The Death of Vishnu Read online

  It was certainly a call for elation, this success she’d achieved in her first try at being a temptress. Why then was a part of her so confused? The part that had noticed the smooth fine hairs glistening along Pran’s upper lip. The part that had detected the quiver at his throat as he had strained to get the words out, the part that had looked deeper into his eyes than had probably been prudent. There had been a tenderness hiding there, an unexpected sensitivity, that had shyly communicated its presence from behind the fear. For an instant, her own breast had throbbed with his longing, and she had felt an urge to sweep him into her arms and squeeze his ache away. To reach through his timidity, to coax out the tenderness caged inside, and feel its warm presence nuzzle against her face.

  “Look at her, can’t even eat anything,” her mother said, bringing out the ice cream. “What’s the matter, can’t stop thinking about you-know-who?” Mrs. Asrani beamed, radiating goodwill at everyone at the table.

  Somewhere the lights were dimming, and a movie was starting up. Her parents and his parents hugging each other as she said yes. Anita and the rest of her girlfriends giggling as the henna was put on her hands. People lining up along the sands at Juhu to watch the wedding procession arrive. Trumpets and trombones gleaming as the band played a song from Bobby. No, Sachcha Jhootha. No, Do Raaste. No…she’d have to think about the music.

  Pran arriving on a mare, just like the groom at Anita’s wedding. Riding it all the way to the entrance of the Holiday Inn. Or maybe, the Kotwanis having insisted, it was the Oberoi instead, and Anita was green with envy. Shyamu eating too many laddoos and sadly having to be led away before the ceremony. The groom blushing even more than the bride as the priest started the prayers.

  But just then, a reel from a different movie seemed to get mixed in. There she was again, all dressed up as a bride, but now it was Salim, not Pran, next to her. And they weren’t at the Oberoi, or even the Holiday Inn—they were at Victoria Terminus, sitting in a train. The whistle blew, the train began to move, and slowly they drew out of the station. The streets started passing by, the houses illuminated silently by the mercury lights, the vendors rolling their carts through the empty markets, the stations deserted at this time of night. Salim’s arms encircled her body, his face drew next to hers, and together they looked through the window, at the city they had lived in all their life.

  Then suddenly it was the first movie again, and she was sitting on their petal-strewn bed in the bridal suite of the Oberoi. She felt her gunghat being lifted up, and looked down at her henna-stained feet, then allowed her vision to rise to Pran’s face. Except it wasn’t his eyes she saw, but Salim’s. That mischievous, leering look she knew so well, those lips which always seemed ready to kiss. Salim’s mouth pressed against hers, and she smelled the spicy fragrance of his skin, tasted the toothpaste freshness of his tongue. The petals floated away, the room trembled and dissolved around them, and the sky began to lighten through the window. She found herself snug against Salim in a railway berth, a blanket wrapped tightly around their bodies. Dawn raced along with them, breaking in a thin orange line across the fields outside. She closed her eyes against Salim’s chest and let the train rock her back to sleep.

  “So what did you think, beti?” her mother asked, interrupting her romantic-dawn-in-the-train scene. Kavita felt a hand stroke her hair lightly, questioningly. “Do you think we should go forward with it?”

  “Really, Aruna, there should be some limit—give the poor child a chance to breathe at least,” her father said.

  “You stay out of this, jee. Lots of breathing you’ve let her do. Even the people down the street have been hearing her breathing.” Then, seeing Kavita’s expression, Mrs. Asrani quickly softened her tone. “All I’m saying is that if we like him, we shouldn’t delay. What if tomorrow some other girl turns his head—engineers don’t grow on trees, you know. Especially not Voltas.”

  “I say we show her around some more,” Shyamu announced, licking the last of his ice cream. “And get pista flavor next time.”

  Should she say yes? Should she agree to marry Pran? What about Salim? What about the money she had withdrawn from the bank? Even if she were to put it back now, how would she explain it on the monthly statement? Besides, it was nine-thirty already, and Salim would be waiting for her on the terrace at midnight.

