The Death of Vishnu

unwavering—what he was striving after was much too important to lose in the shadows of her gloom. Besides, she was the one always complaining about his lack of faith. This was his chance to do something about it, not only for himself, but also for the two of them.
    How different Arifa had been when he had first met her. Or perhaps it was he, Mr. Jalal thought, his opinion, that had changed. Could he have really found her neediness so reassuring back then, her insecurity so endearing? And the naiveté with which she stumbled through life—was there really a time when he had been charmed by it?
    Those had been the days he was going around with his intellectual friends—the bearded, bespectacled group with whom he met every night to discuss philosophy and the fate of the world. “Every leaf has its story” was his favorite saying, and Arifa had been a leaf that had fallen his way. How touched he had been by her plainness, her lack of a story, when he had smiled his encouraging smile at her that first day. Wasn’t she, too, worthy of a story—didn’t she, too, deserve to have someone write one for her? Why not undertake the task himself, he had thought, perhaps even write himself into the plot? Didn’t he pride himself as being unswayed by wealth or position, didn’t he profess such faith in the innate potential of every human? This was his chance to prove it, prove it once and for all, by marrying this plain person. This person, whose only recommendation so far was the eloquence with which her features had communicated their gratification in the light of the chaatwalla’s lamp.
    It was an idea that had quickly taken root, an idea that had flourished and ripened in the idealism of those youthful days. “Are you sure,” his father had asked, “about this Dongri girl?” And Ahmed’s chest had puffed with assurance when he had said yes.
    His conceit had been that he would transform Arifa, Pygmalion-like, that he would introduce her to art and literature and pure thought. That he would scrape and scrub away at her Dongriness, until she emerged, polished and precious, like a multifaceted jewel, able to hold her own with razor wit and glittering personality. He had dived into this project with great gusto, talking to her about Kant and Plato, reciting to her works by Shaw and Tagore, shaking her up, baiting her, challenging her to think . She had displayed a particular softness for religion, so he had tried to introduce her to the ideas, sometimes foreign, sometimes contradictory, that formed the essence of other faiths, to show her that these were all man-made inventions, and one could not be preferred over the other. He had especially tried to impress upon her the story of his favorite Mughal emperor, Akbar, who had come to power in India after a long history of Muslim invaders, but followed a completely different course—not only encouraging other religions, but even marrying Hindu princesses, inviting Christian missionaries to educate his son, and eventually renouncing so much in the pursuit of his own Din Ilahi religion that people said he was no longer a Muslim.
    “Think of it, Arifa. An emperor who gave up Islam to unify the subjects in his land, a ruler who said all men were equal, no matter to which religion they were born.”
    His wife chose not to think about it. “Isn’t it enough to lecture me from morning to night about every topic under the sun? What need is there to push this further rubbish down my throat?”
    Arifa’s resistance only made his resolve grow stronger. He would not rest until he had forced her to confront the irrationality of her beliefs. The harder he labored, though, the more stubbornly she resisted. Eventually, it was she who won—a victory that appalled him, since it represented the defeat of everything he championed—rationality and reason—to so primitive a force as faith.
    That was when the absurdity of his situation struck Mr. Jalal. He had knowingly pursued and tied himself to a woman with whom he had little in common. Now she turned out to not even be the blank slate he had expected to fill. Instead, she came programmed with ideas of her own, convictions he had not been able to dislodge, beliefs he might never exorcise.
    What was it about Arifa’s faith that had such tenacity in the face of his efforts? How could he have underestimated it so disastrously? He had always been proud of his conversance with not only Islam, but all the major religions of the world.