The Death of Vishnu

a look at him. If nothing else, for your poor aging mother and father.”
    That was when Kavita decided. She would run away. Elope, they called it—the English word had such a voluptuous feel. All those movies, all those stories. She would be Laila, she would be Heer, she would be Juliet. “If that is what everyone wants, I’ll do it.”
    The beam returned to her mother’s face. “I knew you would,” she said, putting her arms around Kavita and kissing her forehead. “Whose daughter are you, after all? Come now, after breakfast, I’ll teach you to cook gulab jamuns so you can take some along on Saturday.”
    Originally, Kavita had planned to elope last night. But then curiosity had got the better of her, and she had postponed it a day. She wanted to see if she could pull it off. She wanted Mrs. Lalwani to be impressed. She wanted the poor engineer boy to fall madly for her, and have all his trite engineer dreams crushed when she ran away. She would cook to kill tonight, she would scent the gulab jamuns with the perfume of her own youth, sweeten them with the syrup of her own beauty. They would remember her, all of them—they would have her picture emblazoned on their minds, and pine for her return, but it would be in vain.
    Kavita kissed Salim’s photo and opened her purse to put it in. The smell of fresh hundred-rupee bills wafted out. A new life, Kavita thought, inhaling. The fragrance of a new future. She separated a note from the rest. Vishnu had not been well lately. This was for him—she’d leave it under his blanket as they left.

    O N THE FIFTH step, he pauses. The stairs are curving round. The lower half of his figure has disappeared behind the stone. If he climbs another step, only the head will remain visible.
    Vishnu looks at the torso outlined under the sheet. It lies there unmoving, mapping out the space he occupies in the world. He has worked so hard to stake out this space. Every inch his body has grown, every cell it has generated, every hair, every eyelash, has needed space. He has fought to claim it from the outside, gouged it out from the unyielding reserves around. He has guarded it, hoarded it, squeezed his body into its confines. He is loathe to give up this space.
    His body, too—how will he leave it behind? It is his agency for experience, his intermediary to the world. This body that has borne him from infancy to manhood. Every imperfection in this body is his, every scar belongs to him—he can remember when it first appeared. He has cared for this body, fed it, cleaned it, nurtured it like a child. These lips that barely encircled his mother’s nipple, this nose that has learnt to pick out Kavita’s fragrance from a dozen others, these eyes that have watched the layers around Padmini’s body peel away. He has tried to fulfill its longings, he has lain it down naked on the ground and felt the sperm surge out of this body.
    Is it his perception, or is the stone under his feet beginning to fade? Are his limbs getting weightless, or was he always this light? Are his muscles losing their flex, are his bones turning to air, is his head threatening to float away? He can no longer feel his clothes, nor under them, his skin.
    Vishnu mounts the next step. He wills the action, and it is done. There is no push against the ground, no thrust against the air, no activity at all. It is a strange sensation, vaguely unsatisfying.
    He rises, and the stone slides across his view like a screen. Now, only his neck and head are visible, now only his face, now only his forehead, now only his hair. He closes his eyes. There he is, lying on the landing, the light cresting around him. He opens his eyes, then closes them again, making the image disappear, then reappear. He keeps them closed. He may have lost his sense of touch, he may have lost the comfort of weight, but he has gained, as well. He can see now, clearer, deeper, than he has ever seen before.

    T HE FIGHT HAD ended an hour ago—the landing had been cleaned up, the children beaten, the husbands berated, and both Mrs. Pathak and Mrs. Asrani were being borne towards their afternoon naps on carpets of satisfaction and inner peace, when Mrs. Jalal came down.
    “Hello? Anyone home?” She knocked on the Pathaks’ door, but there was no answer.
    Salim had told her that the Asranis and Pathaks had been wrapping up their fight when he had passed their floor. “Looks like they couldn’t agree who should pay for the hospital bed,” he said.