The Death of Vishnu

are blaring an old Shamshaad Begum song. Ahead rises the giant wheel, lifting laughing fairgoers into the sky.
    “Look! Carrots!” Padmini says, pulling Vishnu toward a gunnysack stall. A man sits behind a mound of vegetable scraps. He is inserting carrots into one end of a shiny tube and they are emerging in an unbroken spiral at the other end. “And potatoes! Look! Look!” The potatoes have been forced through a slicing machine, a stack of ridged ovals lies spread out before the man.
    “Come right up, memsahib, see what the wonders of science can do for you. Every husband should buy one of these for his wife, yes, you too, sir.” He points at Vishnu with the implement. “Make your shrimati happy!”
    Padmini has put her elbows on the wooden platform on which the man with the vegetables is performing his magic. “Does it do mooli too?” she asks, leaning forward and resting her chin on her palms.
    “But of course!” In goes a long white radish; it, too, emerges as a spiral.
    Padmini claps her hands. “Here, you try it, memsahib,” the man says. People stop to watch. Padmini takes a carrot and puts it into the metal tube. She turns the handle, but nothing happens. A hush passes over the spectators. “You have to push it through,” the man quickly says, and shows her how. The carrot emerges in a spiral, Padmini laughs, and a sigh of relief is heard from the crowd.
    “It’s so easy!” Padmini turns around and exclaims. Dazzled by her endorsement, people surge forward to buy the carrot cutter. The man sells so many that he gives her a new one, still wrapped in plastic, and tells her she can keep it.
    “I’ve always loved kitchen things,” she says, as they walk through the gunny-lined corridors.
    Vishnu looks at her silver-sandaled feet treading delicately around the puddles of mud. He looks at her dress, studded with sequins, sees the layers of red, red lipstick on her lips, the kohl applied so skillfully, stroke by stroke, that her eyes seem to float white and free. He is still amazed, amazed to be walking with this exquisite creature next to him, this woman with the stainless-steel gadget held so tightly against her sequined bosom. He still cannot believe that she has agreed to be with him today.
    “Guddi ke baal!” Padmini points. The cotton candy does look like pink doll’s hair, it appears from nowhere, spinning itself into a giant pink puff around the stick waved around inside the bowl of the machine.
    “Would you like some?” Vishnu asks, and Padmini nods shyly. Vishnu buys it for her, and they continue.
    “Look at that! What a motor!” They are passing a photographer’s stall, lined with all sorts of painted backdrops. There is a horse, standing up on two legs, perilously close to the edge of a cliff; an aeroplane with painted-on wings, obviously airborne, as evidenced by the clouds behind; even a crescent moon surrounded by stars, a rocket spaceship about to land on the surface. But Padmini is pointing at the bright red car painted on a wooden cutout, with yellow headlights, and a plate lettered in English, which the man reads out: “Good luck. Made in USA.” She runs to the seat hidden behind and leans out of the window. “How do I look?” she says, as she presses on the painted-on horn.
    “Only three rupees for a picture,” the man says, so Vishnu pays him. He begins to sit in the seat next to her, but she stiffens. “No, just me,” she says, “just me, or just you, but not both.”
    She begins to rise, but Vishnu stops her and gets up instead. There is a flash as the photo is taken.
    They have an hour before the picture will be developed. They come to a canvas tent outside which a man stands. “Come see the film!” he shouts. “Cabaret dance by Reshma! Very hot! Up next, five minutes!”
    “Let’s go!” Vishnu says. “I love seeing the films here.”
    Padmini is unsure, but allows herself to be led through the tent flap. Inside, wooden benches face a sloping white sheet that has been sewn to the tent. A naked bulb swelters at the end of a wire. The heat has built up with every show, the air is now thick with the smell of perspiration and warm canvas. Vishnu and Padmini join the audience, which waits listlessly in the heat, scattered around the benches like victims of a carnage.
    “I’m not used to this,” Padmini says. “Usually I get taken out to proper cinemas. Taj, sometimes even Novelty.” She shifts around, displaying obvious discomfort on her wooden