The Death of Vishnu (20 page)

It was signed “William Warby, Associate Editor,
Guinness Book of World Records.
” Accompanying it was a flyer for the new edition of the book.

Sheetal was devastated for the rest of the day. But the next morning, she had Vinod reread the letter, making him go over the actual wording of the rejection several times.

“Aha,” she said, interrupting him. “They’ve written that they can’t do it
at this time
. Which means they are planning to keep it in mind for the future. Plus, who knows how long this Warby character will last, especially if he is turning down such good proposals? Once he goes, the new person will have a fresh chance to look at this.”

That’s when she extracted the promise from Vinod. “Keep trying until they put me in. Tell them that I died of cancer even, then they’ll have to relent. Especially once the new person comes in.” Meanwhile, the letter she had received was matted and framed, and hung over her bed. Every day, she reached out to touch the part which complimented her on her “most interesting achievement.”

The year after Sheetal died, Vinod re-sent the petition to Guinness. A few months later, he got an almost identical reply, complimenting him on his wife’s interesting achievement, and signed once more by William Warby.

T
HE JAMADARNI IS
squatting on the landing, eating the mango.
His
mango. Her mouth is smeared with yellow, visceral pleasure gleams in her eyes. She scrapes the pit clean, then runs her teeth over the peel for bits of pulp she may have missed.

Is this what it means to be a god? The first offering made to him, and he isn’t even the one to enjoy it? Vishnu looks at the jamadarni—she is working on the pit one more time, trying to suck out some more flavor.

What else will he have to forsake? All the tastes and smells of his life? He has already lost his ability of touch—will he lose all power to experience as well? Could he choose
not
to be a god?

The jamadarni gives a contented sigh, then throws the pit and the peel into her rubbish basket.

He thinks of his final time with Padmini. “What if one day you came, and I was no longer here?” she says, sitting up in bed. “Would you try to find me?”

“Of course I would. Why do you say that?” he says.

“No reason. But you know, you’d never be able find me if I decided to leave.”

Then, seeing his expression, she laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.” She looks through the window. “No, Padmini will always be here.”

He follows her gaze past the veil of red silk over the window. There are women standing on the balcony of the facing building, laughing and calling to the people down below. He wants to press his face into Padmini’s neck, he wants to squeeze her body against his chest, he wants to hear her promise again and again that she will never abandon him, she will never go. How little of her he has learnt to live with—the minutes he steals from her are so precious, she will never know. The sound of a hawker selling bhajia rises from the street—onion and pepper and brinjal and potato.

But leave she does. The brothel owner does not know where she has gone, but offers him Lajjo instead, or Gulabi, or even Reena, who normally commands a higher price. Vishnu is distraught. Padmini, he cries, he wants Padmini. He roams for days looking for her but her prediction is true, he does not find her.

But he is a god now. He can bring her back. He need only gaze across the lay of the city, and pinch her out of the cranny in which she hides. Kiss her, hug her, love her, splay her on the floor if he pleases. Never let her out of his sight again.

Why does the thought no longer compel? Why have the pleasures of Padmini’s body faded to such a subdued fragrance in his memory? A fragrance incorporating the perfume of mangoes, the wetness of water, the flavorings in tea. Has he lost his desire, has he been rinsed of his experience, has all the physical cognition acquired through his existence been suddenly rendered irrelevant, obsolete?

A warm indifference spreads through him to the cravings of his body. He is not sated, no, yet he can partake no more.

The jamadarni picks up her basket and starts up the steps. Vishnu is glad she has eaten the mango, he does not begrudge it to her.

T
HE NEWS TRAVELED
fast down the core of the building, raging through the ground floor like an out-of-control conflagration. Short Ganga told the cigarettewalla, who told the paanwalla, who told the electrician. Mr. Jalal had been found sleeping on the steps, and when he awoke, had tried to molest Mrs. Pathak in front of her husband. Man Who Slept on the Lowest Step heard about it from the cigarettewalla, who added his own fictitious update about how Mr. Jalal’s eyes had been rolling uncoordinated in his head when he came down just now to buy cigarettes. In turn, Lowest Step told the jamadarni that a mental asylum ambulance had taken Mr. Jalal away. This was refuted later by the jamadarni, who heard from Mrs. Pathak about Kavita’s elopement with Salim, and Mr. Jalal’s mysterious part in it. The elopement quickly turned into an involuntary one, because of the illegitimate child Kavita was expecting, and then into a full-fledged abduction perpetrated by the Jalals. Mr. Jalal was said to have had a fight with Vishnu, who had recovered miraculously to try and save Kavita, but was then mercilessly beaten by father and son. A supporting version claimed Vishnu managed to knock Mr. Jalal unconscious before he was overpowered himself, and Kavita left behind her dupatta to implicate the true wrongdoers. Another theory had it that the dupatta was ripped off in an attempted rape, and that Kavita had been kidnapped to be part of a famous Muslim smuggler’s private harem. Nobody seemed clear about exactly what Mr. Jalal had said about Vishnu himself, though the jamadarni alleged he had called him a Hindu devil who deserved to die.

