The Death of Vishnu

by Manil Suri

  The sun will dip into the ocean from the sky, the owl will hoot from its branch on the tree,

  Together on the sands of time we will run, on this, the first day of our union.

  The record had been a journal that had charted his recovery after Sheetal. Day after day, year after year, he had taken his emotional pulse as he had listened to it. In the beginning, there had been no pulse. He had performed each task dutifully: cranking the handle, placing the record on the turntable, setting the needle down, receiving the notes transmitted. But these had not added up to the experience of listening to the song. It had been some weeks before he had actually sensed the music, and even more time before he had heard the lyrics. Then, one day, it had happened—suddenly, he could see Dilip Kumar and Meena Kumari on the CinemaScope screen, feel Sheetal’s hand resting under his own in the cool darkness of the movie theater. That’s when he had begun to cry, his tears so big and splashy that he had shut the gramophone lid, afraid of getting them over the record. For months, he had been able to listen to only part of the song before breaking down.

  A year later, it was only anguish he felt when he heard the song. A deep, penetrating, physical anguish, the kind that comes when a dentist drills too deep into a tooth. Over time, this anguish had gradually dulled, leaving behind only the memory of pain; a quiet, almost sweet numbness which lingered in the hollow where the ache had been rooted. Now, even that numbness was fading.

  Look at the moon, see how he smiles from the sky; see the stars, how they wink from up high;

  We’ll wave at them from here on the ground, on this, the first night of our union.

  This was the part, the part near the end, that always took him back. Back across the fading nights and days, filled with dimly remembered happiness and pain; back through all the doorways traversed, both alone and hand in hand with Sheetal; back through the ravaged map of his existence, with the stars that drew it burning triumphantly above. Vinod looks at the record and waits to see her, he looks at the rotating blackness of the disc, and waits for her image to emerge.

  ON THE DAY Vinod passed his Bachelor of Commerce exam, his father announced they had found a suitable match for him. Would he have any objection to marrying Sheetal, the niece of his uncle’s wife, who had been at Paplu’s birthday party last week?

  Vinod remembered seeing her there. He hadn’t paid her any special attention, nor had he tried to talk to her, although he was sure he had said hello once at a previous family function. She was not the most beautiful woman he had laid eyes on, but on the other hand, he couldn’t remember any obvious physical defects either. Thinking about it overnight, he could come up with no particular reason to either reject or endorse the match. The wedding was negotiated that very week.

  A few days later, he found himself at the house of his future in-laws. Sheetal’s mother brought out the sets of jewelry that were to be given with the bride and laid them out for his family’s inspection. His mother put on her reading glasses, and lifting the pieces from their red velvet boxes, started examining them one by one. Vinod watched the proceedings for a while, and then, with nothing to do, picked up a necklace himself, and held it up against his palm.

  He was trying to follow a point of light as it skittered from stone to stone when his eyes met Sheetal’s. He was startled by the disdain in them, a disdain so keen he had to look away. He put the necklace down immediately, then tried to catch Sheetal’s eye again. But she did not look up, keeping her face properly lowered through the rest of the meeting.

  He saw her next a few weeks after that, at their engagement. He wanted to talk to Sheetal then, but their eyes did not meet once during the entire ceremony. Even when he offered her the laddoo, Sheetal did not raise her head, but waited for him to bring it to her mouth, so she could take a delicate bite.

  The period between the engagement and wedding passed by in a haze. Vinod spent the days at his new job in the bank, and his evenings as before, gathering with friends at the café near Churchgate. There were many jokes about his impending union, but somehow he managed not to think about how his life was going to change. The wedding always seemed to be at least a few days away, and Vinod occupied his hours without letting himself worry about it.