  The movie had been rewound to their wedding night again. Except this time, as she and Pran were being wed, Salim was singing a sad song, alone, on the terrace. Looking across the bay, calling to his love, reminding her of the promises they had made to each other. His eyes, so full of playfulness usually, now so empty and far away.

  No, this was too sad, she couldn’t do this to Salim. She needed to find another way. But where was the time? Already her sari had been secured to the wedding cloth trailing behind Pran, and the seven circles around the fire were about to start.

  Suddenly a voice rings out across the hall. It carries the authority of a thousand wedding scenes past, declaring the sentence that has been inescapable since talking movies began.

  “This marriage cannot take place!”

  Conversation stops, and people look up, shocked. The priest drops his holy spoon in the fire. Pran tries to get his headdress off, but can’t.

  It is Salim, astride the same white mare that carried Pran to the hotel earlier. He gallops through the ballroom of the Oberoi, vaulting over tables laden with food. Guests scatter in his wake, and he rides up to the very mandap itself.

  With one stroke of his sword, he slices the knot binding Kavita to Pran. He scoops her up with his other arm, then waves at the speechless onlookers. He spurs his mare, and they stride up the stairs. They burst through the lobby, and into the night outside. They gallop past the Air India building, past the Oval Grounds, past Flora Fountain. In the distance, Kavita sees Queen Victoria standing above her railway station. Holding her beacon high above her head, lighting the way to escape, to victory, to freedom. The train waiting inside, steam rising from the nostrils of its rearing engine.

  She would do it. She would elope with Salim. It was meant to be. She would try not to think of the forlorn figure removing his headdress in the empty Oberoi hall.

  “Mummy,” Kavita said, and Mrs. Asrani shushed at everyone for quiet. “Mummy, I think—I think I might like to say yes.”

  THE SUN HAS set. The stairs are dark again. The sounds have stopped. Below him, Vishnu can see the first-floor landing.

  Music wafts down the stairs to him. You did, oh yes you did, it was you who did, who stole my heart with a trick… The words are muffled and faint.

  Vishnu listens to the lyrics. I don’t know how you looked at me, but my heart started going tic, tic, tic… They are coming from the next landing, the one between the first and the second floors. He follows them up.

  …tic, tic, tic, tic…

  It is Radiowalla, sitting hunched on his landing, a sheet draped around his shoulders. The radio is cradled in his lap, his head bent forward at an angle, as if trying to catch the sounds of an infant. The volume is turned so low that it is only Vishnu’s new, heightened sense of hearing that makes it audible.

  Perhaps Radiowalla senses Vishnu’s presence, because he draws his arms around his knees, curtaining off the radio with his sheet. He turns his head this way and that, then dips his face into the chamber he has created, pulling the sheet to his neck to seal off the music. Vishnu can still hear an occasional tic, but the rest of the words remain trapped inside.

  Radiowalla rears his head back from his chamber, like a dog looking up from a bowl. He scans the landing once more, then bends forward, pulling the sheet right over his head this time. He sits there in the dark, covered by the sheet, his body motionless underneath.

  The first time Vishnu met Radiowalla was years ago, when Vishnu had just moved to the building. Back then, Radiowalla, having not yet acquired a radio, was still Nathuram. Nathuram, the cart pusher, whose single burning ambition in life, declared to Vishnu the day they met, was to own
a transistor radio, the one sitting in its own glossy brown leather case in the Philips showroom window at Kemp’s Corner.

  Since Nathuram did not have his own cart, work was somewhat erratic, and he would sit for days on end at Gowallia Tank with the other cart pushers, waiting for his turn. But every time he was paid for a job, Nathuram would save something, even if it was only a twoor three-paisa coin, putting it in a large cloth bag strung around his neck, which jingled his arrival on the steps. And when the coins added up, he would exchange them for a rupee note at the cigarettewalla, who provided the service free of commission, as long as Nathuram bought a beedi in return (two beedis for exchanging one-rupee notes to a higher denomination).

