The Death of Vishnu

movies. Instead, he lifted her head slowly, and asked her to open her eyes.
    In that first clear look into the eyes of the person with whom he was supposed to spend the rest of his life, he was relieved to find not defiance but curiosity, not disdain but unfamiliarity, not love but not dislike, either.
    We will produce a new and soulful tune; the flute will play, the guitar will strum;
    Now we are two, but soon we’ll be three, from this, the first night of our union.
    They sat there next to each other, the layers of clothing and ornaments they were wearing too intimidating to allow conversation, let alone intimacy. More daunting was the fact that they had met only twice since the engagement, that too under the supervision of a caucus of chaperons. The silence pressed around them, as oppressive as the heat and the humidity in the air.
    Vinod cleared his throat, preparing to say something. But no topic of conversation suggested itself. He gazed at the new ring banding his finger. How were they going to fill all the minutes, all the hours, between now and the end of their time together?
    Whispers came from the other side of the door, then the sound of muffled giggles. Suddenly, a radio was turned on, at full volume. The soaring chorus of the national anthem filled the room, and Sheetal looked up, confused. For a moment, he thought she was going to stand to attention beside the bed. There was laughter from the corridor outside, then the sound of running feet, and his mother’s scolding voice. The radio was switched off just in the middle of the final “Jaya he.”
    Vinod heard his mother tiptoe away from the door.
    “Do you know all the words?” he asked Sheetal.
    “Of course,” she replied. “Everyone learns it in school. Didn’t you?”
    “I did. But I could never memorize the whole thing.”
    Sheetal did not respond.
    “They must have waited,” he said. “Waited till eleven-thirty, for the station to shut down and the anthem to come on. I should have run to the door and grabbed their radio from them. We could have had a little music.”
    “But the station has shut down, you said.”
    “The foreign stations run all night. We could have heard jazz. Do you ever listen to jazz?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I don’t much, either. Except late at night. Otherwise, I listen to Radio Ceylon. They have the songs from all the new films. Months before they get them on Vividh Bharati. Do you like seeing films?”
    Sheetal nodded.
    “Did you see Mughal-e-Azam ?”
    “Yes, and I hated it. I hate Madhubala.”
    “How can you possibly hate Madhubala?”
    “She has the face of an elephant.”
    “She’s not even fat.”
    “Not her body. Just her face. Her nose, especially.”
    “You don’t know what you’re saying. She has a beautiful nose.”
    “An elephant. I’m not going to any Madhubala films with you.”
    They argued about Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Vyjayanthimala. They talked about their favorite films. Sheetal shyly revealed that she often liked to memorize not only songs but also pieces of dialogue that moved her. As an illustration, she recited her favorite lines from Love in Rome .
    “Remember that scene in the restaurant, when they eat all that Italian food?” Vinod said, laughing. “What does it turn out to be—octopus or something?”
    Sheetal’s face darkened. “Don’t expect me to cook any non-veg for you,” she suddenly declared.
    Vinod was taken aback.
    “But your family isn’t vegetarian,” he protested. “You yourself were eating tandoori chicken tonight at the reception.”
    “I like to eat it, but I’m not going to cook it. It’s a hundred times more sinful to cook it than eat it.”
    “But nobody said anything before the wedding. How will we eat meat when we start living by ourselves if you won’t cook it?”
    “What if I teach you to cook it?”
    “But I’m the husband. I’m not supposed to cook. And also, if I did, then all the sins would come on my head.”
    Sheetal’s brow furrowed. “And since you’re my husband, they’d be on my head too.” She fell silent. “I guess we won’t be able to have meat after all,” she said.
    They looked at each other gloomily. Married life had barely begun, and already abstinence was the forecast for the future.
    The talk about cooking had made Vinod hungry, so he suggested sneaking out to locate the wedding sweets. Sheetal demurred at first, but then gave in—she, too, was hungry. They took off all the