The Death of Vishnu

her best movies, died in the end. What could be a better selection? Sheetal asked Vinod to borrow the new cassette recorder his brother had bought, the kind that could run on batteries. Vinod could record the whole soundtrack while he sat next to her.
    It took her a full hour to dress. She wrapped her thin frame in the most cheerful sari she owned, and tried to cover the hollows in her face with makeup. Somehow, she steadied her hand enough to put on the lipstick, both on her lips and for the dot on her forehead. She asked Vinod to thread the earrings through her ears, and wore a necklace and gold bangles, even though they were only going to a matinee.
    When the time came to go downstairs, she was unable to negotiate the steps. Eventually, she sat on one of the dining-room chairs, and Vishnu and the paanwalla carried her down, like a queen on a palanquin. Vinod took the two of them along to see the movie as well, so they could carry Sheetal upstairs to the balcony of the theater, where she had insisted on sitting.
    They sat in the first row, right behind the railing. Sheetal watched most of the movie, though a few times when Vinod glanced over, her eyes were closed, as if she had lapsed into deep thought. Neither Vishnu nor the paanwalla had ever seen a movie from the balcony, and the paanwalla claimed several times that not only was the sound better up there but also the picture, because the screen was designed to send more light up to the expensive seats. It took three of the cassettes to record the two-and-a-half-hour soundtrack—Vinod was careful to reload the recorder during the songs, so that none of the dialogue would be lost.
    The next day, Sheetal dictated a petition for Guinness, telling them what she proposed to do. Vinod took it to be typed by one of the professional typists in Tardeo, then mailed the letter himself at the post office, making sure the clerk canceled the stamps in front of him, as per Sheetal’s instructions, so nobody would take them off for reuse.
    For the next two months, Sheetal lay next to the cassette recorder and memorized. Sometimes when the different roles on the soundtrack became too confusing, she recruited Tall Ganga to help her. “Don’t you have any shame, teasing girls like that,” she would berate Tall Ganga, who would slowly, awkwardly, mouth the hero’s response. Vinod would come home from work and hear Sheetal repeating “When I’m with you, my heart starts going dhuk dhuk —why do you think that is?” He would kiss her good night, and she would say, “Even if God forgives me, I won’t be able to forgive myself for what I have done.” Sometimes she would have a fever but still she would persevere, even if it meant memorizing only a few words that day.
    Two months after seeing the movie, Sheetal made her first attempt. Vinod’s brother and sister-in-law were called in to act as witnesses, and everyone gathered around Sheetal’s bed to hear the recitation.
    It was a disaster. Sheetal confused lines, forgot entire scenes, and became too emotional to continue when Dilip Kumar consigned his beloved’s ashes to the Ganges and watched them float away in the water. “This, the first night of our union,” Mohammed Rafi sang sadly on the tape as Vinod ushered everyone out of the room.
    Sheetal grieved for days over her failure. She did not try again for almost three months. By then, she had deteriorated to a point where it was easy to convince her that she had done it, that she had managed to go through the entire movie. She went to sleep that afternoon already able to imagine her name in the book.
    Three weeks before Sheetal died, the postman delivered a letter with a big blue-and-orange stamp from the United Kingdom. Sheetal got so excited that she forced herself to sit up in bed as Vinod opened the letter.
    “Dear Mrs. Taneja,” Vinod read aloud, “Thank you for your recent petition regarding the creation of a new category for memorization of the dialogue of a movie. We regret to inform you that we do not anticipate adding this category at this time. We would, however, like to congratulate you on your most interesting achievement in this regard.”
    It was signed “William Warby, Associate Editor, Guinness Book of World Records. ” Accompanying it was a flyer for the new edition of the book.
    Sheetal was devastated for the rest of the day. But the next morning, she had Vinod reread the letter, making him go over the actual wording of the rejection several