M
RS
. J
ALAL LOOKED
at her husband, asleep on their bed. At the angle at which he was lying, the light from the window reflected off his cheeks, obscuring all the pockmarks, so his face shone unblemished as a child’s. She lay down next to him and cradled his head in the crook of her elbow. Her poor Ahmed, how hard he had tried, how hard he still tried, to transcend himself. She had never seen a person with such aspirations, such ideals. She reached out to brush the hair off his forehead. Was there anything she could say, anything she could do, that would stop him in his bizarre pursuit?

Ahmed snuggled closer to her. “Arifa,” he murmured, his eyes still closed. He wrapped an arm around her and stroked her neck with the back of his fingers. “I feel so sleepy. But so much work to do.”

“Shhhh,” Mrs. Jalal said. “Later.” She raised a hand around his face to block the sunlight that was dappling his eyelids. Instantly, the marks rose back to view on the surface of his skin. She looked at them and traced their unevenness with the tips of her fingers. She wondered what he thought about them, what he had felt growing up with his face all cratered like that. She had asked him once long ago, but he had not answered. Had people called him names in school? Had he been shunned by classmates who might have otherwise been his friends? Had he gone through life always conscious of this handicap, which captured attention with such cruel clarity at first meeting?

She herself had never minded the marks. If anything, she was glad for them in her selfish way, because they balanced her own feelings of inadequacy. Ahmed’s skin was Ahmed’s skin, and these were just variations—variations in texture and color, that she was sure could be explained in terms of biological factors like nerves and blood vessels and pigment cells.

It was what lay beneath the skin, inside his head, that she had difficulty with. Why couldn’t she learn to think of those differences too as biological variations? She had heard somewhere that all thought, and with it, feeling and belief, arose from a series of chemical and electrical impulses. How could something so unemotional, so scientific, be responsible for causing so much turmoil? Why had the paths in Ahmed’s brain arranged themselves in such perverse ways, so diametrically opposite to what she had been taught?

Lying there now on the bed with him made these things seem less important. She drew her head next to his, and brushed his cheek with her lips. He kept his eyes closed, and continued rubbing his fingers against the nape of her neck. Nuzzling with him like this reminded her of the times she would lie next to the goat her father brought home every Bakr-Eid. She would wrap her arms around its body and pet its head, and bury her face in its fur. Sometimes she would lay her head against its chest and listen to its beating heart.

The goat would be housed right outside the kitchen, where it could be fattened a little more with a steady stream of vegetable scraps. She loved feeding it herself, watching it nibble delicately at carrot tops and cauliflower leaves. Always, though, would be the thought in her mind that the day of Bakr-Eid was arriving. The night before Eid, she would lie in bed, knowing it was the last time she would fall asleep to the sound of the goat bleating on the verandah. She would fantasize about setting it free to sprint down the wide stone steps. It would race down Jail Road, loping past milkwallas on their bicycles, dodging taxis and BEST buses, to freedom.

One year she stumbled upon the actual sacrifice. She had followed the cadence of her uncle’s voice, and come upon her father and cousins crowded around a doorway. The white cotton kurtas felt soft and smelled of attar as she squeezed through between the men. She saw her uncle standing in his embroidered robe next to the butcher, the cloth streaming down from arms raised at right angles to his body. He lowered them, and she looked past and saw the head of the goat. Its neck lolled against the curved blade, the eyelids twitched, as if awakening from deep slumber. There was a trough on the ground, with blood so black and viscous it looked like tar. The tiles around were stained in red, and she noticed that her uncle’s own shoes were spattered as well. She screamed and tried to squirm back through the men, but got caught in the suffocating folds of white cloth. She screamed and screamed, surrounded by the white, until her father’s arms found her and lifted her away.

Her uncle came to see her afterwards. She was unable to look at him at first, terrified that she would find drops of blood in his beard. Once she stared into his eyes, she was pulled into the deep calm in them.