  “Eleven rupees today,” Nathuram would say to Vishnu. “Fourteen rupees.” “Eighteen.” “Twenty-four.” The tally went up month by month, year by year. Vishnu would sit with Nathuram at the bottom of the steps and listen to him talk about how wonderful it would be once he got his radio. The whole building would be filled with the sweet sounds of Naushad and Madan Mohan, and Lata’s haunting voice would be like a creeper curling around the flights, its tendrils reaching out to caress every nook and corner. Everyone would be invited to gather in the evenings for special programs on film music, with a few nights of devotional bhajans and perhaps even western music thrown in.

  The day finally came when Nathuram fulfilled his dream, and proudly carried the bright red cardboard box to his landing. Tall Ganga arranged to come back early from her cleaning jobs, and even the cigarettewalla clambered up the stairs to watch. It took Nathuram several minutes just to pry off the staples, so determined was he to preserve every last detail of the box. Each piece of packing material inside was carefully removed and passed around for the people gathered to marvel over. Short Ganga was particularly fascinated by the Styrofoam, and asked if she could keep a sample, but Nathuram was horrified at her request and quickly plucked away the piece from her hands.

  When the last piece of plastic had been circulated and folded away, an expectant hush fell across the landing. Nathuram raised his hands and rotated them in the air, like a magician displaying his palms to an audience before a trick. Then he reached deep into the box and slowly pulled up the transistor. The knobs rose into view first, shining in a smart row across the top surface, the sleek black dial window emerged next, its numbers embedded in yellow against a blue background, and then came the silver front with the speaker holes arranged geometrically in a circle. Nathuram carried the transistor around the assembly like a baby in his arms, quickly retracting the instrument in case a hand got too close to it.

  That first night, the transistor filled all the landings in the building with its sound. The cigarettewalla had shown Nathuram how to connect it into an old socket which hadn’t been used since the time there had been bulbs illuminating each landing. People stayed until the last program on Vividh Bharati ended at 11:30 p.m. Nathuram tried to get something on the shortwave channels afterwards, but no matter how the antenna was adjusted, the signals that were captured were too weak. Vishnu came up after everyone had left, to find Nathuram fast asleep, the radio still on in his arms, waves of static whooshing through the landing like an ethereal tide.

  The radio quickly became an integral part of life in the building. Every morning, Vishnu woke up with the Glycodin commercial on Radio Ceylon. When the K. L. Saigal song came on, he knew it was almost 8 a.m, almost time for the radio to be switched off. A few minutes later, Nathuram would come down the stairs, the transistor in its leather case, strapped around his neck. In the evenings, Nathuram greeted people who came up the stairs, showing them where to sit on the landing, like an usher at a movie theater. The most popular program was the 9:30 Listeners’ Requests. Tall Ganga claimed to have mailed in a request herself, and listened eagerly each evening as the names were announced, but hers was never called out.

  In time, everyone in the building, even Mr. Jalal and Mrs. Asrani, started calling Nathuram Radiowalla. Radiowalla never went anywhere without his radio—he played it on the rocks at Breach Candy while performing his morning business, carried it slung behind his back while pushing his cart, and even slept with it hugged tightly to his body under his sheet.

  It was not clear exactly when the changes started to occur, or what caused them. Everyone still gathered on Radiowalla’s landing in the evenings for the new hits by Lata and Asha and Rafi. But whereas before Radiowalla walked around greeting people with an animated smile, he now sometimes just sat next to his radio and stared wordlessly at his audience. One Wednesday, he insisted on tuning in to devotional music even though Binaca Top Twenty was playing on Radio Ceylon; another evening he refused to move the dial from All India Radio, forcing people to listen to news programs, that too in English. The cigarettewalla, who had been entrusted with the care of the box the radio came in, was suddenly accused of using it to store cartons of matches. Radiowalla angrily took it back and spent several days airing the pieces of packing material on his landing to get rid of the smell of sulfur he claimed clung to everything.

  His audience, reluctant to lose their evening gatherings, were ready to make allowances. “Oh, he’s not feeling well these days,” they would say. “What to do, the bechara hasn’t been hired for two weeks now,” they would postulate.

