The Death of Vishnu

life; why should her clothes be old? Besides, she had all the money from her savings account—the clerk had looked at her funny when she had given him the withdrawal slip, but she was eighteen now, and what could they do?
    Kavita did not feel guilty about taking the money. After all, her mother had kept telling her over the years that it was for her dowry. While this was perhaps not ( definitely not) the match her mother could have had in mind, they were going to get married, although they had not figured out yet how they would get a priest or mullah to perform the ceremony. Besides, there hadn’t been so much money anyway—her mother should be thankful the family was getting off so cheap. She remembered the huge wedding and reception that Anita’s parents had paid for last year, with the horse and the band and the dinner at Holiday Inn. A momentary wistfulness made her resolve waver, but then the prospect of romance won her over again.
    Growing up, Salim had been one of the neighborhood boys, nothing more. She had seen him loitering around with the other teenagers, but had paid little attention to him. One day, the group had been particularly boisterous, and Kavita had complained to her mother about the catcalls and whistles they’d made. Mrs. Asrani had marched upstairs and accused the Jalals of harboring an eve-teaser. Salim’s parents had sent him down to apologize—not to Kavita, but to her mother, who had met him at the door, arms crossed emphatically across her chest. He had stuttered at first, but then expressed such eloquent regret that Mrs. Asrani had melted—she had pulled him to her bosom and declared him to be her own son.
    “From now on, Kavita is your sister,” she said, and clasped their hands together. “If we can’t all live in harmony in this building, what hope is there for the nation?”
    “Sister,” Salim said, with an expression so angelic that Kavita knew at once he was mocking her. She was going to pull her hand away, but stopped—there was some chemical reaction that had started between them. Electrons were being blown out of their orbits, atoms and molecules rearranged, heat was being generated, and she was suddenly afraid to interrupt. She stood there and felt the blood surge in her fingertips; she looked into his eyes, and saw the hint of green mixed in slyly with the brown, she noted the whiteness of his teeth and the fairness of his skin. She would not be his sister.
    Mrs. Asrani’s benevolence evaporated quite rapidly. “What all you keep doing to encourage this Salim character, I don’t know—day after day he buzzes around like a flying cockroach.”
    “But he’s my brother. You said so yourself.”
    “What brother-wrother? I pat him once on the head, and he becomes your brother? Who am I, the Queen of England?”
    “But you said we all have to live in harmony.”
    “Yes yes. Everyone in the building has seen your harmony. Even Mrs. Pathak—the nerve of that woman. ‘How broad-minded of you,’ she tells me in the kitchen. ‘He hardly even looks Muslim,’ she says. I felt like slapping her.”
    “But it’s not my fault if people think like that.”
    “Then whose fault is it? Parading up and down for everyone to see. Well, no more, I say. No more Master Cockroach Jalal. No more meeting him. Get rid of the bamboo, and the flute won’t play.”
    “But that’s so unfair.”
    “I’ll talk with your father today only. We’ll get your horoscope drawn. It’s time to put henna on your hands, before you blacken your face too much for anyone to marry you.”
    Naturally, such proscriptions against seeing Salim charged their trysts with a new and delicious urgency. Whereas before Kavita had been content to just talk and spend time in his company, she now found herself consumed by the need for physical contact. She stroked his face with her fingers to feel the tingling rise up her hand, she brushed her lips against his mouth to experience the rush that raced through her body, she pressed her breasts against his shirt and fantasized about the thick dark hair on his chest rubbing against her uncovered nipples. And every time they met, she let Salim guide her hand closer and closer to places she had not thought about, before she pulled it away.
    They began enlisting Vishnu’s help. He had surprised them one day, as they were nuzzling in the dark on the stairs. “Watch out, your mother is coming up with the kerosenewalla,” he had hissed at her, and Salim had