The Death of Vishnu

forehead, his cheeks, his neck, and even his arms was the ash—chalky raised patches of it, that looked like the mounds left behind when insects bore through wood. As people watched, the ash above his brow started welling up and dropping to the ground in clumps, where it lay in powdery contrast to the dark earth.
    One of the onlookers broke from the rest and advanced to the bed. He ran his fingers through the ash on the ground and smeared it on his forehead, then scurried back. A second person was about to do the same when Jamuna Bai charged at him. “Stay away, you hear? Don’t touch the ash. Do you think he is doing this for your sake, so you can come here and loot us like this?”
    Jamuna Bai instructed her daughter, Vasanti, to hold a stainless-steel thali under Thanu Lal’s face. She carefully harvested the ash onto the plate. “I don’t want it flying away or falling to the ground. The newspaperwalla is on his way—he’ll want to see it.”
    By the time the Loksatta reporter came, however, Thanu Lal had stopped producing ash. In her zeal to conserve it, Jamuna Bai had brushed too much off onto the plate, and the reporter, disappointed by the faded patches on Thanu Lal’s face, asked his photographer to take only one photograph.
    “Come tomorrow,” Jamuna Bai said. “He will bring forth even more ash. Fresh for you. It will happen every day.”
    The next morning, an even bigger crowd gathered to witness the miracle. At ten o’clock, Thanu Lal came out of the hut and had his wife and daughter wash his feet in a large thali. Jamuna Bai announced that those who had brought offerings of flowers and coconuts should put them in another platter, which she placed at the foot of his charpoy. They began the wait for the newspaper man to come. At eleven, when he still hadn’t shown up, Jamuna Bai asked for silence from the crowd. She announced the ash would be produced anyway.
    Thanu Lal closed his eyes and concentrated. But nothing happened. His skin remained clear. There were whispers in the audience, which became louder as Thanu Lal’s forehead contorted, as his cheeks turned dark with effort. Finally, he burst out in tears and ran inside the hut.
    For many mornings after that, Thanu Lal sat on his bed outside and tried to produce ash. The crowds came to watch at first, but gradually thinned, until it was mainly a gaggle of children who gathered in front of the hut. In an effort to attract an audience, Jamuna Bai brought out the thali of ash she had saved, and allowed onlookers to mark their foreheads with a fingertip’s worth. One day, when the ash failed to materialize again, Thanu Lal took the thali from her hand and beat her unconscious with it.
    The cigarettewalla says that Thanu Lal actually killed Jamuna Bai, and spent many years in prison for the murder. But according to the paanwalla, once Jamuna Bai had been beaten, she was the one who started producing ash, and became very rich after she opened a shrine to herself. Vishnu does not know which version, if any, to believe.
    He feels the urge to wake Thanu Lal now, and ask him. Talk to him about God and ash, about looking through walls, and being able to kill ants. Thanu Lal, wake up , Vishnu says, but the man does not stir.
    Wake up, wake up, it’s Vishnu. I have something to ask you. Thanu Ram keeps sleeping.
    Vishnu goes over to shake him awake. But of course he can’t, not without his sense of touch. Thanu Lal turns over on his side, and remains asleep. Vishnu notices another line of ants, taunting him from the wall behind.
    The questions descend again to torment Vishnu. How can he be a god if he has no power? Could he just be a man, the man he has been his whole life? If this isn’t divinity he is looking at, if it isn’t immortality, then what is it?
    This is not the time to think of answers, Vishnu tells himself. His task, for now, is to keep ascending, and not waver until he reaches the top.

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN
    W HEN HE WAS first told the seriousness of Sheetal’s illness, Vinod was devastated. Not only by what the news meant for Sheetal, but also for him. The future he had constructed so painstakingly over the past few years in his mind would crumble, now that the person around whom he had built it was to be taken away. He sat in the hospital waiting room and felt the resentment grow underneath the sorrow—why had he been treated so unfairly by fate? He found his mind wandering to thoughts of what his life might have been had his