  But things became impossible to ignore the night Tall Ganga’s name was called out on Listeners’ Requests. At first, she couldn’t believe it, but then she yelped in delight and burst out clapping. Her song came on, and tucking her sari into her waist, Tall Ganga stood up to dance to the music. Someone asked Radiowalla to turn up the volume.

  For a minute, Radiowalla did not move, but stared at the people who were clapping and shouting along with Tall Ganga. Then he reached over and switched off the radio.

  “Tell her to get her own radio,” he said, turning his back to Tall Ganga, who stood in mid-dance, her long limbs frozen by the silence.

  After that, the evening assemblies rapidly came to a close. Radiowalla started turning his radio on only when people weren’t present, switching the channel to something boring or even to just static when anyone came to join him. Vishnu was sent one day to talk to him, but Radiowalla greeted him with suspicion, and ordered him not to come close to his radio. To make matters worse, someone tore off the lid from the radio box in retaliation and ripped up the packing material inside. Radiowalla came back from work that evening to find the landing littered with plastic and Styrofoam and cardboard. He gathered up all the pieces he could find and put them back in the box. The next day, he chased Short Ganga down the steps, accusing her of having ripped open his box to get the Styrofoam inside. It was only the cigarettewalla’s promise to give Radiowalla a thrashing that made Short Ganga feel safe entering the building again. Especially since she had not been able to resist carrying off the two most fascinating chunks of Styrofoam the day she had found the box vandalized.

  Radiowalla stopped speaking to people in the building. He started playing his radio so softly that nobody could hear it except himself, lowering the volume even further when anyone was passing by. Every once in a while, he could be seen on his landing with the packing material all spread out in front of him, turning and examining the pieces as if he were trying to decipher his fortune in them.

  As Vishnu passes by him now, Radiowalla’s head again emerges from the sheet. A catch of music escapes, and Radiowalla quickly pulls his sheet around tighter. Vishnu imagines the notes bouncing around inside, imparting rhythm and energy as they break against Radiowalla’s skin. The faintest drafts of melody follow him up as he continues past on the stairs.

  BY THE TIME they reached the shrine of Amira Ma, Mrs. Jalal was feeling light-headed with relief. A nazar, that’s what it was, and this was the place to counteract it. Nafeesa had diagnosed it with an air of clinical certainty, and that too before they had even finished their tea. “Someone’s put an evil eye on your Ahmed,” she’d declared, “and until it’s lifted, his condition can only grow worse.”

 
; Mrs. Jalal’s mind had reeled. Why would anyone hate Ahmed? Who would do such a thing to him?

  “Are you serious?” Nafeesa said. “The way my dear jija carries on about religion, I wouldn’t be surprised if Maulvi sahib himself didn’t put a curse on him. But who knows how these nazars can happen—praise someone too much, and they get a nazar, don’t put a soot mark on your baby’s cheek, and he’ll get a nazar, say something nice about your spouse, and he’ll catch a nazar—they’re easier to catch than the flu.”

  Mrs. Jalal felt the color drain out of her face. “You aren’t saying I could have done it, are you? Oh my God, what if it was me?”

  “It hardly matters how it happened. The important thing now is to counteract it. We’ll go right now—to Amira Ma’s. Tie a thread at the shrine, and that should do it.”

  A beggar limped up to them as they waited for a taxi. Nafeesa started to shoo him away, but Mrs. Jalal pulled out a one-rupee note from her purse and handed it to him, under her sister’s disapproving look. She felt she needed all the luck she could get, and giving alms couldn’t hurt. In the taxi, they passed a marriage procession, surely another good omen, and Mrs. Jalal began to relax. She even managed to convince herself that nothing she had done could have caused the nazar—after all, when was the last time she had praised Ahmed?

  The taxi left them at the mouth of a passageway lined with stalls. As they made their way through, dozens of hands reached out, offering to sell them coconuts and flowers and incense. “All we need is thread,” Nafeesa said impatiently, brushing off the hands.