  It was only when he saw his garments being tied to Sheetal’s that the enormity and irreversibility of the situation hit him. He was getting married, and he did not know why, or to whom. He looked up at the guests and relatives all around and heard them whispering and saw them smiling at him. He suddenly felt like protesting—there had been a mistake, it hadn’t sunk in, he hadn’t had the time to think about it, it had all been too hastily arranged. He saw the fire at the center of the gathering, the priest chanting and spooning ghee into the flames. The vapors were so strong he could taste them. He felt a gentle tug on his clothing, and realized that the seven circles had started. The fire always to his left, a hush spreading over the crowd, the priest reaching out to throw camphor into the flames, Sheetal behind him, tied to his body by her sari, destined to follow him forever. The fire seemed to grow more intense with each round, the flames jumped into the night air, and he wondered if they might leap out and set the knot that tied him to Sheetal aflame. Buds of white swayed and dissolved before his eyes as the curtain of flowers hanging in strings from his turban swung in front of his face. He wished the curtain was more impermeable, so that he could shut out the sights in front of him, so that he would not feel the heat of the fire he imagined on his face, or hear the priest’s stream of Sanskrit, growing steadily unbearable in his ears. On and on the circles went—three, four, five, six—and he wondered if he could quit before completing the seventh one, run through the guests and vault over the walls of the mandap to freedom. But then his feet had crossed the threshold for the seventh time, and then Sheetal’s feet, the edges stained orange with henna, were crossing it too.

  And then he was entering their wedding-night room and closing the door; the sounds of giggling were left outside, and his bride was sitting on the petal-strewn bed. He had seen this scene so many times before—Raj Kapoor and Nargis, Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, the heroine always in embroidered silk, the groom in impeccable white, and when the hero pulled back the heroine’s ghunghat, she kept her eyes closed. He reached out to lift the cloth, and his hand wavered. What if Sheetal’s eyes were staring at his, defiant, with the look of that first day? But his wife must have seen the same films he had, because when he looked under the cloth, her eyes were closed, the dots painted in ceremonial white forming a serene arch over her eyebrows. For a second, he wondered if he should break into song as they did in the movies. Instead, he lifted her head slowly, and asked her to open her eyes.

  In that first clear look into the eyes of the person with whom he was supposed to spend the rest of his life, he was relieved to find not defiance but curiosity, not disdain but unfamiliarity, not love but not dislike, either.

  We will produce a new and soulful tune; the flute will play, the guitar will strum;

  Now we are two, but soon we’ll be three, from this, the first night of our union.

  They sat there next to each other, the layers of clothing and ornaments they were wearing too intimidating to allow conversation, let alone intimacy. More daunting was the fact that they had met only twice since the engagement, that too under the supervision of a caucus of chaperons. The silence pressed around them, as oppressive as the heat and the humidity in the air.

  Vinod cleared his throat, preparing to say something. But no topic of conversation suggested itself. He gazed at the new ring banding his finger. How were they going to fill all the minutes, all the hours, between now and the end of their time together?

  Whispers came from the other side of the door, then the sound of muffled giggles. Suddenly, a radio was turned on, at full volume. The soaring chorus of the national anthem filled the room, and Sheetal looked up, confused. For a moment, he thought she was going to stand to attention beside the bed. There was laughter from t
he corridor outside, then the sound of running feet, and his mother’s scolding voice. The radio was switched off just in the middle of the final “Jaya he.”

  Vinod heard his mother tiptoe away from the door.

  “Do you know all the words?” he asked Sheetal.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Everyone learns it in school. Didn’t you?”

  “I did. But I could never memorize the whole thing.”

  Sheetal did not respond.

  “They must have waited,” he said. “Waited till eleven-thirty, for the station to shut down and the anthem to come on. I should have run to the door and grabbed their radio from them. We could have had a little music.”

  “But the station has shut down, you said.”

  “The foreign stations run all night. We could have heard jazz. Do you ever listen to jazz?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t much, either. Except late at night. Otherwise, I listen to Radio Ceylon. They have the songs from all the new films. Months before they get them on Vividh Bharati. Do you like seeing films?”

  Sheetal nodded.