“Do you know why we do this, Arifa? Why we sacrifice a goat?”

She looked at his shoes in silence. The blood had dried to a dark brown along their edges.

“It’s to remind us how precious life is. To remind us that anyone who sacrifices a goat must be prepared to sacrifice themselves in the same way, for God.”

The words did not make sense to her, but she nodded in agreement, nodded to let him know that she had understood, nodded to escape the incriminating calmness that emanated from his eyes.

Now, so many years later, her uncle’s words had an immediacy for her that she found frightening. Ahmed had already crossed the line, and the Koran was clear on blasphemy. Would she be called upon to repudiate him? The Koran recommended divorce, it prescribed death. Would she be able to banish him from her life?

Ahmed opened his eyes, and she looked into them. No, she was not strong enough. She could not abandon Ahmed. She could not draw a knife across his throat. She would stay by his side, and carry him through, come what may. There would be time later to atone, to settle her debts with God.

“Tell me again, Ahmed,” she said, “what Vishnu told you last night.”

T
HE CLAMORING DOWNSTAIRS
was getting louder. “We can’t let these Muslims carry away our daughters.” “Who do they think they are? They should be put back in their place.” “We have to teach them a lesson, before they get out of hand.”

When Mr. Pathak came down for cigarettes, a group of people congregated around him, as if he were a film star. “What did Mr. Jalal tell you?” they asked. “Did he reveal where Salim is hiding?”

Mr. Pathak was overwhelmed by all this attention. “I’ll answer all your questions, just let me get my cigarettes.” As he paid for his packet of Charminar, he imagined reporters milling around and flash-bulbs popping in his face. He gestured to the questioners to follow him, and sat down on the third step of the building stairway.

Mr. Pathak pulled out a Charminar and tapped it on the packet. He put it in his mouth and searched for his matches, but a lighter miraculously appeared to light his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, then blew out the smoke while looking skyward, as he had seen important film people do while talking about their work. “Mr. Jalal is apparently a very complex man,” he began.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pathak had overestimated the gathering’s appetite for analysis. What they were hungry for was facts—or, if those were not available, then the next best thing, rumors. “Did Mr. Jalal confess?” “Was Vishnu badly hurt in the fight?” “Did you see blood on the dupatta?” they pressed.

Anxious to retain his grip on his audience, Mr. Pathak began answering all their questions, some with half-truths, some with a random yes or no, taking care to lubricate things with adequate amounts of embellishment.

“Yes, there was blood on the dupatta, but at this point it’s impossible to tell whether it was Mr. Jalal’s or Vishnu’s when they got into a fight, or perhaps it could even be Kavita’s if God knows who tried to outrage her modesty.

“Yes, Vishnu was hurt in the fight, which is so bad because he was doing quite well yesterday—even the ambulance people said he didn’t need to go to the hospital, but now he’s lying there near death.

“No, Mr. Jalal didn’t confess, not exactly, though he did say that if Hindus aren’t prepared to give their daughters in marriage, then Muslims have no alternative but to take them by force.”

These answers seemed to be the right ones, since they suitably roiled the congregation. There were shouts to protect the honor of the Hindu bride pool, and to beat a confession out of Mr. Jalal. “Nobody should be able to get away like this with impunity.”

At the idea of violence, Mr. Pathak started getting nervous. Perhaps the Hindu-Muslim bit had been too much, perhaps he should take it back. But he was loath to relinquish the position of leadership the people had bestowed on him. He tried to search for a middle way. “Let’s go inform the police,” he said, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Let’s go ask them to search for Kavita.”

But the gathering was having none of it. “The Jalals must pay for what they have done. Who do they think they are, doing this in a Hindu country?”

By now, Mr. Pathak was perspiring. The situation was getting quite out of hand, and he hadn’t even mentioned to his wife that he was going downstairs. The assembly was becoming nastier before his eyes—already, he could see one or two bamboo lathis being wielded at the periphery. What would his wife say if she heard he had incited a lathi-armed mob up the stairs to beat up poor Mr. Jalal? “Let’s just calm down for a moment,” he tried saying, but a chorus of voices drowned him out. Sensing his weakness, the congregation turned instead to the cigarettewalla, who had emerged from his shop, a lathi held expertly in one hand.

“All we want is justice for Kavita,” the cigarettewalla said, and there were cries of approval. The cigarettewalla slapped a palm on his forearm and thigh, and then held his lathi up. “Let’s go get some more lathis and some more people,” he said.