The Death of Vishnu

the other hand, he couldn’t remember any obvious physical defects either. Thinking about it overnight, he could come up with no particular reason to either reject or endorse the match. The wedding was negotiated that very week.
    A few days later, he found himself at the house of his future in-laws. Sheetal’s mother brought out the sets of jewelry that were to be given with the bride and laid them out for his family’s inspection. His mother put on her reading glasses, and lifting the pieces from their red velvet boxes, started examining them one by one. Vinod watched the proceedings for a while, and then, with nothing to do, picked up a necklace himself, and held it up against his palm.
    He was trying to follow a point of light as it skittered from stone to stone when his eyes met Sheetal’s. He was startled by the disdain in them, a disdain so keen he had to look away. He put the necklace down immediately, then tried to catch Sheetal’s eye again. But she did not look up, keeping her face properly lowered through the rest of the meeting.
    He saw her next a few weeks after that, at their engagement. He wanted to talk to Sheetal then, but their eyes did not meet once during the entire ceremony. Even when he offered her the laddoo, Sheetal did not raise her head, but waited for him to bring it to her mouth, so she could take a delicate bite.
    The period between the engagement and wedding passed by in a haze. Vinod spent the days at his new job in the bank, and his evenings as before, gathering with friends at the café near Churchgate. There were many jokes about his impending union, but somehow he managed not to think about how his life was going to change. The wedding always seemed to be at least a few days away, and Vinod occupied his hours without letting himself worry about it.
    It was only when he saw his garments being tied to Sheetal’s that the enormity and irreversibility of the situation hit him. He was getting married, and he did not know why, or to whom. He looked up at the guests and relatives all around and heard them whispering and saw them smiling at him. He suddenly felt like protesting—there had been a mistake, it hadn’t sunk in, he hadn’t had the time to think about it, it had all been too hastily arranged. He saw the fire at the center of the gathering, the priest chanting and spooning ghee into the flames. The vapors were so strong he could taste them. He felt a gentle tug on his clothing, and realized that the seven circles had started. The fire always to his left, a hush spreading over the crowd, the priest reaching out to throw camphor into the flames, Sheetal behind him, tied to his body by her sari, destined to follow him forever. The fire seemed to grow more intense with each round, the flames jumped into the night air, and he wondered if they might leap out and set the knot that tied him to Sheetal aflame. Buds of white swayed and dissolved before his eyes as the curtain of flowers hanging in strings from his turban swung in front of his face. He wished the curtain was more impermeable, so that he could shut out the sights in front of him, so that he would not feel the heat of the fire he imagined on his face, or hear the priest’s stream of Sanskrit, growing steadily unbearable in his ears. On and on the circles went—three, four, five, six—and he wondered if he could quit before completing the seventh one, run through the guests and vault over the walls of the mandap to freedom. But then his feet had crossed the threshold for the seventh time, and then Sheetal’s feet, the edges stained orange with henna, were crossing it too.
    And then he was entering their wedding-night room and closing the door; the sounds of giggling were left outside, and his bride was sitting on the petal-strewn bed. He had seen this scene so many times before—Raj Kapoor and Nargis, Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, the heroine always in embroidered silk, the groom in impeccable white, and when the hero pulled back the heroine’s ghunghat, she kept her eyes closed. He reached out to lift the cloth, and his hand wavered. What if Sheetal’s eyes were staring at his, defiant, with the look of that first day? But his wife must have seen the same films he had, because when he looked under the cloth, her eyes were closed, the dots painted in ceremonial white forming a serene arch over her eyebrows. For a second, he wondered if he should break into song as they did in the