The Death of Vishnu (18 page)

Whispers came from the other side of the door, then the sound of muffled giggles. Suddenly, a radio was turned on, at full volume. The soaring chorus of the national anthem filled the room, and Sheetal looked up, confused. For a moment, he thought she was going to stand to attention beside the bed. There was laughter from the corridor outside, then the sound of running feet, and his mother’s scolding voice. The radio was switched off just in the middle of the final “Jaya he.”

Vinod heard his mother tiptoe away from the door.

“Do you know all the words?” he asked Sheetal.

“Of course,” she replied. “Everyone learns it in school. Didn’t you?”

“I did. But I could never memorize the whole thing.”

Sheetal did not respond.

“They must have waited,” he said. “Waited till eleven-thirty, for the station to shut down and the anthem to come on. I should have run to the door and grabbed their radio from them. We could have had a little music.”

“But the station has shut down, you said.”

“The foreign stations run all night. We could have heard jazz. Do you ever listen to jazz?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t much, either. Except late at night. Otherwise, I listen to Radio Ceylon. They have the songs from all the new films. Months before they get them on Vividh Bharati. Do you like seeing films?”

Sheetal nodded.

“Did you see
Mughal-e-Azam
?”

“Yes, and I
hated
it. I
hate
Madhubala.”

“How can you possibly hate Madhubala?”

“She has the face of an elephant.”

“She’s not even fat.”

“Not her body. Just her face. Her nose, especially.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. She has a beautiful nose.”

“An elephant. I’m not going to any Madhubala films with you.”

They argued about Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Vyjayanthimala. They talked about their favorite films. Sheetal shyly revealed that she often liked to memorize not only songs but also pieces of dialogue that moved her. As an illustration, she recited her favorite lines from
Love in Rome
.

“Remember that scene in the restaurant, when they eat all that Italian food?” Vinod said, laughing. “What does it turn out to be—octopus or something?”

Sheetal’s face darkened. “Don’t expect me to cook any non-veg for you,” she suddenly declared.

Vinod was taken aback.

“But your family isn’t vegetarian,” he protested. “You yourself were eating tandoori chicken tonight at the reception.”

“I like to eat it, but I’m not going to cook it. It’s a hundred times more sinful to cook it than eat it.”

“But nobody said anything before the wedding. How will we eat meat when we start living by ourselves if you won’t cook it?”

“What if I teach you to cook it?”

“But I’m the husband. I’m not supposed to cook. And also, if I did, then all the sins would come on my head.”

Sheetal’s brow furrowed. “And since you’re my husband, they’d be on my head too.” She fell silent. “I guess we won’t be able to have meat after all,” she said.

They looked at each other gloomily. Married life had barely begun, and already abstinence was the forecast for the future.

The talk about cooking had made Vinod hungry, so he suggested sneaking out to locate the wedding sweets. Sheetal demurred at first, but then gave in—she, too, was hungry. They took off all the ornaments they could, Sheetal being especially careful to remove her noisy ankle bracelets. Vinod got out of the stiff wedding jacket that had been choking him all evening, and Sheetal wrapped her long ceremonial sari around her shoulders and stuffed the end into her waistband. Then, in bare feet, they crept to the door.

Vinod opened it a crack. A multitude of snores streamed in. He stuck his head out. Starting at the door and stretching out all along the floor were dozens of recumbent wedding guests. It looked as if a cyclone had blasted through the corridor.

They made their way to the kitchen through the maze of bodies. Sheetal accidentally stepped on one of her cousins, and they both held their breaths, but the girl muttered something and went back to sleep.

In the kitchen, they were unable to locate the sweets, but came across a large platter of the tandoori chicken in the refrigerator. They looked at each other. “Let’s find some pickle and onions to go with it,” Sheetal whispered.

The kitchen floor had been cleared to accommodate more of the sleeping guests, and Vinod and Sheetal crept around them to the dining table, which had been pushed to the far side. The chairs had been stacked up in another corner, so they sat cross-legged on the table itself, the platter of chicken between them.

“What do you like,” Vinod asked, “breast or leg?”

“I like the little leg attached to the breast. It’s my favorite part.”

