The Death of Vishnu (16 page)

There was no point telling Ahmed about the letter—not until he had returned to his senses. She had thought about calling the doctor, but had been scared at the prospect that he would recommend psychiatric evaluation, or even hospitalization. She didn’t want to have Ahmed committed to a mental asylum, or worse, end up in a place like Amira Ma’s. Once such news spread, it was difficult to contain, so she had to be very careful about what she was doing.

Just then, Ahmed walked into the room.

“How do you feel?” Mrs. Jalal asked, trying to put on a cheerful face. She suddenly noticed how awful he smelled. “Should I get the water ready for your bath?”

Mr. Jalal shook his head. There was something he was holding behind his back. His eyes circled the room, estimating distances and angles from where he stood to Mrs. Jalal and the front door.

Mrs. Jalal tried to see what he held in his hand, but he used his body to screen it from her. “What’s that, Ahmed,” she finally asked, “behind your back?”

Reluctantly, Mr. Jalal showed her. It was one of the mangoes she had put in the refrigerator last night. It looked nicely chilled, the moisture glistening against its golden skin. Why had Ahmed been concealing it?

“Should I cut it open for you?”

“It’s not for me,” Mr. Jalal said, sheepishly. “I was taking it downstairs. As an offering for Vishnu.”

“An offering? What do you mean, offering?”

“One has to offer gods things to eat. That’s what they do in the temples.”

The light suddenly left the room. Mrs. Jalal watched as the gloom began to scale the walls. Ahmed had not recovered. He was still ailing from the delusion he had experienced last night. She had known, since that omen at the shrine, that she should not have let him out of her sight. Couldn’t she have kept awake on the floor for just one night to watch over him?

“I don’t think Vishnu is well enough to eat a mango,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “They’re very heating—it might upset his stomach.”

“I would’ve taken a banana, but I couldn’t find any. There were so many lying on the dining table yesterday—I’m surprised you ate them all.”

Mrs. Jalal’s throat constricted. Somehow, she had forced down the last banana last night, even though it had been well past ripe. She tried to stop the tears flooding her eyes, but couldn’t.

“Don’t cry, Arifa. Why are you crying? Is it the mango? Here, you can put it back—I’ll find something else.”

Mrs. Jalal looked at the mango her husband was offering, his face innocent of guile. As if it were an enchanted fruit that would arrest her tears, as if a bite of its magic flesh would carry her away from her problems. What had gone wrong, she wondered, who had made this happen to him? She felt so powerless—what could she do to make him right again? “I don’t care about the mango,” she said, averting her face.

“Then come with me,” Mr. Jalal said, grabbing her hand. “Come, let’s go make this offering together. Ask his blessing, both of us.”

“Ask whom for blessing? Not
Vishnu
. Are you crazy?” Mrs. Jalal pulled her hand away. Instantly, she missed the reassurance, however slight, that Ahmed’s touch had transmitted.

“It’ll be much more effective if we both go. I can’t do this alone, Arifa. Come, be my partner.”

“What are you saying, Ahmed? Stop—just stop all this, please.”

“Listen to me, Arifa. I’ve changed.
You’ve
made me change. All the arguments we had about religion. I’m now like you. I’ve let myself be touched. By something—by a sign, by faith.” Mr. Jalal took his wife’s hand again, and squeezed it, as if his newly acquired faith would flow through in proof.

“You don’t know how much I worked, to open my mind, to free it. All the fasting and the sleeping on the ground. You saw last night how hard the floor of our bedroom is. Try it for a month,
then
you’ll see.”

So this was the explanation. She had known, of course, that he had been lying, but that didn’t stop the blood from burning in her cheeks. All those nights she had spent alone in her bed, all those times she had called out to Ahmed, pleaded with him to tell her what was going on. And this?
This
was what it was about?

“Last night it finally happened. I saw a hundred suns fill the sky. Flowers so unusual, I can’t describe them, jewels so fantastic, you wouldn’t believe existed. Then
he
appeared. Vishnu.
Our
Vishnu. Yes, I couldn’t believe it either. But fifty—no,
five hundred
feet tall. With fire and smoke, and more heads than I could count. It was terrifying. Yet beautiful, too.”

