The Death of Vishnu

react when he asks her to buy them petrol so they can get back. Relief comes pouring in, and he begins to laugh; laugh at the veil still covering Padmini’s head, laugh at the doll dangling by her side, laugh at the reassurance his laughter brings to her eyes. Padmini begins to laugh as well, and from somewhere in the faraway trees, the koyal joins in with its mocking call, and as the peals of their mirth get louder, Vishnu hears them sound through the valley, echo across the mountains, and reverberate up into the sky.

C HAPTER S IX
    I T WAS DARK by the time the taxi reached Dongri. The call to the evening prayer was echoing from the buildings, and Mrs. Jalal cocked her ear and listened to the familiar sound. She missed having the masjid with the peacock-green tiles just around the corner, missed the summons from the prayer tower that marked each day into regular segments. Down the road, she knew the women in their black burkhas would be haggling with the butcher from behind their veils at the Rahim Meat Shop, and next to it, old Anwar chacha might still be sitting at the register of the Allah Ijazat Hotel, calling out orders for fish fry and lamb’s feet to the workers in the kitchen. She wondered if he would recognize her now, if he would offer her a sweet from the jar he kept at his elbow, as he did every time her mother sent her down to fetch cold drinks from him.
    She walked down Jail Road and turned into the market street. The corridor was as crowded as ever, with throngs of people milling around and arguing with the vendors squatting on the ground. Everywhere were piles of fruits and vegetables, mounds of glossy black brinjals, pyramids of carefully stacked oranges, baskets of ripe red tomatoes, and most precious of all, crates filled with green and yellow mangoes, still partially wrapped in tissue to protect them from bruising. There was a man hawking kerosene stove parts, another with tubes of insect repellent (except the brand read Odomol, not Odomos), and outside the Indore Sweetmeat Store, a boy standing over dozens of identical plastic dolls spread out on a sheet, like babies arranged in orderly rows in an orphanage. “Two for three, two for three,” the tout yelled out, and Mrs. Jalal felt a hundred eyes peering up at her from the ground, reproaching her for not saving them at such a bargain.
    At the corner of Nawoji Hill Road, she paused. Down the street, next to the bus stop around the bend, used to be the chaatwalla stand where she had first met Ahmed. She wondered if it would still be there, if she should walk down and check for it. All those evenings that Nafeesa and she had succumbed to the promise of chili on their palates, the anticipation of tamarind tickling their throats, hooking them and reeling them in as surely as fish at the end of a line. The dark winter evenings, the hot and listless summers, even the rainiest days of the monsoons, when they huddled next to the chaatwalla under the bus stop shelter, and the wind tried to pluck away the leaves folded into cups from their hands.
    And that one moonlit starry night—or perhaps it was cloudy and starless—when she crushed that first golgappa in her mouth, felt the crisp papdi shards and the soft yielding chickpeas between her teeth, tasted the sweet and fiery chutneys on her tongue, closed her eyes as the gush of tamarind water exploded down her throat. The initial dose of acid and spice always brought tears to her eyes. As she dabbed at them, she was dimly aware of Ahmed smiling at her from the other end of the semicircle of customers. He raised his leaf to her, and when the chaatwalla doled out a golgappa into it, scooped the papdi out and closed his mouth around it with an expression of such luxuriant satisfaction it could have only been for her benefit.
    She looked away at once, not wanting to acknowledge his expression. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the large steel vessels and earthenware pots rising from the red cloth covering the stand. She watched intently as each golgappa was created: the tap to make the hole in the top of the papdi, the scoops to fill it with chickpeas and chutney, the final immersion into the pot of tamarind water, the chaatwalla’s hand disappearing almost to the elbow. She had been determined to keep her attention thus occupied, but then her second golgappa developed a leak, and as she tilted her head to swallow the water spilt into the leaf, her vision got entangled in Ahmed’s smile again.
    She