The Death of Vishnu

demons bared their teeth at Mr. Jalal before being obscured by the vapors issuing from their nostrils.
    “Where did you come from?” Mr. Jalal asked, his voice trembling.
    “Forever have I been here, and forever shall I remain—I am everywhere and everything all at once. In every living cell of every living thing shall you find me. Lucky are those to whom I show myself, for it is not through penance or rituals that you will see me.”
    The heads had multiplied, and were now craning their long necks to surround Mr. Jalal and stare at him from all directions. A steady stream of gods and ghosts and demons were passing from mouth to open mouth, undaunted by the skulls and mangled bodies dangling between the teeth. The air was so heavy with heat that Mr. Jalal felt the inside of his chest was on fire.
    “What do you want from me?” he wheezed.
    “Fortunate are those who recognize my presence. Blessed are those who acknowledge me, worship me. Tell them down there to recognize me for who I am. I can wait only so long. Before it is too late, too late for all. For I have come to save and destroy the universe.”
    And then, as Mr. Jalal looked, Vishnu began to expand even more, until he filled all of space, and suffused all of time. Mr. Jalal felt himself becoming one with Vishnu, not only in this, but in all his previous existences as well. The last thought he had was about the splinters of walnut shell still embedded in his forehead, and then he was overcome with a sense of oneness, all touch and feeling subsiding, all thought and emotion fading, the intensity of the vision engulfing him in all its splendor, and once fully encapsulated, an unexpected peace descending, a quiet, a solitude, a meditative calm, and then, finally, sleep, pure and silent, unusually deep, from which Mr. Jalal was awoken a few hours later.

C HAPTER E IGHT
    S HORT GANGA SET the bottles of milk down. Although she could manage to carry all eight of them from the milk booth to the building without pause, climbing the stairs with them was a different thing, and she always took a break, both before starting and at the Jalals’ landing. She was careful not to wake up Man Who Slept on the Lowest Step. Not so much because she was concerned about his sleep, about which she couldn’t care less, but because he unfailingly tried to look up her sari if he was awake when she went past. Even though she wore her sari in the Maharashtrian fashion, which made looking up it impossible, she still felt uneasy at his attempts. She almost wished he was improper with her in some other, more tangible way, so she could approach the cigarettewalla about giving him a beating.
    The morning milk run was the most hectic part of the day. First she had to stand in line to get the milk from the ration booth, using the cards that each family gave her. Then it was a race to distribute all the milk to the buildings before it soured in the heat. April was one of the hottest months, second only to May, and already this week two of her customers had complained about spoiled milk. When this happened, the loss was quite staggering, since the cost of a bottle was roughly what she made per household for a week’s delivery. Often, when people demanded she pay them for the spoiled milk, she just stopped delivering to that address—if enough gangas did that, then the housewives would no longer be able to wield such tyranny over them.
    Her break over, Short Ganga picked up the two wire holders and started climbing the steps. All she had been able to get today was the bottles with the red foil caps, the ones with reconstituted milk. Which meant there was bound to be a fuss. Especially with the Asranis and the Pathaks. Short Ganga knew they would accuse her of selling their good milk to nonration customers and substituting the cheaper variety for them. Which she did do occasionally, but the point was that today was not such a day.
    Let them just try it, Short Ganga thought to herself. The heat was making her bellicose. She’d accuse them of poisoning Vishnu. That would shut them up. It wasn’t so far from the truth anyway—the cigarettewalla had told her that neither family had offered to pay for the hospital even though the ambulance had come to pick Vishnu up. “All those years he has worked for you, and this is what you give him?” she practiced to herself. “A death worse than a dog’s?”
    Short Ganga had reached the stage where she had stopped caring so much about losing a