The Death of Vishnu (15 page)

Can he take away the sun and the moon? Can he plunge the universe into night? Everything that lives, does it live in his light? Must every desire of his be accommodated, every whim obeyed?

But what is it he wants? What are gods supposed to desire?

I am Vishnu,
he says to himself. He is eager to learn the new ways and powers.

I
T WAS NINE
o’clock in the morning before Mrs. Asrani entered Kavita’s room. Ordinarily, she would have allowed her daughter to sleep much longer on a Sunday, even until noon, but in light of the “I think I would like to say yes” answer from last night, Mrs. Asrani wasn’t sure she could hold it in herself any longer not to seek a confirmation. She had been so excited all morning that she had hardly paid attention to Short Ganga’s gossip about Mr. Jalal being found asleep on Vishnu’s landing, and of his attempted assault on Mrs. Pathak. She was surprised now to find Kavita’s bed all made up, since her daughter almost never did that, and more surprised to find that the bathroom was empty, since Kavita spent what seemed like hours there every morning.

“Have you seen Kavita?” Mrs. Asrani asked. Shyamu and Mr. Asrani looked up from the breakfast table. “Did she go outside?”

Mr. Asrani shook his head. “No one’s been outside since I got the newspaper.”

“I’ll find her for you,” Shyamu offered. “Kavita,” he called out. “Kaveeetaaaaaaa…”

There was no reply. “She’s not there,” he said. “I guess she ran away with the Jalals’ son after all, so we can all live happily ever after.”

It was definitely the wrong thing to say. Mrs. Asrani’s inaugural slap of the day was so energetic that Shyamu burst out crying. “Go inside to your room,” Mrs. Asrani commanded, taking away his half-eaten jam sandwich.

Shyamu kept crying at the table, so Mr. Asrani returned his sandwich to him. Between sobs, Shyamu started putting pieces of jam-spread bread in his mouth.

“God help you if she’s run away with that cockroach. God help you if you have a black tongue,” Mrs. Asrani thundered. “And you, jee?” she said, turning her attention on Mr. Asrani. “Are you going to just sit there and sip tea, or are you going to try and find your promising young daughter?”

“I’ll go look in her room, to see if everything is still there,” Mr. Asrani said, glad for a chance to be out of range of his wife.

He came back a few minutes later. “Everything is intact,” he said. “There’s nothing missing, and even her suitcase is still in the cupboard. She must have gone out while I was not looking—she should be back soon.”

“I knew it was too good to be true,” Mrs. Asrani lamented, her anger temporarily diffused by despair. “Her saying yes and everything. What are we going to do? What will I say to Mrs. Lalwani?”

“Calm down, Aruna. Nothing’s happened. She’ll be back—”

“You,”
Mrs. Asrani snarled, replugging into the socket of her anger. “This is all your fault. From when I have been predicting this, and all you can say is ‘Calm down, Aruna. Calm down, Aruna.’
Now
do you see the result of letting your daughter climb on top of your head?”

Mr. Asrani was silent. He knew, from experience, that the safest course of action when things reached this stage was one of abject contrition, like that expected from an errant schoolboy. He sat at the table and tried to look as wretched as Shyamu.

“What are you so silent about now? Is some magic genie going to pop out of your tea cup and tell you where she is?”

Mr. Asrani did not look up. Shyamu, still sniveling, but tired of his sandwich, started breaking the bread into crumbs and mashing them on his plate.

Mrs. Asrani looked from her husband to her son, and back to her husband again. She was suddenly uncertain about what point she had been trying to make. But it was apparent she had gotten it across. She took a deep breath.

“Now listen everyone, and this means especially you, Shyamu. If she comes back in a little while, good. But until she does, I don’t want either of you telling anyone—and I do mean
anyone
—that she’s gone. Especially not the next-door neighbors. Who knows, maybe they’re the ones who even put some sort of nazar on her.” Mrs. Asrani cast a baleful eye towards the Pathaks’ apartment.

“And if, God forbid, our Kavita actually has run away with that cockroach, then we just have to wait. Wait till she comes to her senses, wait till she comes back, and not breathe a word about it until then. It would be ruinous if people came to know what has happened.

