The Death of Vishnu

by Manil Suri

  Padmini has put her elbows on the wooden platform on which the man with the vegetables is performing his magic. “Does it do mooli too?” she asks, leaning forward and resting her chin on her palms.

  “But of course!” In goes a long white radish; it, too, emerges as a spiral.

  Padmini claps her hands. “Here, you try it, memsahib,” the man says. People stop to watch. Padmini takes a carrot and puts it into the metal tube. She turns the handle, but nothing happens. A hush passes over the spectators. “You have to push it through,” the man quickly says, and shows her how. The carrot emerges in a spiral, Padmini laughs, and a sigh of relief is heard from the crowd.

  “It’s so easy!” Padmini turns around and exclaims. Dazzled by her endorsement, people surge forward to buy the carrot cutter. The man sells so many that he gives her a new one, still wrapped in plastic, and tells her she can keep it.

  “I’ve always loved kitchen things,” she says, as they walk through the gunny-lined corridors.

  Vishnu looks at her silver-sandaled feet treading delicately around the puddles of mud. He looks at her dress, studded with sequins, sees the layers of red, red lipstick on her lips, the kohl applied so skillfully, stroke by stroke, that her eyes seem to float white and free. He is still amazed, amazed to be walking with this exquisite creature next to him, this woman with the stainless-steel gadget held so tightly against her sequined bosom. He still cannot believe that she has agreed to be with him today.

  “Guddi ke baal!” Padmini points. The cotton candy does look like pink doll’s hair, it appears from nowhere, spinning itself into a giant pink puff around the stick waved around inside the bowl of the machine.

  “Would you like some?” Vishnu asks, and Padmini nods shyly. Vishnu buys it for her, and they continue.

  “Look at that! What a motor!” They are passing a photographer’s stall, lined with all sorts of painted backdrops. There is a horse, standing up on two legs, perilously close to the edge of a cliff; an aeroplane with painted-on wings, obviously airborne, as evidenced by the clouds behind; even a crescent moon surrounded by stars, a rocket spaceship about to land on the surface. But Padmini is pointing at the bright red car painted on a wooden cutout, with yellow headlights, and a plate lettered in English, which the man reads out: “Good luck. Made in USA.” She runs to the seat hidden behind and leans out of the window. “How do I look?” she says, as she presses on the painted-on horn.

  “Only three rupees for a picture,” the man says, so Vishnu pays him. He begins to sit in the seat next to her, but she stiffens. “No, just me,” she says, “just me, or just you, but not both.”

  She begins to rise, but Vishnu stops her and gets up instead. There is a flash as the photo is taken.

  They have an hour before the picture will be developed. They come to a canvas tent outside which a man stands. “Come see the film!” he shouts. “Cabaret dance by Reshma! Very hot! Up next, five minutes!”

  “Let’s go!” Vishnu says. “I love seeing the films here.”

  Padmini is unsure, but allows herself to be led through the tent flap. Inside, wooden benches face a sloping white sheet that has been sewn to the tent. A naked bulb swelters at the end of a wire. The heat has built up with every show, the air is now thick with the smell of perspiration and warm canvas. Vishnu and Padmini join the audience, which waits listlessly in the heat, scattered around the benches like victims of a carnage.

  “I’m not used to this,” Padmini says. “Usually I get taken out to proper cinemas. Taj, sometimes even Novelty.” She shifts around, displaying obvious discomfort on her wooden seat. “And mai, it’s so hot!” She tries fanning herself with the carrot cutter.

  “It’s going to start in a second,” Vishnu says. Outside, the ticket seller is making a last all-out attempt to attract customers. “See Reshma’s body sizzle like a pataka in the most passionate and revealing dance of her career! See her bare all, her youth, her beauty, her all!”

  The light finally goes off, and Reshma appears on the screen, her head unnaturally elongated. She pouts and prances, and boasts that her body is so intoxicating she could even make the priest in the temple worship at her feet if she wanted. Although the promised revealing of her youth does not materialize, the audience is quite satisfied, and there are whistles and catcalls at the screen.

