, he was from a family that had both wealth and culture, and she was not the person his parents would have picked for him (as his mother had assured her once). At first, she had obsessed about this question, and tried to force an answer out from him. But with time had come the realization that it might not be something she really wanted to learn.

  She often wondered, though, if Ahmed had truly come to love her in those first few years. That crucial period, when love, if it catches, can be enough for a lifetime of memories, as the song went. She had almost made it there herself, reaching the stage where she could look into her heart, and view the room she was preparing for him. A little longer, and she would have ushered him in and captured him there forever. There might have still been doubts, and anguish even, but she would have been able to subsume anything into the thickness of those walls.

  Mrs. Jalal sighed. This was not the time to worry about the empty chambers people carried around in their hearts. This was not the time to follow the call of tamarind back into the past. She was visiting Nafeesa to talk things through, not break down and wrest her pity. It was important she keep her composure, important she get her mind off such maudlin thoughts.

  Mrs. Jalal peered one last time towards the invisible bus stop. Then she crossed the street and walked the remaining distance to Nafeesa’s building.

  KAVITA SAT AT the dining table, staring at the masala chicken on her plate. It was her favorite dish. Her
mother had taken great care that morning to fry the masala until it was nice and red, and decorate the dish extravagantly with cashews before bringing it out. The accompanying rice was deep gold with turmeric, and generously laden with the tasty bits of fried onion that Kavita so loved picking out. “There’s even mango kulfi for dessert,” Shyamu excitedly whispered to her as they sat down. “You must let lots more boys look at you before saying yes.”

  Food was the last thing on Kavita’s mind. All she had been able to think about, through the daze of the trip back from Lalwani aunty’s house, were the words Pran had spoken to her.

  “I hope you say yes.”

  She had just stood there and stared at him. His head lifting up, his eyes meeting her face, his cheeks, his neck, his ears turning red.

  “You’re very beautiful.”

  She could hardly believe it. Her charms had worked. She had ensnared herself an engineer, just as she had set out to do. What heights her beauty must have moved the poor bashful boy to, that he was able to summon up the courage to bring forth such words. Pran’s eyes opened before her, like buds flowering reticently in the light—she could feel the breath catch in his throat and hear the blood pound in his ears.

  What part of her, she wondered, had he found most irresistible? Had it been her hair? The locks that (people said) curled around her face so perfectly, the tresses that (they added) cascaded so luxuriantly down to her shoulders? Or was it her eyes—so round and wide (and eyeliner-accentuated today), against which Mrs. Kotwani had pressed her lips so lovingly in farewell. Or maybe her lips, painted with her new Revlon lipstick, the one so startlingly red that her mother had forbidden her to wear a red dress with it. She had kept her lips in a pout and glossed them over frequently with her tongue. Pran’s eyes, she had noticed, had sneaked several times to their level before darting away.