The Death of Vishnu

found she could take the 81 bus all the way to the mosque near Metro. Downstairs, the paanwalla started greeting her with a “Namaste, Jalal memsahib,” and the cigarettewalla started doing the same. And every time Vishnu saw her on the steps, he inquired if memsahib needed a taxi, and ran down ahead to flag one down if she nodded.
    She had never been able to solve the puzzle of what Ahmed had seen in her, why he had married her in the first place. After all, he was from a family that had both wealth and culture, and she was not the person his parents would have picked for him (as his mother had assured her once). At first, she had obsessed about this question, and tried to force an answer out from him. But with time had come the realization that it might not be something she really wanted to learn.
    She often wondered, though, if Ahmed had truly come to love her in those first few years. That crucial period, when love, if it catches, can be enough for a lifetime of memories, as the song went. She had almost made it there herself, reaching the stage where she could look into her heart, and view the room she was preparing for him. A little longer, and she would have ushered him in and captured him there forever. There might have still been doubts, and anguish even, but she would have been able to subsume anything into the thickness of those walls.
    Mrs. Jalal sighed. This was not the time to worry about the empty chambers people carried around in their hearts. This was not the time to follow the call of tamarind back into the past. She was visiting Nafeesa to talk things through, not break down and wrest her pity. It was important she keep her composure, important she get her mind off such maudlin thoughts.
    Mrs. Jalal peered one last time towards the invisible bus stop. Then she crossed the street and walked the remaining distance to Nafeesa’s building.

    K AVITA SAT AT the dining table, staring at the masala chicken on her plate. It was her favorite dish. Her mother had taken great care that morning to fry the masala until it was nice and red, and decorate the dish extravagantly with cashews before bringing it out. The accompanying rice was deep gold with turmeric, and generously laden with the tasty bits of fried onion that Kavita so loved picking out. “There’s even mango kulfi for dessert,” Shyamu excitedly whispered to her as they sat down. “You must let lots more boys look at you before saying yes.”
    Food was the last thing on Kavita’s mind. All she had been able to think about, through the daze of the trip back from Lalwani aunty’s house, were the words Pran had spoken to her.
    “I hope you say yes.”
    She had just stood there and stared at him. His head lifting up, his eyes meeting her face, his cheeks, his neck, his ears turning red.
    “You’re very beautiful.”
    She could hardly believe it. Her charms had worked. She had ensnared herself an engineer, just as she had set out to do. What heights her beauty must have moved the poor bashful boy to, that he was able to summon up the courage to bring forth such words. Pran’s eyes opened before her, like buds flowering reticently in the light—she could feel the breath catch in his throat and hear the blood pound in his ears.
    What part of her, she wondered, had he found most irresistible? Had it been her hair? The locks that (people said) curled around her face so perfectly, the tresses that (they added) cascaded so luxuriantly down to her shoulders? Or was it her eyes—so round and wide (and eyeliner-accentuated today), against which Mrs. Kotwani had pressed her lips so lovingly in farewell. Or maybe her lips, painted with her new Revlon lipstick, the one so startlingly red that her mother had forbidden her to wear a red dress with it. She had kept her lips in a pout and glossed them over frequently with her tongue. Pran’s eyes, she had noticed, had sneaked several times to their level before darting away.
    It was certainly a call for elation, this success she’d achieved in her first try at being a temptress. Why then was a part of her so confused? The part that had noticed the smooth fine hairs glistening along Pran’s upper lip. The part that had detected the quiver at his throat as he had strained to get the words out, the part that had looked deeper into his eyes than had probably been prudent. There had been a tenderness hiding there, an unexpected sensitivity, that had shyly communicated its presence from behind the fear. For