  “That fat cow!” Padmini snorts after they have exited. “All she ever does is wriggle that big stomach of hers! Why did you take me to see her?”

  “Because you dance so much better than her,” Vishnu says quickly. “You should be the one up there.”

  “You really think so?” Padmini wants to hear more. “But she has bigger breasts than I do.”

  “Yes, but your face. There’s no comparison.” Padmini is pleased at this.

  It is late by the time they get back to the street where she lives. There is music and light everywhere, young girls and women beckon from windows, from doors, from balconies.

  “Can I come?” he asks.

  “Depends,” she answers, rubbing her thumb and fingers together. “You know what you need if you want to come in.”

  IT IS LATE afternoon when he awakens. The tide has come in and receded while he slept. The sand stretches to the water’s edge, gleaming in the sun’s rays as if painted with silver.

  He tries to remember the night before. Standing on Padmini’s doorstep after the mela. Telling her how much she means to him, telling her how much he loves her. Trying to find the words into her room, into her heart.

  Padmini smiles her half-smile. “Wait here till I am done,” she says, and runs her fingers lightly across his lips. He tries to catch them, to kiss them, but only her attar remains.

  He cannot remember how long he sits outside her building. Listening to the music float by, watching the people file in and out. He gets up when the sound of the ghungroos chiming inside becomes too much to bear.

  Is the sky still dark when he makes his way to the beach? Are the stars still out when he lays back his head on the sand? He lies by the water and thinks he has not felt this way with any of the other girls. This desire to be consumed with Padmini in one fiery instant, this feeling that he wants them to spend a lifetime together.

  But now the sun is up, and the day demands more practical pursuits. He watches a seagull making its way across the beach in search of food. It hops through the sand, stops to peck at a piece of plastic, then hops on. It stops each time it sees something yellow or orange, and tests it with its beak. A wad of paper, a cigarette butt, a dried mango pit—everything inedible is spit back out.

  The bird gets closer and Vishnu sees how ugly it is. The head is dark and shiny, as if dipped in oil. The feathers are streaked with black and look oily too. Gobs of brown cling to the legs.

  The gull walks up to where he is sitting and lunges at a crust of bread in the sand. Vishnu watches the bread disappear into the beak, and imagines it traveling in one large piece down the bird’s gullet. His own stomach rumbles its emptiness.

  The bird stares at his toe, and Vishnu wonders if it will peck at it. He sits completely stationary, tempting the bird with his stillness, hands poised at his sides, ready to twist the white-and-black neck. The bird lifts its head, looks beadily at his face, then turns and hops away.

  The sun hovers above the water. The hunger in his stomach rises, a roiling tide inside. He tries to remember when he has last eaten. Did Padmini tear off a bite for him from her cotton candy?

  A small boy walks up to him. “Would you like some crabs?” he asks, holding out a bright yellow plastic pail with a toy spade in it. Vishnu notices the boy is wearing bathing shorts made of striped red nylon. They look expensive.

  “I caught too many of them,” the boy explains, “and Mummy said we can only take one of them home. Would you like the rest?” The boy stirs the spade in the pail and Vishnu hears the contents scrape against the plastic.

  “How big are they?” Vishnu asks, looking skeptically at the pail.

  “Oh, all size
s,” the boy says, and lowers the pail, so that Vishnu can peer inside. “See this one?” He points with his spade at the largest crab, only a few inches wide. “That’s the only large one. I’m going to add it to my aquarium.”

  Vishnu shakes his head and mumbles no. The boy stands there, surprised. “You really should take them—they’d make great pets. Besides, I spent all afternoon looking for them.” His voice has an injured tone.

  “Go away,” Vishnu hisses at the boy. “I don’t want your crabs, they’re too small!”

  The boy goes running toward a man and a woman. They are also wearing swimming clothes. “Mummy,” he cries, “the man says my crabs are too small!” Vishnu turns away.

  When he looks back, the boy is emptying the pail into a hole dug out in the sand. Vishnu watches as he straightens up and goes running after the couple, the pail swinging by his side.