  “Did you see Mughal-e-Azam?”

  “Yes, and I hated it. I hate Madhubala.”

  “How can you possibly hate Madhubala?”

  “She has the face of an elephant.”

  “She’s not even fat.”

  “Not her body. Just her face. Her nose, especially.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. She has a beautiful nose.”

  “An elephant. I’m not going to any Madhubala films with you.”

  They argued about Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Vyjayanthimala. They talked about their favorite films. Sheetal shyly revealed that she often liked to memorize not only songs but also pieces of dialogue that moved her. As an illustration, she recited her favorite lines from Love in Rome.

  “Remember that scene in the restaurant, when they eat all that Italian food?” Vinod said, laughing. “What does it turn out to be—octopus or something?”

  Sheetal’s face darkened. “Don’t expect me to cook any non-veg for you,” she suddenly declared.

  Vinod was taken aback.

  “But your family isn’t vegetarian,” he protested. “You yourself were eating tandoori chicken tonight at the reception.”

  “I like to eat it, but I’m not going to cook it. It’s a hundred times more sinful to cook it than eat it.”

  “But nobody said anything before the wedding. How will we eat meat when we start living by ourselves if you won’t cook it?”

  “What if I teach you to cook it?”

  “But I’m the husband. I’m not supposed to cook. And also, if I did, then all the sins would come on my head.”

  Sheetal’s brow furrowed. “And since you’re my husband, they’d be on my head too.” She fell silent. “I guess we won’t be able to have meat after all,” she said.

  They looked at each other gloomily. Married life had barely begun, and already abstinence was the forecast for the future.

  The talk about cooking had made Vinod hungry, so he suggested sneaking out to locate the wedding sweets. Sheetal demurred at first, but then gave in—she, too, was hungry. They took off all the ornaments they could, Sheetal being especially careful to remove her noisy ankle bracelets. Vinod got out of the stiff wedding jacket that had been choking him all evening, and Sheetal wrapped her long ceremonial sari around her shoulders and stuffed the end into her waistband. Then, in bare feet, they crept to the door.

  Vinod opened it a crack. A multitude of snores streamed in. He stuck his head out. Starting at the door and stretching out all along the floor were dozens of recumbent wedding guests. It looked as if a cyclone had blasted through the corridor.

  They made their way to the kitchen through the maze of bodies. Sheetal accidentally stepped on one of her cousins, and they both held their breaths, but the girl muttered something and went back to sleep.

  In the kitchen, they were unable to locate the sweets, but came across a large platter of the tandoori chicken in the refrigerator. They looked at each other. “Let’s find some pickle and onions to go with it,” Sheetal whispered.

  The kitchen floor had been cleared to accommodate more of the sleeping guests, and Vinod and Sheetal crept around them to the dining table, which had been pushed to the far side. The chairs had been stacked up in another corner, so they sat cross-legged on the table itself, the platter of chicken between them.

  “What do you like,” Vinod asked, “breast or leg?”

  “I like the little leg attached to the breast. It’s my favorite part.”

  “But it’s so little.”

  “I always get both of them. It’s the only part I really like. Though I can eat the big leg if necessary.”

  Vinod tore off the wing portions from two of the breasts and handed them to her. “Here. You can have the little legs every time we have chicken.”

  “Thanks,” Sheetal said, smiling shyly as she accepted the pieces from him. “Here’s some onion—I couldn’t find the mango pickle.”

  They sat in the dark and ate their chicken. The only light came from a streetlamp outside, through a small window on the opposite wall. It was quite hot, and Vinod could hear a mosquito whining around near his ear. He looked at Sheetal. His wife. She was gnawing at the cartilage in a wingjoint, red specks of tandoori spice stuck to her lips. In the dim light, Sheetal looked even younger than her nineteen years. He imagined her hair braided in pigtails, looped around and tied behind her ears, like a schoolgirl’s. Who was this person? What did she want from life? Sheetal selected a red pickled onion from a bowl and bit off a chunk of it.

