The Death of Vishnu (27 page)

The girl in the burkha was having trouble feeding her infant, with a second child sleeping in her lap and another crying loudly next to her. She looked at Kavita helplessly, but Kavita looked away, staring instead at the announcement board with the names of the trains. But then the girl leaned forward and tapped Kavita on the knee, requesting her to take the sleeping baby from her while she fed the youngest one, and Kavita had no choice but to agree. She accepted the baby with a forced smile, and held its body awkwardly in her lap, wondering if it was sufficiently well insulated against leaks. Imagine traveling in a second-class compartment, that too, to
Jhansi
, in a soiled dress.

Meanwhile, the oldest child was still crying, so the mother asked him to go stand next to aunty. Kavita felt her face turn red. She had never been called that before. She felt like protesting—she wasn’t old enough, thank you, to be
anyone’s
aunty. The boy came over, sniveling, and with the fingers of one hand in his mouth. He brushed up right next to her, and Kavita felt herself surrounded by an overpowering baby smell, tinged with traces of urine and vomit. The boy suddenly took the fingers out of his mouth and draped that arm around her neck, and Kavita tried not to imagine the saliva dripping down her dupatta.

“He likes you,” the mother said. “See, he’s stopped crying already. Say hello to aunty, Ijaaz.” The baby suckling at her breast made a gurgling sound. “Newly wedded, aren’t you? You’ll learn soon enough how to hold a baby properly, don’t worry.”

The girl smiled, and Kavita noticed the two chipped teeth in the front row of her mouth.

“Where are you going?” the girl asked.

“Jhansi,” Kavita replied.

“Jhansi? But that’s where we’re headed. It’s a wonderful town. Not so big and noisy like Bombay, no big buildings and film industry. Much more quiet.

“I was born here, but I had all three of them once I moved to Jhansi. One after another, phut-phut. You’ll see.” The girl giggled.

“Maybe we can sit together on the train—my husband doesn’t like me to travel by myself.”

Just then, Salim came back from the ticket station. “You look so motherly with them,” he said, seeing Kavita with the baby in her lap and the boy clinging to her side.

First auntyhood, now motherhood. This was too much to bear for one night. “Here, you hold them,” she said, thrusting the children at Salim. “I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

They made it as far as Nasik. The girl with the children found seats with them and Kavita fumed the entire way at having to suffer the ignominy of an
unreserved
second-class compartment. At Nasik, she issued Salim an ultimatum. Either they traveled in first class or she was getting off and taking the next train back to Bombay.

“And of course, whatever Daddy’s spoilt little brat wants, Daddy’s spoilt little brat gets,” Salim said.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to live with a car mechanic the rest of my life.”

“Don’t talk to your husband that way,” the girl, wide-eyed, admonished her.

“He’s not my husband,” she replied. That shut the girl up.

As Kavita stepped out of the train, she hoped Salim would relent and follow her. She hoped, as the whistle blew and the engine started up, that he would come to the door at the last minute and throw himself onto the platform for her love. Then she would consider taking him back—but only under some conditions—no Jhansi and no mechanic business. But the engine gathered speed, and the compartments started whizzing by, and she wasn’t even able to tell which compartment had been theirs. For a second, she was struck with panic at having left her luggage in the train, before remembering she wasn’t traveling with any. Then thick, dark smoke started billowing out of the engine, the compartments disappeared one by one into a tunnel, and the only sign remaining of the train was the acrid taste left behind in the air.

Now here she was, back at her building again. She couldn’t believe it had been only fourteen hours since she had left. The question was, how was she going to explain that absence to her parents?

And more important, how was she going to explain her decision to them? Her decision not to marry Salim
or
Pran.

No, she was going to become a film star. A heroine. A glamour queen. No one man could hope to possess her, only long after her on the screen. Her life would be one of the fabulous ones she read about in
Stardust
, in
Filmfare
.

“Kavita memsahib? You?” she suddenly heard. She looked up to see the cigarettewalla gaping at her as she passed by his shop.

“Of course it’s me. Whom were you expecting? Meena Kumari?” Kavita said, as she began mounting the steps.

T
HE POLICE INSPECTOR
stared at Mrs. Asrani.

“You mean you’ve been here all day, and you haven’t heard a thing?”