Mrs. Jalal opened her mouth, but her husband started speaking faster, to prevent her from saying anything. “He told me I was to be his messenger. That he would destroy us all, if we didn’t recognize him. I know what you’re thinking,—why would he ever choose me? But it’s hardly surprising, is it? After all the effort I’ve been putting in. Who are we to argue anyway, Arifa? If Vishnu wants me to be his prophet, that’s what I must be.”

Mrs. Jalal felt a chill in her shoulders. What was Ahmed saying? This talk of Vishnu being a god, this talk of Ahmed being a prophet. It was one thing to ramble on about these things in the incoherent state he was in this morning. But looking into his eyes now, she saw an alertness that frightened her. Did he not understand this was blasphemy?

“I need your support, Arifa. Just give it a chance. Even if you don’t accept everything I witnessed. Even if that is too much to hope for.”

“Stop what you are saying, Ahmed. Stop, and listen to me. What you saw was a dream. A nightmare. More vivid than most, but nothing more. Understand? Vishnu is
not
a god. You are
not
his messenger. You are
not
to call yourself prophet. There
are
no more prophets. It’s written in the Koran.”

“It wasn’t a dream. No matter what you or anyone says, it wasn’t a dream.” Stubbornness settled at the corners of Mr. Jalal’s mouth. “No one can tell me I didn’t see what I saw. As for the Koran, doesn’t it also say a wife is supposed to obey her husband?”

“Just listen to yourself. You, the pillar of rationality. This is the best you can come up with?
This
is what you preach? That we all sit down and pay homage to your dream?”

“A vision, it was a vision, didn’t I just tell you? I know it must be hard for you to accept, but what’s the point if you don’t even try?”

“You’re right, it
is
hard for me to accept. That my husband’s lost his mind. That he’s lost all sense, all logic. That he’s calling some drunkard a god. Have some sense, Ahmed, have some shame.”

“I thought you’d be happy. That I’ve finally found something in common with you. Faith, religion, call it what you may. Don’t you see? It’s a sign that I’ve received. Or all of a sudden do you not care?”

“You want me to rejoice? That you’re declaring yourself prophet? That you’re hailing some mortal as god? All these years of begging you to come to the masjid with me, and this is what you offer? Blasphemy? You’ve found nothing, Ahmed—you’ve only lost. You’ve lost my respect. You’ve lost your religion. You’ve turned your back on everything it stands for.”

“But I haven’t given up anything. We all discover our own god. I’ve just begun to define mine. Think of the people I can lead to Vishnu. Think of all the people who might find their god in him.”

“There is no God but God,”
Mrs. Jalal screamed. “Don’t you understand? Say no more, Ahmed, for I cannot hear you speak.”

L
ISTEN TO WHAT
the man says, I am Vishnu. Listen to what he says, yes, I have come to save or destroy you. See me descend to earth in my different avatars. Matsya and Kurma and Varaha and more.

She is sitting by the shrine in the hut. It is raining outside. Flashes of lightning play with the features of her face. She waves incense over the idol as he watches from his mat and waits. “When will I be in heaven, O Krishna, to hear the sweetness of your magic flute,” she sings.

She is next to him now, shaking her hair loose over her shoulders. He can smell the coconut oil as her fingers run through the strands. She reaches back to tie it up again, and he sees the sweat darkening the armpits of her blouse. It is her essence that he knows so well, the sweat mixed with the coconut oil.

“Little Vishnu,” his mother says. “What avatar has my Vishnu come down as today?”

The rain outside is a quickening drumbeat. Gusts of wind blow through the hut and the flame in the oil lamp flickers.

He giggles and hides his face in the mat. He pretends to answer, mumbling something he knows she cannot hear.

“Let’s see. What is he? Hmmm—burying his head like that—all curled up—he looks like a tortoise, perhaps, hiding in his shell.”

