The Death of Vishnu

be once he got his radio. The whole building would be filled with the sweet sounds of Naushad and Madan Mohan, and Lata’s haunting voice would be like a creeper curling around the flights, its tendrils reaching out to caress every nook and corner. Everyone would be invited to gather in the evenings for special programs on film music, with a few nights of devotional bhajans and perhaps even western music thrown in.
    The day finally came when Nathuram fulfilled his dream, and proudly carried the bright red cardboard box to his landing. Tall Ganga arranged to come back early from her cleaning jobs, and even the cigarettewalla clambered up the stairs to watch. It took Nathuram several minutes just to pry off the staples, so determined was he to preserve every last detail of the box. Each piece of packing material inside was carefully removed and passed around for the people gathered to marvel over. Short Ganga was particularly fascinated by the Styrofoam, and asked if she could keep a sample, but Nathuram was horrified at her request and quickly plucked away the piece from her hands.
    When the last piece of plastic had been circulated and folded away, an expectant hush fell across the landing. Nathuram raised his hands and rotated them in the air, like a magician displaying his palms to an audience before a trick. Then he reached deep into the box and slowly pulled up the transistor. The knobs rose into view first, shining in a smart row across the top surface, the sleek black dial window emerged next, its numbers embedded in yellow against a blue background, and then came the silver front with the speaker holes arranged geometrically in a circle. Nathuram carried the transistor around the assembly like a baby in his arms, quickly retracting the instrument in case a hand got too close to it.
    That first night, the transistor filled all the landings in the building with its sound. The cigarettewalla had shown Nathuram how to connect it into an old socket which hadn’t been used since the time there had been bulbs illuminating each landing. People stayed until the last program on Vividh Bharati ended at 11:30 p.m. Nathuram tried to get something on the shortwave channels afterwards, but no matter how the antenna was adjusted, the signals that were captured were too weak. Vishnu came up after everyone had left, to find Nathuram fast asleep, the radio still on in his arms, waves of static whooshing through the landing like an ethereal tide.
    The radio quickly became an integral part of life in the building. Every morning, Vishnu woke up with the Glycodin commercial on Radio Ceylon. When the K. L. Saigal song came on, he knew it was almost 8 a.m, almost time for the radio to be switched off. A few minutes later, Nathuram would come down the stairs, the transistor in its leather case, strapped around his neck. In the evenings, Nathuram greeted people who came up the stairs, showing them where to sit on the landing, like an usher at a movie theater. The most popular program was the 9:30 Listeners’ Requests. Tall Ganga claimed to have mailed in a request herself, and listened eagerly each evening as the names were announced, but hers was never called out.
    In time, everyone in the building, even Mr. Jalal and Mrs. Asrani, started calling Nathuram Radiowalla. Radiowalla never went anywhere without his radio—he played it on the rocks at Breach Candy while performing his morning business, carried it slung behind his back while pushing his cart, and even slept with it hugged tightly to his body under his sheet.
    It was not clear exactly when the changes started to occur, or what caused them. Everyone still gathered on Radiowalla’s landing in the evenings for the new hits by Lata and Asha and Rafi. But whereas before Radiowalla walked around greeting people with an animated smile, he now sometimes just sat next to his radio and stared wordlessly at his audience. One Wednesday, he insisted on tuning in to devotional music even though Binaca Top Twenty was playing on Radio Ceylon; another evening he refused to move the dial from All India Radio, forcing people to listen to news programs, that too in English. The cigarettewalla, who had been entrusted with the care of the box the radio came in, was suddenly accused of using it to store cartons of matches. Radiowalla angrily took it back and spent several days airing the pieces of packing material on his landing to get rid of the smell of sulfur he claimed clung to