The Death of Vishnu

buildings facing the sea. It had been months since he had been to Breach Candy. He thought that watching the tide recede would soothe him. When he got there, however, he found that the benches had been ripped out, and a sign announcing the construction of a new park had been erected on the pavement. The water was still visible in the distance, but only through a wire fence in between.
    He was about to turn back when he noticed there was a gate in the fence, and it was open. There was nobody around, so he entered through the gate and descended down the stones leading to the sea. The stones turned to rocks, and he picked his way across the slippery surfaces and the moss-green pools until he was at the water’s edge, and the tide was gurgling at his feet.
    Vinod squatted on his haunches and leaned his face forward over the sea. He waited for a wave to spray him with moisture. How many times, he thought, licking the salt off his lips, how many times had he and Sheetal…
    He remembered the time they had clambered over the rocks to the furthest point they could reach on land. Sheetal put her head on his shoulder and they shared a paper cone of roasted gram bought from a hawker on the shore. When the cone was empty, she smoothed out the paper and showed him how to fold it into a boat. He set it on the water and they watched it bob away on the waves.
    Vinod wondered if he still remembered what Sheetal had taught him, if he could still make a boat. He searched his pockets for paper, and came up with a used envelope that had contained a bill. On the back was a shopping list he had scribbled. He tried folding the envelope into a boat, but it was too thick, and in addition, he realized he was no longer sure how to do it. His eye fell on the canceled stamps stuck to the paper—they were all quite colorful—a bird, a butterfly, and a fish.
    He gazed at the water spreading into the distance, at the clouds gathering melodramatically at the horizon. He thought of Dilip Kumar standing at the banks of the Ganges, of Mohammed Rafi singing his sad song. A wave of emotion swept over him. He needed something that would float, something that wouldn’t sink when he consigned it to the sea. If not a boat, perhaps just the envelope itself.
    Vinod pressed the envelope against the surface of a rock and tried to smooth out as many crinkles as possible. He repeated this several times over until he was satisfied the envelope was flat enough. Then he reached down and set it on the surface of the water. The moisture crept up the paper and colored it a darker white, and Vinod shivered, as if it were his own skin against which the sea was advancing.
    He watched the envelope twirl around lazily where he had released it, and then be pulled away by a retreating wave. It stopped at a rock rising out of the water, its edges catching the afternoon sun as they nudged and pushed against the outcrop. Then it cleared the obstacle and spun towards the open sea.
    Vinod tracked its whiteness as it bobbed through the waves. Occasionally it would catch a crest and come closer to shore, but mostly it floated away further in the receding tide. He watched it until it was a speck in the distance, indistinguishable from the countless other specks that danced and glittered across the surface of the Arabian Sea. As he made his way home, as he climbed the steps to his flat, as he lay down that night in his bed, he imagined the envelope continuing its journey towards the horizon. The water dissolving the glue on the stamps, so that the menagerie detached itself upon arriving at the line between sky and sea. The envelope embarking on its voyage across the oceans, the fish and the bird and the butterfly floating free.

    A S TIME WENT by, Vinod found his anger spent. He felt a tranquillity he could not remember having experienced before. He wondered about returning to the Swamiji, but was embarrassed to do so, in light of the abrupt way he had walked off almost three years ago. He suspected, though, that he might have attained what the Swamiji had challenged him about, so he did not think it crucial to return.
    Now, when Vinod tried to clear his mind, he found he could. He would concentrate on the syllable om, and feel the force that it embraced. He would feel the energy from the trinity that flowed through to fill all of him. He would see the universe being created in a single exhalation of Brahma’s breath. He would understand the delicacy with which Vishnu balanced