“No,” Mrs. Asrani said, and winced because it came out more forcefully than she had wanted. The trick was to just say it without any sign of nervousness. “No,” she said again, more calmly this time, “I’ve been watching the cricket test match on TV since morning.”

“So you don’t know, for instance, that Mrs. Jalal was taken to the hospital in a coma, or that Mr. Jalal broke both legs from a fall into your courtyard?” The inspector emphasized the word “your.”

“Are they okay?” Now Mrs. Asrani’s voice carried neighborly concern, the precise amount that would behoove someone living one floor down.

“Mr. Jalal—he’ll live,” the inspector said. “But his wife—we don’t know yet how serious it is.”

“That’s terrible.” Mrs. Asrani felt guilty about all the ill will she had directed towards Mrs. Jalal. She hoped none of this would boomerang back on her. She had not asked for this, she silently reminded whoever or whatever might be listening—even a bruise here or there would have sufficed as far as she had been concerned.

“Where is your daughter, Mrs. Asrani?”

“She’s asleep. Why?”

“Not a cricket fan, I see.”

“Only when certain cricketeers are playing.”

“Could you wake her up, please?”

“Is that really necessary? She’s only a child.”

“I understand she’s—” The inspector consulted his notes. “I understand she’s eighteen and a half. Do you consider that a child?”

Mrs. Asrani tried to peer into the inspector’s notebook, to see what else was written there, but the inspector shielded his book and looked at her sternly.

“I’ll go get my daughter.”

Kavita was sitting in her room, her face ashen, when Mrs. Asrani unlocked the door and walked in.

“You can’t keep me prisoner here. I’m an adult now. I’ll tell the inspector. I won’t be forced into marrying Pran. I’ve already told you I want to become a film star. Why don’t you listen to me? Why don’t you ever let me do what I want?”

“Now look here, you disobedient girl. You’re in a lot of trouble already. Mr. Jalal tried to kill Mrs. Jalal because you ran away with his son. Then he tried to commit suicide himself. Almost succeeded. And all because of
you
. Whom are you going to kill next with your waywardness, your mother and father?”

Kavita started sobbing.

“You listen to me now. If you don’t want to end up in jail. If you ever want to be able to show your face outside again. You tell the inspector you were here last night.
All
of last night. It’s what the cigarettewalla and the paanwalla have already said. They’re doing their best to stop the scandal from spreading. For
our
sake. For
your
sake. And remember, you don’t know anything about the Jalals. Understand?”

“But I
wasn’t
here. I was with
Salim.
He’ll tell them that when he comes back, when they ask him. We’ll be in trouble—the police will come and arrest us.”

“What will they do, arrest the whole building? What is the word of one Salim-valim, compared to all of us put together? Whom do you think they’re going to believe?”

“But the truth will come out.”

“What truth? I just told you, the truth is you’ve been here all along. And you don’t know anything else. Now you get that into your head, if you ever want to show your face in public again. Sneaking out God knows where in the middle of the night.” Mrs. Asrani checked herself. She took a deep breath.

“I told the inspector you were asleep.” Mrs. Asrani wiped Kavita’s eyes dry. “Try to look as if you’ve got up from sleeping, not from crying.”

When Mrs. Asrani returned to the door with Kavita, she found the inspector at the entrance to the Pathaks’ flat, interviewing Mrs. Pathak. Who, coincidentally, had also been watching the test match since morning.

“And your husband?” the inspector asked.

“Oh, he’s a complete fanatic,” Mrs. Pathak said, fingering the necklace she had hastily put on over her house clothes when she had seen the inspector through the keyhole. “He hasn’t even gone downstairs since the match started—not even to the cigarettewalla, believe it or not—that’s why we have no idea what happened. It’s impossible to pry him away from the TV, even though ordinarily on Sunday mornings he goes to the temple. Cricket before God, I guess.” Mrs. Pathak raised her shoulders helplessly to the inspector, who did not smile.

“Should I get him for you?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

The inspector turned to Kavita. “And you, miss, have you been watching cricket as well?”

This was it. It was her chance to
act
. She would prove to her mother that she was a natural, a born actress, who should not be kept from her calling.