  Clumsily, Vinod leaned over with his face next to hers and tried to kiss her. Sheetal drew back. “What are you doing? Are you crazy—with all these people here?”

  “But they’re asleep,” Vinod protested.

  “That doesn’t matter. They’re still here.” Sheetal resumed munching on her onion.

  Vinod looked at the sleeping people. There was Pramod uncle and his wife, lying next to each other. How long had they been together? He wondered when his uncle had first kissed Manisha aunty, and whether her mouth had been redolent of cumin and onion when he had done so. He looked again at Sheetal. She had finished her chicken. Her tongue was wiping her lips clean, leaving behind a thin glisten of saliva that outlined her mouth in the silvery light. He had never kissed a girl before. He was determined to do so tonight, in this kitchen, on this table.

  Vinod eased the platter out of the way and moved closer to Sheetal. He could feel her stiffen, could almost hear her heart start beating faster. He slowly put his arm around her neck, then tensed his muscles, ready to resist in case she tried to escape. She sat there, rooted to the wood, looking straight ahead. Quickly, he pressed his mouth over hers. He sensed the back of her neck go slack. Her saliva felt wet and sticky and strangely exciting on his lips. He held them there for a moment, inhaling the spicy meatiness of her mouth. Then, not sure how to proceed, he released her mouth and drew his head back.

  She looked away from his eyes. Her hand went up to wipe her lips, but she stopped and self-consciously brought it down. She sat on the table next to the platter and the onions, the bone of a chicken wing still in her hand.

  They went back to their bedroom. Nervously, Sheetal unwound her sari, and quickly got into bed. She shivered, even though the room was unbearably warm, and pulled the sheet up to her blouse. Vinod took off his shirt but not his pants, and got in next to her.

  They stared at the wedding decorations festooned over the bed. The sound of the mosquitoes diving among the streamers mingled with the snores that trickled in from under the door. A balloon rested listlessly against the ceiling, its thread dangling all the way to the floor. Down the street, a dog barked, and further away somewhere, they heard a car start up.

  Vinod could feel Sheetal’s body breathing next to him in the dark. He thought of her bosom beneath its blouse, the red cloth rising and falling wi
th each breath. In the sixth standard, a friend had shown him his first photo of a naked woman. He tried to picture that image under Sheetal’s blouse, tried to imagine the contour of each breast, the fleshiness of each nipple. He saw himself kissing her neck, bringing his mouth down and wetting the material of her blouse and, when the nipple was clearly outlined, taking it in his mouth through the cloth.

  “Are you asleep?” he whispered to Sheetal.

  “No,” she replied. “I was thinking.”

  “About what?” Vinod’s voice was hoarse.

  “I was thinking,” Sheetal said, turning around to face him, her expression troubled. “I was thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be such a big sin to once in a while cook chicken?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE THRASHING ADMINISTERED to Shyamu by his mother that afternoon was earned fair and square by him in the half hour that preceded it. Even Mr. Asrani, when confronted with the evidence, would have had to agree that it was fully deserved, not that he was given a chance to arbitrate. Shyamu, of course, tried to deny everything, which was not the wise thing to do, since it enraged Mrs. Asrani even further. But then, Shyamu was never one given to wise choices, as evidenced by his behavior.

  What happened was this. Shyamu had been playing aeroplane with Rajan, the Pathaks’ younger son. The two children had brought several empty ghee and cooking-oil tins from the kitchen and arranged them to form the central corridor of seats in the inside of the plane. They were taking turns being the pilot and crash-landing the plane. First, Rajan crashed the plane, the impact sending the tins helter-skelter, and killing all the passengers. Then it was Shyamu’s turn, and he killed not only all the people on board but several unfortunate bystanders on the ground as well. Then it was Rajan’s turn, with Shyamu being a hijacker, and once again the loss of life was total, with several of the deaths being gruesomely enacted among flying cooking-fat tins.