He shakes his head. He is not a tortoise tonight.

“Not a tortoise. But yet so bunched up. Could he be a dwarf, then—little Vamana, waiting to confront Bali?”

He shakes his head again. He moves his arms over the mat, as if he is is swimming. Tonight, he is in the mood for an aquatic incarnation.

“Aha, the rain. Of course. It’s Matsya the fish. Is there going to be a flood, then?”

He nods. “So you must put me in the sea where I belong.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I will grow and grow and grow before your eyes, and become so big you won’t know what to do with me.” He puffs up his cheeks as he says this, and stretches himself out from his balled-up position.

“No, no, Matsyaji, I will do as you say and carry you to the sea. Will Juhu Beach do, or will it have to be Chowpatty?”

“The Gateway of India. And hurry, I’m already twice your size, and soon you won’t be able to carry me anymore.”

His mother scoops him up into her lap. “Oh, my—you are a big fish. How happy you might make some fisherman if he caught such a big fish in his net.”

“How dare you joke with me. The net has not yet been sewn that can catch Matsya. Now put me in the sea and do as I say, unless you want to be washed away with the rest. For it is Vishnu you are talking to, Vishnu who has descended personally from the heavens, to save you from the flood.”

“Forgive me, Vishnuji, for I did not know. Tell me what I should do.”

“First you must build an ark. Then go to the forest and gather seeds from every plant and tree you see. Tie the ark to my horn when the flood comes and I will tow you to safety.”

“Which horn, O great Matsya? All I see is this.” His mother tweaks his nose, and he giggles.

“When the flood comes, my horn will grow,” he says. He is getting sleepy.

“When the flood comes,” he hears his mother whisper, as she pulls the blanket over his falling body.

Outside, the rain spills over from the gutters and forms a stream. Streams that course through unlit passageways and coalesce cunningly in the night. Stealthily, the water rises, burrowing under tin walls, seeping through cardboard sides, silently lifting objects off the ground. It creeps up and encircles his mat, then gently laps against his body.

“Vishnu,” his mother calls, but he has found his fins. Through the open door he swims, into the river waiting outside. Bubbles rise from upturned faces, still asleep on the riverbed. Huts pass by underneath, then houses, then buildings, as he rises with the water. The glow of streetlights floats up silently from submerged lampposts.

“Vishnu,” he hears his mother call again. She is standing on the top of the Gateway of India, surrounded by the four carved turrets. Beneath her feet, the stone plunges in giant arches to the plaza far down below. Children run on the plaza, couples linger in front of the monument. They do not see the wall of water that rises behind in the bay.

He feels his horn grow. He feels the skin on his forehead erupt, and the appendage push out. He can see it curve through the water, thickening and hardening as it emerges.

The water begins its descent. The sea rushes in to embrace the land. Children fly into the air, then vanish in the foam. Buildings rock and sway, then acquiesce majestically. “Vishnu,” his mother cries as the water surges over her feet.

He submerges his head. Ahead are the arches of the Gateway, fish dart in and out of them. Already, his body is too big to pass through the side arches. He swims halfway through the main arch, centering his body under it. Then he begins to rise, to rise and to push upwards.

His horn breaks the surface first, then his head. The Gateway comes off its foundation, and rises on his back. He turns his head around and looks at his mother, still standing on the top. She throws a rope around his horn, and nods at him.

With the chariot on his back, he turns to the sea. Through the waves he rides, towards the sun, leaving behind the ruined city.

M
R. JALAL CRANED
his head around the stairway to make sure there was no one on the landing. Vishnu lay just as he had been left this morning, the suns on his sheet beaming in the light filtering in from outside. Seeing his inert body, Mr. Jalal had the strange feeling of being a murderer stealing back to the scene of a crime. He shook his head to expel this thought—what if Vishnu was able to read it in his mind?

How frail Vishnu looked. It was hard to imagine that this body before him could have metamorphosed into something so terrifying. Had it all been a mistake? Was it simply a dream, after all? But wait, wasn’t that a grin Vishnu’s face was twisted into? Could he be smirking at the folly of mortals, whose flaw it was to always go on appearance, whose fate it was to never comprehend what lay underneath?

