The Death of Vishnu

some time, refusing to be disturbed by the footsteps, the voices, the occasional giggles, even the roar of a jet passing overhead, when it happened. Suddenly, he felt light surge into his face, a momentary flash which turned the insides of his eyelids a vivid red. He kept his eyes shut, and wondered if he was imagining things. Seconds later, he felt the flash again, and this time, his heart began pounding. Something was occurring, something unexpected, something extraordinary, and he was the medium through which it was being manifested. His mind raced through the books he had read—had the Buddha spoken of a flash, had Mahavira? What did it mean, what did it signify? The flash returned, lingering a little longer this time, and for an instant he wondered if this could be the first step towards enlightenment. A feeling of warmth began to permeate his shoulders, and he suddenly started feeling very light. Then he heard a laugh, his eyes flickered open, and he was greeted by the sight of a group of schoolchildren gathered around him. One of them flashed the mirror a final time into his eyes, another kicked dirt into his face, and then they all ran away laughing.
    Wearily, Mr. Jalal got up and shook the mud out of his hair. As he limped bleary-eyed towards the taxi-stand, he decided the world had become too overpopulated a place to recreate the conditions for renunciation from the Buddha’s time.
    Even though he had been tricked, one thing about the experience stayed with him. It was the memory of those last few instants, when the exhilaration had spread like a drug through his body, when his mind had surged with optimism, and he had felt himself floating, as weightless as a balloon. Mr. Jalal wanted to relive that feeling, he wanted to be able to recreate the conditions that produced it. He found himself diving into his quest with a new urgency, and starting to hope, against the grain of his nature, that he would find something. That the trials he was putting himself through, the pain, the deprivation, would yield a more authentic sign—one that he would not be able to refute, one that would blaze its energy through every cell and fiber of his body. With each new attempt he made, this longing only grew, and soon Mr. Jalal had to periodically remind himself of the skepticism that had always been such an essential part of him.
    Tonight, as he edged his way down the dark and moonless steps, it was not skepticism but excitement that hummed in Mr. Jalal’s mind. He had been waiting for this all day, he had a feeling about this experiment—perhaps this would be the stop on his journey when he finally arrived somewhere.
    He eased himself into the calm that hung over Vishnu’s landing. It was like entering a different dimension, one where the nature of every object had been softened, the sharpness of every corner rounded away. Vishnu’s form lay covered by a bedsheet, and the bright orange floral pattern on the cloth gleamed in the dark around his feet. Mr. Jalal noted that the sheet had changed since the last night, as had Vishnu’s position on the floor. Even the smell was different—mixed in with the odor of excretion was the astringency of phenol, hanging over the landing like the air in a hospital. He wondered who had cleaned Vishnu up. The changes worried Mr. Jalal, since he had counted on the filth to make it more of a test than it might turn out to be now.
    As Mr. Jalal prepared to join Vishnu, he tried to imagine what the Buddha might have done before lying down. Surely there must have been some prayer uttered before settling into meditation. And what about Mother Teresa and St. Francis? For a second, Mr. Jalal toyed with the idea of crossing himself, but then decided not to. Using his sense of touch, he aligned himself with Vishnu’s body in the darkness. He stretched out on the ground, thankful that it felt harder, somehow, than the floor of his bedroom.
    The edge of Vishnu’s sheet brushed against Mr. Jalal’s pajamas. Body and flesh, he had promised. He eased out some of the sheet from under Vishnu and arranged it over his nightshirt. Then, reaching in with his arm, Mr. Jalal felt around under the sheet until his fingers came into contact with Vishnu’s.

    L ET ME TELL you, my little Vishnu, of a yogi-spirit named Jeev. A yogi-spirit named Jeev born nine hundred and ninety thousand times.
    Vishnu stops on the stairway to listen. Which one of Jeev’s stories is his mother going to relate?
    Many, many