“But it’s so little.”

“I always get both of them. It’s the only part I really like. Though I can eat the big leg if necessary.”

Vinod tore off the wing portions from two of the breasts and handed them to her. “Here. You can have the little legs every time we have chicken.”

“Thanks,” Sheetal said, smiling shyly as she accepted the pieces from him. “Here’s some onion—I couldn’t find the mango pickle.”

They sat in the dark and ate their chicken. The only light came from a streetlamp outside, through a small window on the opposite wall. It was quite hot, and Vinod could hear a mosquito whining around near his ear. He looked at Sheetal. His wife. She was gnawing at the cartilage in a wingjoint, red specks of tandoori spice stuck to her lips. In the dim light, Sheetal looked even younger than her nineteen years. He imagined her hair braided in pigtails, looped around and tied behind her ears, like a schoolgirl’s. Who was this person? What did she want from life? Sheetal selected a red pickled onion from a bowl and bit off a chunk of it.

Clumsily, Vinod leaned over with his face next to hers and tried to kiss her. Sheetal drew back. “What are you doing? Are you crazy—with all these people here?”

“But they’re asleep,” Vinod protested.

“That doesn’t matter. They’re still here.” Sheetal resumed munching on her onion.

Vinod looked at the sleeping people. There was Pramod uncle and his wife, lying next to each other. How long had they been together? He wondered when his uncle had first kissed Manisha aunty, and whether her mouth had been redolent of cumin and onion when he had done so. He looked again at Sheetal. She had finished her chicken. Her tongue was wiping her lips clean, leaving behind a thin glisten of saliva that outlined her mouth in the silvery light. He had never kissed a girl before. He was determined to do so tonight, in this kitchen, on this table.

Vinod eased the platter out of the way and moved closer to Sheetal. He could feel her stiffen, could almost hear her heart start beating faster. He slowly put his arm around her neck, then tensed his muscles, ready to resist in case she tried to escape. She sat there, rooted to the wood, looking straight ahead. Quickly, he pressed his mouth over hers. He sensed the back of her neck go slack. Her saliva felt wet and sticky and strangely exciting on his lips. He held them there for a moment, inhaling the spicy meatiness of her mouth. Then, not sure how to proceed, he released her mouth and drew his head back.

She looked away from his eyes. Her hand went up to wipe her lips, but she stopped and self-consciously brought it down. She sat on the table next to the platter and the onions, the bone of a chicken wing still in her hand.

They went back to their bedroom. Nervously, Sheetal unwound her sari, and quickly got into bed. She shivered, even though the room was unbearably warm, and pulled the sheet up to her blouse. Vinod took off his shirt but not his pants, and got in next to her.

They stared at the wedding decorations festooned over the bed. The sound of the mosquitoes diving among the streamers mingled with the snores that trickled in from under the door. A balloon rested listlessly against the ceiling, its thread dangling all the way to the floor. Down the street, a dog barked, and further away somewhere, they heard a car start up.

Vinod could feel Sheetal’s body breathing next to him in the dark. He thought of her bosom beneath its blouse, the red cloth rising and falling with each breath. In the sixth standard, a friend had shown him his first photo of a naked woman. He tried to picture that image under Sheetal’s blouse, tried to imagine the contour of each breast, the fleshiness of each nipple. He saw himself kissing her neck, bringing his mouth down and wetting the material of her blouse and, when the nipple was clearly outlined, taking it in his mouth through the cloth.

“Are you asleep?” he whispered to Sheetal.

“No,” she replied. “I was thinking.”

“About what?” Vinod’s voice was hoarse.

“I was thinking,” Sheetal said, turning around to face him, her expression troubled. “I was thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be such a big sin to once in a while cook chicken?”

T
HE THRASHING ADMINISTERED
to Shyamu by his mother that afternoon was earned fair and square by him in the half hour that preceded it. Even Mr. Asrani, when confronted with the evidence, would have had to agree that it was fully deserved, not that he was given a chance to arbitrate. Shyamu, of course, tried to deny everything, which was not the wise thing to do, since it enraged Mrs. Asrani even further. But then, Shyamu was never one given to wise choices, as evidenced by his behavior.