“Give me strength,” Mr. Jalal whispered, looking around furtively, “to be your messenger.” It had been so many years—decades, perhaps—since he had uttered any kind of prayer that he felt self-conscious saying these words, even though no one was there. He laid the mango next to Vishnu’s head and wondered if there were other steps he should perform. Scattering flowers, lighting incense—what ceremonies were needed to make the offering complete?

Mr. Jalal tried to remember how they had done it at the temple at Mahalakshmi. That one time he had visited a Hindu temple—it had been while he was reading all those books on Akbar. Akbar, who might be the only Muslim ruler to set foot in a temple—who, in fact, frequented all sorts of places of worship to mingle with his subjects, always in disguise.

As he had followed the throng of people up the steps to Mahalakshmi temple, Mr. Jalal had felt like a masquerader himself. His heart had pounded as he walked barefoot across the stone to the shrine. This is the way Akbar would do it, he told himself, and boldly sounded one of the brass bells suspended from the carved ceiling. Then he waited, fidgeting, in the line to walk past the idols. He seemed to be dressed like, to look like, the other people. But he worried nevertheless—could they tell he was a Muslim, were they able to sense his ignorance, his unease?

The woman in front of him was carrying an elaborate offering on a polished metal thali. Several bananas, a coconut, strings of marigold, and to crown it, a large lotus flower. Mr. Jalal stared at the vermilion splashed over the whole arrangement and mounded generously around the edge. What was the significance of this bright red powder? he wondered. Was it the same powder with which married Hindu women lined the parting in their hair, so that their skulls looked freshly cracked open in neat red lines? Could the red be related to blood, like the blood from animal sacrifices, like the blood of Christ? Even though they didn’t sacrifice animals anymore—perhaps this was a remnant from a more ancient ritual?

He was pondering which of his books at home might contain the answer when he saw the woman hand over her thali. He realized they were inside the shrine already, and he was standing empty-handed in front of the idols. Panic gripped him as the priest turned and extended a hand towards him. From behind the priest, the three incarnations of Lakshmi regarded him dubiously with their six questioning eyes. He was beginning to stutter some excuse, some apology, when the priest thrust a disc into his palm, the line moved along, and he found himself outside, blinking and free in the sunlight. He opened his palm and looked at the peda nestling there, round and golden like some forbidden fruit. The other worshipers were reverentially putting their pedas into their mouths, but Mr. Jalal hesitated. Although he regarded all religions to be equally irrelevant, he had never actually participated in a rite from another faith. What would Arifa say if she saw him now, with this Lakshmi-blessed food poised in his fingers, ready to be brought to his lips? But he could already smell the flowery scent of the peda in his nostrils, then feel it crumbling between his teeth, then taste its intense milky sweetness against his tongue. A sweetness, an incriminating sugariness, that spread purposefully down his throat, and insinuated itself through his entire body.

Mr. Jalal made his way to the rocks behind the temple, climbing down to the water’s edge. The tide was coming in, and he had to retrace his steps to a higher rock, to avoid being sprayed. He looked across to the middle of the bay, where the masjid of Haji Ali rose from the water. As a child, he had often accompanied his mother across the stone path that made the masjid accessible during low tide. Now he watched the waves break over the stones and submerge the bases of the lampposts that lined the way. It would be some hours before the path was traversable again. He imagined Akbar, sitting where he was sitting, surveying the religious landscape of his kingdom. The temple on the hill behind him and the mosque surrounded by water in front.

Hadn’t Akbar experienced a vision of some sort as well? Mr. Jalal found himself back in the shadows of Vishnu’s landing, trying to recall the accounts he had read. Akbar had been riding in the forest, hunting for tigers, when it had happened. His soldiers had come upon him laughing and dancing among the trees and shearing off locks of his hair. Could that have been the catalyst for the new religion he had created? His Din Ilahi, his grand, doomed experiment, to reconcile opposing philosophies and unite his Hindu subjects with their Muslim brethren?