“Understood?”

Shyamu flattened the remainder of his sandwich and watched the jam squeeze out.

“Shyamu, I’m talking to you.
Understood?
”

With a look dripping with misery and remorse, Shyamu nodded that he had understood.

M
R. JALAL LAY
on his bed and tried to make the cricks in his back disappear. He had several months’ worth of them to work on. Now that his travails had paid off, now that he had received his sign, there seemed no reason to deny himself small luxuries, such as returning to his bed. He pressed his neck muscles into the mattress, then the ones in his back, feeling the cotton stuffing yield to fit the contours of his body. Ah, the softness—so pleasurable, so decadent—no wonder people didn’t get revelations every night as they slept on their pillowed and padded beds. Something in Mr. Jalal’s spine released with an audible pop, and the relief that flooded into his brain almost made him swoon.

As he had waited for Arifa to let him in, there had been only one thought burning in his head. The directive that Vishnu had given him. He had to spread the word, inform people, impress on them that Vishnu was a god. He had braced himself at the door like an athlete at the start of a race. He would sprint in straight to the telephone, call all the people he knew, even contact the
Times of India
.

But a peculiar incoherence had possessed him. His words had not seemed to convey their message. “Enlightenment
does
come in a walnut,” he had insisted, and the Pathaks had discreetly taken their leave. “Thousands of hands and feet,” he had said, waving his arms around to simulate Vishnu’s many limbs, and Arifa’s expression had changed from confusion to dismay. Eventually, he had allowed himself to be ushered into their bedroom for a rest.

It was not going to be easy, Mr. Jalal realized. First the Pathaks and Short Ganga, now Arifa—nobody had believed him. He supposed he couldn’t really blame them—what he’d seen was so fantastic, and he’d been too excited to be articulate. But if he couldn’t even convince his wife, what chance did he have with the rest?

How had the Buddha done it? And Jesus and Muhammad and the other prophets? Even the present-day godmen. He remembered seeing the Satya Sai Baba on TV, descending from his podium onto a platform that swept through a sea of adoring disciples. Waves of devotees surged towards the platform, screaming and crying as they tried to touch his saffron robes. The Baba walked along unperturbed, with his arms raised in blessing, a beatific smile fixed on his face. It had been hard to see the Baba’s feet on TV, and the effect had been of someone gliding across water.

Mr. Jalal imagined himself standing on his balcony, clad in robes of saffron himself. The road below choked with people assembled there to receive his message. Taxis and buses honking their horns as they tried in vain to negotiate the throngs. Silence descending suddenly and completely, as he raised both his hands just like the Baba had done. He would gaze individually at as many of the thousands of upturned faces as he could—the sea,
his
sea of followers. All those eyes focused on him, all those ears waiting to hear the compelling words issue from his mouth.

But what, exactly, would those words be? The ones that would crackle down through the air, like lightning, like electricity, and energize the entire crowd? From where would he summon the power to seize the attention of such an enormous congregation? To inspire them, to incite them, to make them forever his followers?

Mr. Jalal felt his back begin to stiffen again and willed himself to relax. He was getting ahead of himself. Right now, the important thing was that he was in, he had been initiated. He had opened his mind wide enough to receive the vision. The giant mouths, the tongues of fire, the steam and smoke, all these he had witnessed. The sign he had been waiting for had finally been granted. He tried pressing his spine into the mattress again, and heard several small crackles, but nothing as satisfying as the previous pop.

Or had it?
What tangible evidence did he have? Wasn’t he being absurdly credulous? Couldn’t the whole thing—heads, tongues, fire—just have been a dream? He had, after all, dreamt before—had he forgotten how real some dreams could appear? Wasn’t this explanation a more rational one, not involving signs and visitations and other fanciful notions? Wasn’t it, in fact, the
only
logical explanation, the one that
demanded
his immediate and complete acceptance?

Mr. Jalal recognized his old friend, Reason. Revived and hungry to reclaim its rightful place. Perhaps it had wakened from its hibernation the instant he had lain down again in this bed. Perhaps it had sniffed out the torpor into which the mattress was lulling his body. Already, he could feel it nipping here and there tentatively, testing the durability of what he had witnessed.