What happened was this. Shyamu had been playing aeroplane with Rajan, the Pathaks’ younger son. The two children had brought several empty ghee and cooking-oil tins from the kitchen and arranged them to form the central corridor of seats in the inside of the plane. They were taking turns being the pilot and crash-landing the plane. First, Rajan crashed the plane, the impact sending the tins helter-skelter, and killing all the passengers. Then it was Shyamu’s turn, and he killed not only all the people on board but several unfortunate bystanders on the ground as well. Then it was Rajan’s turn, with Shyamu being a hijacker, and once again the loss of life was total, with several of the deaths being gruesomely enacted among flying cooking-fat tins.

Short Ganga had left behind the dupatta found that morning, draped prominently over the grinding stone outside the kitchen. Mrs. Pathak, not wanting to handle it herself in case it had been infected by Vishnu, had asked Short Ganga to place it there. Mrs. Pathak had a hunch that the key to the mystery of Mr. Jalal lay in the dupatta, and she was keeping close tabs on it to try and catch either Mrs. Asrani or Mrs. Jalal picking it up.

The game had by now shifted to dacoit pilots chasing terrorized villagers through mountain ravines. And killing them. The score was roughly a dozen villagers each, though Rajan had scored extra for decimating a herd of cows as well. It was Shyamu’s turn, and he had an idea. They would drape the dupatta over some tins to represent a buxom village belle (the kind Reshma played in the movies) and then riddle her body with bullets.

Since there were no more empty tins left, they dragged two containers of rice and stacked them one on top of the other. These were covered with the dupatta to produce a passable belle. Shyamu got into his cockpit and started spraying everything with his imaginary machine gun, and Rajan toppled the belle over after she had been hit what seemed like a sufficient number of times.

This was not enough fun, so Shyamu decided to make it more realistic. The belle would be Kavita, since it was her dupatta anyway. And Rajan could be Salim, though he would have to kiss the belle first, for realism’s sake. They would be running away from home, and Shyamu would be the police chasing them from the aeroplane, with orders to bring them back alive, or preferably, dead.

The game started, but Rajan didn’t want to kiss Kavita, even the rice-container-and-dupatta version of her. Eventually, he was persuaded to, and just as he was locked in embrace, Shyamu’s plane zoomed in, and he said, “Run, Salim, run, Kavita, or the police will catch you.” Mrs. Pathak, who looked out that instant to see if the dupatta was still there, was horrified to see her son kissing it, and absorbing God knew what type of germs into his mouth. She came running out, just as Shyamu, still shouting, “Run, Salim, run, Kavita,” deployed his newly acquired grenade launcher at his sister, and blew her up into bits by smashing two of the empty ghee tins into her. Perhaps he underestimated the force of the grenades, because Kavita the belle literally did fly to pieces, losing her head and showering rice all over Rajan, Shyamu, Mrs. Pathak, and the landing.

When Mrs. Asrani was awoken from her already troubled unscheduled morning nap, she found first of all that her best Basmati rice was lying scattered all over the floor outside the kitchen. She also found that Shyamu had, in an effort to explain his game to Mrs. Pathak, told her not only that the dupatta belonged to Kavita, but also that his sister was missing, and had probably run away with Salim.

“Did you get any news yet?” Mrs. Pathak asked, her voice oozing with sympathy that barely concealed the titillation.

“What news? There’s no need for news. Don’t believe everything Shyamu is saying. Kavita’s just gone to visit a friend.”

“Yes, it must be. Mr. Jalal says that Salim too has gone to visit a friend. I wonder what it all means.” Mrs. Pathak slipped in her little lie to see what Mrs. Asrani’s reaction would be. She was not disappointed.

“Mr. Jalal told you that? When did he say it?” Mrs. Asrani’s jaw was set in a grim line.

“Well, Mr. Jalal was saying all sorts of things this morning. Something about a walnut, and that Vishnu was an incarnation of God come down to earth. Who knows what all he said—he was quite incoherent. And then wearing that dupatta—do you know he even tried to attack me?”

“Yes, yes, but what did he say about Salim?”