The hairs on Mr. Jalal’s arms suddenly stood up. Could it be possible that he, Ahmed Jalal, was poised on the brink of something equally grand? What if he was going to be the next great unifier, the one whose destiny it was to change the land? Was that the sign he had just received, the message he had just been given, the one that would bring people together across the country? After all, wasn’t he born a Muslim, just like Akbar—could that be why he had been chosen by Vishnu?

Mr. Jalal peered at Vishnu. Yes, that was a smile of acknowledgment on his face, a smile of encouragement, a smile that indicated great things were in store. Vishnu was giving him the blessing he had come for, telling him to go forth and heal the world. Perhaps he should descend this very minute, go downstairs and convert the cigarettewalla, the paanwalla. Knock on every door he could find, stop at the shops in the adjacent building, go to the church across the street, to Mahalakshmi, to Haji Ali.

But first he would try once more with Arifa. She was his wife, Salim was his son. Before he saved anyone else, it was his duty to save them.

Mr. Jalal looked at the mango next to Vishnu’s head. The offering had pleased Vishnu. There was no need for flowers or incense.

M
ANGOES. SO FULL
, so sweet, so scented, the oranges and yellows of sunlight. So this is the food gods get offered, Vishnu thinks. Ah, mangoes.

From the orchard mist she emerges. The mango goddess. Her figure lush with mango leaves as she makes her way across the shadows of trees. She stands in front of Vishnu and lets her cloak of leaves drop. Her body is bountiful with fruit underneath. Mangoes, ripe and perfumed, grow from her bosom, they swing from her arms, hang heavily from her thighs.

Vishnu brings his face to her neck and breathes her fragrance in. He touches a mango attached to her breast, and traces the curve of its smooth skin. His fingers linger at the node at the base, swollen, and yielding to his touch. He closes his hand over the mango, she quivers as he plucks it off her skin. Sap oozes out of the rupture, he puts his lips on her breast to stem the flow. She presses her arms around his head and lets him taste her essence.

She directs him to another mango, growing between her thighs. He touches it and pulls on it, anticipation plays on her lips. He detaches it with a snap, and sees pain twinge across her face. Sap flows out again, more abundant, more fertile this time, filling his mouth with her feminine nectar.

One by one, he plucks all the mangoes from her body. When he is done, she stands before him naked, clothed only in the scars of her harvest. He spreads her cloak of mango leaves on the ground and she lays herself down upon it. He kneels between her legs, and kisses a scar still wet with sap.

She guides his body into hers. Tears moisten her eyes. As he fills her with seed, she arches back her neck to face the dying sun.

Afterwards, he drapes the cloak around her. He watches her tread to her orchard through the twilight. Underneath the leaves, he knows, her scars are already beginning to sprout. With buds of fruits barely visible, fruits that will grow and ripen in the next day’s sun.

He looks at the mangoes she has left behind, scattered on the ground. They will sustain all his creatures, they will sustain the universe until she returns.

T
HIS GODLY WAY
with mangoes. Vishnu is not impressed. What about the act of eating to which mortals are accustomed? The essence of mangoes, their taste, their feel. The satisfaction of separating pulp from peel by scraping slices between the teeth. He wonders if gods are allowed only heavenly bliss, if earthly pleasure is beyond their reach.

He sees himself lying naked with Padmini under the sheets. It is the summer his brother has sent him a mango basket. He has brought it to Padmini, she has invited him in.

Padmini turns over on her stomach and drags the basket to the bed. “So many mangoes,” she says, gazing at the basket. She looks up. “Are you sure they’re all for me?”

“Every one of them,” he says, exhilarated by the greed he glimpses in her eyes. He feels the pang of a familiar longing. How many baskets would he need to make her forever his own?

She rolls a mango between her palms to soften the insides. “Lajjo says the foreign mems eat mangoes with spoons, can you imagine?” She laughs. “Maybe that’s what I should do—be your English memsahib.” She bats her eyelids and puckers her mouth into an exaggerated kiss.