Kavita yawned. She stretched her neck, and languorously brushed her fingers against her lashes. “I’ve been asleep,” she said, running her fingers through her hair and yawning again, giving a picture-perfect performance of One Who Has Just Awoken.

“And why are you so sleepy, miss?, Were you away doing something last night?”

“No, I’ve been here, at home. Where would I go?”

“Mr. Jalal says your dupatta was left behind on the landing last night.”

Now it was time for One Who Has Just Experienced Shock. Kavita’s eyes expanded in astonishment, until they were the size of four-anna coins. Her mouth opened to the perfect aperture of surprise mixed in with dismay. Her hands fluttered agitatedly, but uselessly, by her side.

“Why in the world would he say that?”

“That’s not all,” the inspector said, looking hard at Kavita, then Mrs. Asrani, then Mrs. Pathak. He had been saving the mention of Mr. Jalal’s version of events until now. “Mr. Jalal also says that a mob including the cigarettewalla and the paanwalla and the electrician broke into his flat to question him about
your
whereabouts. They hit his wife on the head with a lathi, then threw him off the balcony.”

Kavita was trying to decide on the next vignette in her performance when her mother burst in. “See this? See how they lie? Forever their son has been an eve-teaser after my daughter, and now these stories. I ask you, inspector, is it fair? Is it fair to ruin my poor girl’s name, to implicate her in this mud?”

Encouraged by the inspector’s silence, Mrs. Asrani continued.

“Day by day that man has been getting worse, and nobody did anything. ‘Take him to a hospital, before he does something,’ I told Mrs. Jalal, but who is she to listen? Now that the fruit they have got is rotten, look how they’re trying to dump it in other people’s plate. Look how they’re trying to drag us all in. And the poor cigarettewalla and paanwalla—if they hadn’t responded to Mrs. Jalal’s screams, if it hadn’t been for them bursting in, I’m sure he would have finished her off.”

Kavita began to say something, but her mother still wasn’t finished. “Just one thing I want now, and that is not to let my daughter’s name get mixed in with all this. Just now only the proposal has come for her marriage—and now this. Do you have daughters, inspector sahib, that you know how easily their reputations can be ruined?”

The inspector said he was unmarried. He had written down everything Mrs. Asrani had related. “And you, Mrs. Pathak, do you also think Mr. Jalal has been acting crazy?”

“The ganga woke us up this morning. Told us to come downstairs. It was Mr. Jalal. Sleeping next to Vishnu, can you believe it? All night he must have spent there, instead of in his flat. When he wakes up, he claims we should worship Vishnu because he’s the real Lord Vishnu descended to earth. Then he grabs my arm as if he’s going to molest me. With my husband watching, no less. If that’s not crazy, I don’t know what is.”

“This Vishnu person—is he the one lying dead on your steps?”

“Dead?”

“We’ve radioed for the morgue van to come take him away. How long has he been dead, do you think?”

“He was alive yesterday…” Mrs. Asrani ventured.

“And today, when we went down and Mr. Jalal was sleeping there. I thought he must have been alive then,” Mrs. Pathak said. “Though I didn’t check his pulse.”

“Yesterday evening when we returned—he must have been alive then, wasn’t he, beti?” Mrs. Asrani asked her daughter.

Kavita did not reply. So it had happened. He had died, as she had worried he would. She wanted to grieve, she wanted to cry, but why were her eyes suddenly so dry?

“Did you know him well?” the inspector asked.

“Very well.” Mrs. Asrani shook her head mournfully. “I used to bring him tea every morning. My family depended on him, we really did—in fact, Kavita grew up playing with him. We’re going to miss him—a lot. In fact—”

“Actually, inspector, we knew him better,” Mrs. Pathak interjected. “I used to feed him chapatis every day. He was like a family member to us. The same food I used to cook for my own family, I used to feed him also—”

“Yes, yes, but three days late. When they were hard as rocks, were her chapatis. In fact, I’m sure if you ask a doctor to do a postmortem, he would say that’s what made him sick—he’d find a big undigested chapati piece stuck in his bowel—”

“Excuse me, but we
did
bring in a doctor. And we were the ones who paid for him, too, I will have you know. Not anyone else who is claiming to be so close and dear to Vishnu now, just to impress the inspector—”