The Death of Vishnu

which had suddenly become very riveting. Reshma had been kidnapped by Shatrughan Sinha, who was a villain Vinod had also never seen before, and the hero was about to burst into the den where she was being held.
    “Let’s go into the other room,” Mrs. Bhagwati said, and reluctantly, Vinod followed.
    The other room turned out to be a bedroom, and suddenly it struck Vinod that the questions Mrs. Bhagwati was interested in discussing might not involve slum-dwellers. He started feeling very uncomfortable, and Mrs. Bhagwati, being an industrialist’s wife, picked up on this discomfort at once.
    “I’ll get to the point, Vinod—it’s one thing my husband taught me to do. It’s hard to look at twenty-five, thirty, or however many years we have left, hard to look at them and see only solitude. Fate may have decided we sleep in an empty bed night after night, but we don’t have to listen to fate.”
    Vinod wished he had eaten less of Mrs. Bhagwati’s pomfret. Somehow, in spite of all the site visits on which Mrs. Bhagwati had accompanied him, he had not seen this coming. In retrospect, he supposed it had been quite naive of him to think she enjoyed going to slums, when she had such a nice bedroom and all the new actors to watch with a click of her TV.
    “Here’s my proposal, Vinod. I’ve seen you on the board. I’ve worked with you, side by side, in the dirt and disease of Dharavi. I know you’re an honest person. I know you want to improve the lives of the slum people.”
    Vinod tried, but could not recall having worked in dirt or disease with Mrs. Bhagwati. As for the rest, he supposed it was true, though of late he had wondered whether his motives were purely unselfish.
    “Marry me, Vinod. We will make each other happy. All my wealth will be at your disposal, to spend on whatever little slums you want to improve. It’s not a small amount, Vinod—together, we can clean up the filth with our own four hands, clean up the whole city of Bombay.”
    Vinod had a vision of Mrs. Bhagwati, dirt-streaked and sweating, digging canals and ditches all over the city. To bring water to the teeming residents and clear away the sewage from their homes. He looked at her, standing in the tight kameez, her hair unraveled from its customary bun, the silence broken only by the sound of Reshma singing faintly in the adjoining room. Mrs. Bhagwati was not an unattractive woman. He had not been with anyone for more than sixteen years.
    Vinod went up and kissed Mrs. Bhagwati on the cheek. Mrs. Bhagwati made a small sound in her throat, and closed her eyes. He looked at her mouth and noticed that her lipstick made her lips look quite moist. They were slightly parted, and past them, Vinod could just make out the gleam of her front incisors.
    He was about to kiss her on the mouth when behind her he noticed Mrs. Bhagwati’s dressing table. It was covered with jars and vials, and had a large mirror attached, just like Sheetal’s used to. He remembered the slots for lipstick, the compartments for makeup and jewelry, and at the bottom, the drawer where he had hidden the brown bottle with the pills. How long ago had he carried the bottle to Breach Candy? It had bobbed in the water for a while, and almost smashed against a rock, but then a receding wave had borne it out to sea. He wondered if it had ever washed ashore again, perhaps at Chowpatty or Juhu, where an urchin might have found it and added it to his bag of salvaged glass to sell to the recycler.
    Vinod wondered if that day he had done the right thing. Had his life been worth living since then? He thought about this question as he walked home all the way from Colaba, where Mrs. Bhagwati lived. He had abruptly said his goodbye to her, leaving her standing in her bedroom with the TV room attached, where the Amitabh Bachchan–Reshma movie was still playing. He walked past the Gateway, and looked at the boats in the distance, their lights like oil lamps floating in the still, dark water.
    He took the long way home, past Regal Cinema, past Nariman Point, down Marine Drive, past Chowpatty, staying next to the sea as far as possible. Looking for the occasional seagull that still flew by, wondering if the fish were still swimming about in the water. At Kemp’s Corner, he paused, and stared at the Air India billboard. The Air India maharaja was advertising flights to New York City. “Uncle Shyam wants you!” the sign said, with the maharaja wearing a hat with stars and stripes on it