He had to get off the mattress immediately. There could not be a second’s delay. Mr. Jalal rocked himself on the bed, then rolled off the edge. A dull crack jarred through his spine as the back of his head hit the floor. That was good, he thought, it would discourage his prowling friend. He lifted his head and let it thud several times to the floor. Maybe
that
would send Reason whimpering back into its cave.

He lay on the floor and closed his eyes. He could feel the familiar hardness of the tile against his back. Pain throbbed into his forehead from the base of his skull. He had to concentrate, concentrate to make things as they were before.

The image came slowly, like a painting raised to the surface of a murky pool. The swords were the first to be visible, edges glinting as they sliced through the air. Then came the arms that brandished them, and the mouths and the eyes and the faces. Then there was Vishnu towering above him, in all his hideousness and splendor.

“Why have you not done what I commanded?” Vishnu roared, and Mr. Jalal smelled the sweet fragrance of his own burning flesh.

He opened his eyes. He was alone on the floor of his bedroom. Street noise and sunlight streamed in through the door leading to the balcony. Arifa was talking to someone on the phone in the next room. Somewhere in the building a meat curry was being cooked.

What was real, he wondered, and what was a dream? Didn’t the Hindus hold that reality was just an illusion? That everything was
maya
as they called it—all existence a temporary delusion—hadn’t even the Buddha accepted that? And the westerners, too—wasn’t there something about the world not existing, only mental representations of it? Was it Kant who had said that? Or Nietzsche? No, someone else, someone less well-known—who was it, Berkeley, perhaps? For an instant, Mr. Jalal worried about where all his books on philosophy had gone. He hoped Arifa hadn’t thrown them out.

Perhaps there were some things that could only be experienced, not explained. Perhaps logic was not the answer to bolster every truth in the universe. Last night’s vision had felt as accurate as a shirt against his skin. But surely its fabric could be scrutinized to yield flaws, its fibers worried until they unraveled. And yet, he had felt it clothe the center of his self, transform the way he felt about the world. He would not,
could
not, dismiss the reality of his experience.

But how was he to convey this reality to others? How, without the benefit of logic or argument, was he supposed to capture people’s minds? All he had been given was a sign. With this he had to arm himself, and go out and change the world. He supposed this was the essence of faith. There was no science that governed it, no calculus that propelled it, just the raw strength of his own conviction. Whether he succeeded or not depended on how well he could combat doubt, both his own and in others.

And succeed he had to. Vishnu’s words came back, his promise to save, to destroy the universe. He had to be recognized, recognized before it was “too late for all.” They could not afford to ignore his warning. Mr. Jalal saw Short Ganga being consigned screaming into Vishnu’s giant maws. Then the cigarettewalla and the paanwalla, the Pathaks and Asranis. Their bodies masticated together into one bloody mass, their shocked faces popping and exploding, torrents of fire reducing them to instant ash. And from somewhere, barely audible, Arifa’s plaintive voice, begging to be spared.

Mr. Jalal sat up on the floor. He was the only one who could save them. He would have to use what little he had, and hope it was enough to connect people to the urgency of what he had witnessed. The rest would be up to them.

But first, he had to return to Vishnu’s landing. With a sweet, a fruit, or other offering. This was the proper way, he knew, that one asked for blessing from a Hindu god.

M
RS. JALAL STARED
at the letter Salim had written. What had the world come to today? First Ahmed, babbling about walnuts and gods, led upstairs by the Pathaks and Short Ganga of all people. How would she live the shame down? Being found next to Vishnu in such a condition—with a dupatta wrapped around his head, as Mrs. Pathak had pointed out—not once but three times—the cheek of that woman. At least Mr. Pathak had had the decency to conjecture that Ahmed might have fallen and knocked himself unconscious. Thankfully, she’d had the presence of mind to say that she had often warned Ahmed about taking his night walk down the dark steps.

And now this. Salim writing simply that he was going away for a few weeks. Why wouldn’t he have told anyone? What possible place could he have gone to, that he couldn’t have let her know in advance? She was surprised at all the clothes missing—which told her it was a planned decision. But planned for what? Nothing was making sense—nothing on this inauspicious day.