“Something about visiting a friend,” Mrs. Pathak said vaguely. “He was saying two hundred things, though—you should have heard him. It’s as if he’d
really
seen something. We led him upstairs, and my husband asked him, Mr. Jalal, you’re a Muslim, how strange that you are talking to us about our Hindu gods. And you know what he said—he said if people like us didn’t realize when a god came down, they needed someone like him to open their eyes. Imagine—Mr. Jalal, a prophet.”

“And you said he was
wearing
Kavita’s dupatta?”

“He had it wrapped around his head.”

“How strange, how very strange.”

“If there’s anything I can do, I know what a difficult time this must be for you, if there’s
anything
…”

But Mrs. Asrani was already turning back towards her flat, trying to decide which she would do first, gather up the rice or give Shyamu his beating.

The actual night only came a week later. By then, Vinod had reconciled himself to the fact that his wife clacked her teeth in her sleep. When he mentioned this to her, she complained that he snored every night, and that that was much worse than her clacking, which was due to a misalignment in her mouth, and which only occurred on some nights, and which wasn’t as loud or as hard to adjust to as snoring, anyway.

The monsoons had been delayed again that year, and the heat had been building up night after night in their room. Vinod took off his shirt, hesitated, then took off his pants as well. “It’s so hot,” he explained apologetically, as he got into bed. “Too hot for my pajama suit.” Sheetal, who was wearing a nightie, didn’t say anything. “Why don’t you take your nightie off as well,” Vinod suggested.

“What, and be naked?”

“You’ll be much cooler.”

Sheetal was quiet for a moment. “Okay, but don’t look,” she whispered.

Vinod felt her get out of bed. She returned in a moment, and drew the sheet up to her neck.

“What’s the point if you’re going to cover yourself with a sheet? You’ll sweat even more than in a nightie.”

“I have to put something on. I’m completely naked otherwise.
You
have your underclothes on.”

“Okay, I’ll take them off.”

Vinod took off his undershirt as Sheetal watched. He rubbed the cotton cloth over the hair on his chest to soak up the sweat, then threw it into a corner of the room.

“You’re still not naked. What about those?” Sheetal pointed her chin at his briefs.

“Look the other way, and I’ll do it.”

“See, you’re embarrassed, too.”

“It’s not the same. It’s different for men.”

“You expect me to take off my sheet, yet you won’t take off your underwear.”

“Oh yes? Well, here.” With one quick sweep, Vinod tried to pull his briefs off, and got them all the way to his feet, where they became entangled in his toes.

A cry escaped Sheetal’s mouth, and she covered her eyes with her hands. She looked through her fingers and began to laugh as she saw Vinod try to cover himself by crossing one leg over the other.

“What do you have there?” Sheetal said, pointing at his nakedness and laughing.

Vinod uncovered himself to show her. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Sheetal screamed as he placed her hand on his cock and closed his thighs over it.

He held it there. “It feels so good,” he said, and Sheetal’s face turned a dark crimson.

Still holding her hand in his crotch, so that she couldn’t move away, Vinod sidled next to Sheetal. He slipped his leg under the sheet and rubbed it against hers, feeling the coarseness of his hairs against her smooth skin. Hooking his foot around hers, he slid closer, until his chest was touching hers. Carefully, he peeled the sheet off her body, as if uncovering a sleeping child.

Sheetal pressed her arms over her breasts. She crossed her legs just as he had done a minute ago, keeping her gaze focused on the pillow next to her head. She bore his kisses silently, in her hair, at her brow, on her lips. As his mouth left hers, she turned to face him. Visible beyond the reticence, Vinod was surprised to see, was the unmistakable glint of curiosity.

He couldn’t remember the instructions his brother had given him. Something about kissing, something about caressing, something about pressing their bodies together until they fit correctly. He kissed Sheetal’s cheeks, her nose, her lips, but that didn’t seem enough. He tried rubbing himself against her body, but stopped, because it was bringing him too close to the edge. He suddenly became terrified that he would ejaculate all over her body. He imagined his white semen squirting uncontrolled over her abdomen, like some pubescent emission, pooling in her navel, running down her thighs.

