The Death of Vishnu

to her.
    They stared at the wedding decorations festooned over the bed. The sound of the mosquitoes diving among the streamers mingled with the snores that trickled in from under the door. A balloon rested listlessly against the ceiling, its thread dangling all the way to the floor. Down the street, a dog barked, and further away somewhere, they heard a car start up.
    Vinod could feel Sheetal’s body breathing next to him in the dark. He thought of her bosom beneath its blouse, the red cloth rising and falling with each breath. In the sixth standard, a friend had shown him his first photo of a naked woman. He tried to picture that image under Sheetal’s blouse, tried to imagine the contour of each breast, the fleshiness of each nipple. He saw himself kissing her neck, bringing his mouth down and wetting the material of her blouse and, when the nipple was clearly outlined, taking it in his mouth through the cloth.
    “Are you asleep?” he whispered to Sheetal.
    “No,” she replied. “I was thinking.”
    “About what?” Vinod’s voice was hoarse.
    “I was thinking,” Sheetal said, turning around to face him, her expression troubled. “I was thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be such a big sin to once in a while cook chicken?”

C HAPTER T EN
    T HE THRASHING ADMINISTERED to Shyamu by his mother that afternoon was earned fair and square by him in the half hour that preceded it. Even Mr. Asrani, when confronted with the evidence, would have had to agree that it was fully deserved, not that he was given a chance to arbitrate. Shyamu, of course, tried to deny everything, which was not the wise thing to do, since it enraged Mrs. Asrani even further. But then, Shyamu was never one given to wise choices, as evidenced by his behavior.
    What happened was this. Shyamu had been playing aeroplane with Rajan, the Pathaks’ younger son. The two children had brought several empty ghee and cooking-oil tins from the kitchen and arranged them to form the central corridor of seats in the inside of the plane. They were taking turns being the pilot and crash-landing the plane. First, Rajan crashed the plane, the impact sending the tins helter-skelter, and killing all the passengers. Then it was Shyamu’s turn, and he killed not only all the people on board but several unfortunate bystanders on the ground as well. Then it was Rajan’s turn, with Shyamu being a hijacker, and once again the loss of life was total, with several of the deaths being gruesomely enacted among flying cooking-fat tins.
    Short Ganga had left behind the dupatta found that morning, draped prominently over the grinding stone outside the kitchen. Mrs. Pathak, not wanting to handle it herself in case it had been infected by Vishnu, had asked Short Ganga to place it there. Mrs. Pathak had a hunch that the key to the mystery of Mr. Jalal lay in the dupatta, and she was keeping close tabs on it to try and catch either Mrs. Asrani or Mrs. Jalal picking it up.
    The game had by now shifted to dacoit pilots chasing terrorized villagers through mountain ravines. And killing them. The score was roughly a dozen villagers each, though Rajan had scored extra for decimating a herd of cows as well. It was Shyamu’s turn, and he had an idea. They would drape the dupatta over some tins to represent a buxom village belle (the kind Reshma played in the movies) and then riddle her body with bullets.
    Since there were no more empty tins left, they dragged two containers of rice and stacked them one on top of the other. These were covered with the dupatta to produce a passable belle. Shyamu got into his cockpit and started spraying everything with his imaginary machine gun, and Rajan toppled the belle over after she had been hit what seemed like a sufficient number of times.
    This was not enough fun, so Shyamu decided to make it more realistic. The belle would be Kavita, since it was her dupatta anyway. And Rajan could be Salim, though he would have to kiss the belle first, for realism’s sake. They would be running away from home, and Shyamu would be the police chasing them from the aeroplane, with orders to bring them back alive, or preferably, dead.
    The game started, but Rajan didn’t want to kiss Kavita, even the rice-container-and-dupatta version of her. Eventually, he was persuaded to, and just as he was locked in embrace, Shyamu’s plane zoomed in, and he said, “Run, Salim, run, Kavita, or the police will catch you.” Mrs. Pathak, who looked out that instant to see