The Death of Vishnu

the anonymity of the singing, thankful that the people around were too engrossed to pay attention to his presence. He did not sing himself, partly because he did not know the words, but also because he felt awkward participating in such public worship. As the rhythm of the bhajan began to relax him, though, he remembered his childhood visits to Mahalakshmi, remembered the marble floor of the temple, where he would sit and sing along with his mother. Then the congregation came to their last song, and suddenly Vinod realized he knew the lyrics. Om Jai Jagdish Hare , he began to sing, unable to keep the words trapped inside.
    Vinod started taking the train there daily, in the late morning, once the office crowds had subsided. He would sit at the back of the assembly, observing the other devotees, singing bhajans with them, but never conversing with anybody. Sometimes he spent the afternoon sitting in the verandah, watching the parrots in the mango trees lunge at the unripe fruit with their hooked red beaks. On other afternoons he remained in the bungalow after the bhajans, listening to the inspirational programs that followed. Occasionally he spent the entire day there, taking the train back only after partaking of the simple dinner of lentils and rice that was offered to all who came.
    The first time Vinod had come to the ashram, he had worried about the exposés of godmen and gurus that had been appearing in the newspapers. He had read about the outrageous demands for donations, the bizarre religious philosophies preached, and the sensational rituals, even orgies, forced upon devotees. To his relief, Swamiji, as the holy man was called, did not fit the image suggested by the articles. Swamiji was a small man, perched on tiny toy legs, with a long gray beard, and a saffron-colored sheet wrapped around his loins and upper body. The overall impression projected, as he stood on the large white dais, like a candy figure decorating the top of a cake, was not of potency or stature, but comicality.
    When the Swamiji spoke, however, his voice carried a calm authority that radiated from the dais and spread persuasively through the room. He began every sermon by talking about the stages of man.
    “How long can man live for himself?” he would ask his audience. “How long can he allow the rule of the jungle to govern him? Plundering the pleasures he fancies, acting on every pinprick of desire, a slave to the promise of wealth, a puppet to the callings of the flesh?
    “And yet. If he doesn’t sate himself at this stage, he will never graduate to the next. He must drink from the pool of selfish gratification until he is sure he will be thirsty no more. Until he realizes that his body and all it desires is just maya—no more real than the reflection that stares back from that very pool from which he is drinking. It can take many lifetimes, but I have seen it done in a single existence, or even half an existence.”
    Vinod would watch the other followers rapt in the Swamiji’s message. He himself was content just to be there, to be someone faceless in the crowd, surrounded by the tranquillity of the ashram. Swamiji’s words floated in and out of his attention. He had heard this message so many times before—the maya, the illusion, that was the medium of all existence, like an endless movie in which all their lives were embedded; the journey the soul was supposed to embark on, to break free of the constraints of maya, rising through gratification, through selflessness, to the final goal which all creatures lived and died again and again for.
    “And there will come a day, when all attachment is relinquished, when there is no memory of desire, of hunger, of pain, and then, only then, will he know what true freedom is.”
    Vinod wondered if people still went into the forest to renounce the world. He wondered if that was what the Swamiji would recommend for him. He never felt bold enough to go up to the dais. As the line of devotees filed past to touch Swamiji’s small, perfectly formed feet, Vinod would stay where he was and try to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
    One day, Swamiji came up to Vinod and asked his name. “I’ve been seeing you day after day, sitting in the back. What have you come here for?”
    Up close, the Swamiji looked much younger than the gray of his beard suggested. Vinod was flustered by the intensity in his eyes, an intensity that belied the serenity with which he spoke, and seemed to make