Apparently, Sheetal had received some advice as well, because she took him in her hand and guided him into her body. He felt the warm compactness of her, and smelled her odor, like freshly cut yams, that he would forever associate with sex. He came almost immediately, his body twitching, eyes rolling back in his head, Sheetal holding him tight in her arms, so tight he could hardly breathe. He pulled out and managed to focus on her, and was embarrassed at the confusion flushing her face.

“Next time will be better,” he said, unable to bring himself to watch if the confusion was giving way to understanding, to disappointment.

“It’s okay,” Sheetal said, as she wiped herself clean. She got out of bed and put on her nightie.

“Good night,” she said, as she got into bed and turned to face the window.

“Good night,” he replied, looking at the small of her back, unable to reach out to comfort her. As the minutes ticked away, he stared at the motionless contour of her body and waited for a dog, a car, a mosquito, anything, to break the silence that hung over the room.

W
HEN MRS. JALAL
opened the door and saw the expression on Mrs. Asrani’s face, she knew it was not going to be a pleasant conversation.

“Could I speak to Salim?” Mrs. Asrani asked, in a tone that was polite, but as primed as a sitar string.

“Uh, he’s not in right now.”

“Oh, where is he, may I ask?”

“I don’t know. He’s gone away for a little while.”

“Do your children often go away without telling you where they’re going?”

“My son is an adult. He can come and go where he wants. I don’t insist on keeping tabs on his every move like some people.”

“Well, maybe you should. Unless you think being an adult means he can carry away other people’s daughters.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“You heard me. Carry them away in the middle of the night. Like a dacoit, in the darkness, when everyone is asleep.”

“Keep your voice down, please. My husband is not feeling well.”

“And maybe your husband would like to explain what he was doing with my daughter’s dupatta wrapped around his head?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes you do. You know what you’ve done. Taken my Kavita from me. As soon as you learnt she had accepted a good proposal, a proposal from a proper, decent family. You’ve kidnapped her. Father and son and mother together. Is this what you people came here to do, steal our daughters from under our noses?”

Mrs. Jalal slammed the door in Mrs. Asrani’s face.

The doorbell sounded angrily, as angrily as its tinkling sound would allow. Then there was the sound of fists pounding on the door. “Open this, you coward. Come out, daughter of a swine, and answer my questions.”

Mrs. Jalal looked at the door, backing away from it as if it would burst any moment. What should she do? Ahmed was still quite useless. What if Mrs. Asrani managed to break down the door? The woman seemed deranged. Who knew what these Hindus were capable of? She remembered all those nights in Dongri during Partition, cowering under the bed with Nafeesa as Hindu gangs roamed the streets outside. Just yesterday there had been a news item in the paper about an entire Muslim village in Bihar being massacred. Perhaps she should call the police.

Abruptly, the banging on the door stopped. Mrs. Jalal heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs.

So the worst had happened. Salim
had
run away with Kavita. All those trips to the mosque over the years, all those lectures on what was right and what was wrong, and this is what it had amounted to. Her only child doing a thing like this. Where had she gone wrong?

And what was the business about the dupatta? What had Ahmed been up to? Why had he been wearing Kavita’s dupatta over his head? Mrs. Jalal had not known what to make of it when they’d told her this morning. She could make out even less now that the dupatta had turned out to be Kavita’s.

She had to speak to Ahmed. Coherent or not. Find out what had been going on. She had seen him come back upstairs and go back to their bedroom.

Mrs. Jalal knocked on the door, then opened it and went inside.

T
HE FIRST MORNING
Vinod headed back to work after the wedding, Sheetal was waiting at the door, his tiffin box packed and ready. Vinod felt like kissing her goodbye, but didn’t, because his mother was watching. That evening, he hurried home to be with Sheetal, even though he hadn’t seen his friends at the café for two weeks. It was not long before he began to resent this routine, however, and had to remind himself that Sheetal remained cooped up at home with his mother all day. Living under one roof did not seem to be fostering the loving relationship he had envisioned between the two of them. Few days passed without his mother grinding in a subtle pinch of criticism about Sheetal to flavor the evening meal.