“Maybe you should,” he says. He wills the longing to disappear. He has given up the idea of possessing her, he reminds himself, he has resolved to be satisfied with what she gives.

“Why, is my skin not fair enough for you?” she pouts, lying back on her pillow and bringing the mango to her lips. She peels the skin off the top with her teeth. “I used to have so many mangoes, growing up in Ratnagiri.” Juice dribbles out as she sucks at the mango, it trickles down her chin and pools beneath her throat.

Vishnu wants to follow the trail of juice, blot it drop by drop off her skin with his tongue. This is what he has taught himself to be content with—the pleasure of her body, when she allows it, and nothing more. He believes then that his visits will continue forever, a string of lightbulbs glittering through the reaches of his future.

Padmini squeezes the mango to push out more pulp. But she presses too hard, and the whole seed slips out—it lands on her chin and slides down to her chest. She shrieks and tries to grab the seed, but it is covered with pulp and slips out of her grasp. She laughs as she chases the seed over her body, catching it finally at the base of her abdomen.

“Give me that,” Vishnu says, and rubs it over her belly, as if it were a bar of soap. A swath of pulp glistens on her skin.

“Everywhere,” she instructs, so he scrubs her waist, and lathers her between her legs.

“My mango queen,” he says, when the mango is spent. Her skin is wet, pieces of yellow pulp stick to her breasts, her stomach, the hair between her thighs.

He tastes her neck first. It is sweet with mango, salty with sweat. He moves downwards, capturing the dabs of pulp with his mouth, lingering at each nipple, stopping to sip the liquid collected in her navel. She gets saltier as he descends, and more aromatic, as if the mango is mixed with something pungent in the earth from which it has sprung. As he enters her, his tongue encounters a sweetness not encountered before in these folds. Lured by the sweetness, he dives in deeper, and then deeper still. Probing, caressing, tasting, but never retrieving, the tiny nugget of mango he knows is nestling there.

So many earthly ways to enjoy mangoes. Vishnu is loath to give them up.

A
T FIRST, WHEN
Short Ganga saw the mango, she was tempted to pick it up. It looked so ripe and delicious, and was one of those refined varieties, not the half-wild types that she occasionally was able to afford.

But then she wondered who had left it there, right next to Vishnu, and why. She knew of all sorts of spells and nazars that people planted in pieces of fruit, nazars that could spring out and seize you if you even touched the piece. Lemons were particularly dangerous, and Short Ganga always made a detour when she saw one in her path, but mangoes might be even more hazardous, and it was probably not a good idea to gaze at this one for too long.

Her skin began to crawl as she stood on the landing. First the ghost that had possessed Mr. Jalal, and now this. There was something unnatural lurking on this landing—perhaps it was the spirit that was waiting to take Vishnu away. Short Ganga shivered under her sari, then grabbed the tiffin box and ran up the steps.

The final flights were always the hardest. Short Ganga wiped her brow as she clambered past the second-floor landing. She tried not to think about Vishnu or the mango. Instead, she concentrated on Mr. Taneja’s tiffin box, hanging by her side, growing heavier with each step she rose, absorbing weight from the air like a sponge drawn through liquid. It was to be expected, of course—it was normal—a law of nature, a physical principle, that she had figured out all by herself.

Things grew heavier the higher they were lifted.

It was a discovery she was proud of, a finding that had obsessed her for the past several weeks. It had struck her one day as she was huffing her way up the Makhijanis’ building—the one with the lift that servants were not allowed to use. On the ground floor, the tiffin box felt so light she wondered if the compartments had all been filled, if the food would be enough for both Mr. and Mrs. Makhijani. By the third floor, however, the box was heavy enough that she started cursing the Makhijanis’ appetites, cursing the gluttony of all the rich, whose swollen tiffin boxes left daily red marks where the handles cut into her fingers. It was as she was shifting the box from one hand to the other that the realization struck her.
The box had put on weight.
The lid, the containers, the handle, the food—everything had become heavier.