  A fresh knot of hunger tightens in Vishnu’s stomach. His vision swims. He suddenly sees Padmini emerge from the water and walk toward him across the wet sand. Drops of water fall from her hair, a platter piled with fish gleams in her hands. The sun blurs and lists peculiarly to one side. He wonders if he should go over to the hole and see if the boy has dumped in the large crab as well.

  There is a screech from above. Wings flap above his head, and he looks up to see a blur of oily brown feathers. The seagull circles once, then lands. It hops to the hole and perches at the edge, gripping the wet rim with its claws.

  Leaning forward, the gull probes deep into the hole, then straightens out. Vishnu can make out legs and claws flailing through the sides of its beak.

  The gull hops back from the hole, then turns toward Vishnu. It stares at him for a second, then spreads its wings wide. Vishnu watches the feet leave the ground, watches the body ascend into the air, watches the head turn lazily toward the sea. He tracks the bird as it completes half a circle, tracks it through the sky, tracks it until it flies toward the sun and is swallowed in its brilliance.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MRS. JAISWAL WAS cheating again, and as usual there was nothing Mrs. Pathak could do about it. Not unless she was prepared to be banished from the kitty party circle, like poor Mrs. Bawa had been. The scene was still fresh in her memory—the last time anyone had ever seen the hapless Mrs. Bawa, who had not even directly accused Mrs. Jaiswal, just said, “You seem to be getting too too too many good cards today.”

  It had been the three “toos” that had done her in—Mrs. Bawa could not have made a bolder statement had she pulled three aces from Mrs. Jaiswal’s breast and flung them in her face.

  “Are you suggesting I am getting these too too too good cards not by my own good luck?”

  The chill had been so palpable that the women in the room had hugged their saris tight around their shoulders. Even Mrs. Mirchandani had felt it in the kitchen and rushed back to catch every word.

  Perhaps if Mrs. Bawa had been keen enough to perceive the danger she was in, and skillful enough to pretend she’d just been joking, she might have escaped. But she interpreted the silence as encouragement to blunder on. “So much luck you have—last week too your three-three queens to my ninetenjack—it must be something you eat, to get this rosy rosy luck every time.” She laughed nervously and looked around the room for support, but no one would meet her eye.

  “Never so-so much luck for one person only, never have I seen that.” Mrs. Bawa laughed again, more nervously this time.

  “You haven’t been playing very long then,” Mrs. Jaiswal said, and everyone in the room, except Mrs. Bawa, knew what the words foreboded for Mrs. Bawa’s cardplaying future. For Mrs. Jaiswal controlled all the top kitty parties in town, and no one who wanted to keep playing dared challenge her.

  Poor Mrs. Bawa, Mrs. Pathak thought, she had been so distraught on the phone. “The exact amount that I put into the kitty!” Mrs. Bawa had wailed. “It came in a letter, today only! And now Mrs. Dosh won’t let me play in her group either, says her sister has moved into town, and she has to give my place to her.”

  Mrs. Pathak had clucked sympathetically. She bit her tongue now, as Mrs. Jaiswal plucked the two-rupee notes, several of which had been lying in front of Mrs. Pathak a few minutes ago, from the sheet spread out on the floor. “I was so sure I was going to lose, too—Mrs. Pathak gets such big-big cards, and I only had a small little sequence.”

  The last of the notes disappeared into Mrs. Jaiswal’s big black purse, the one that always lay by her side, the one that Mrs. Pathak was convinced held the secret to her unnaturally good luck. She watched as Mrs. Jaiswal tucked the purse under the folds of her sari, and fantasized again about pulling it out and emptying its incriminating contents over the sheet.

  The kitty party had been a disaster from the start. The ambulance that Mr. Pathak said Mr. Asrani had called had not shown up. At one-thirty, only an hour before the guests were to arrive, Mrs. Pathak had sent frantically for the jamadarni, to have the mess around Vishnu cleaned up. The jamadarni had demanded—Mrs. Pathak still couldn’t believe it—thirty rupees! Thirty! The cheek of that woman, taking advantage of her when she was helpless! It had taken all Mrs. Pathak’s bargaining power to bring it down to twenty, with the Russian-salad samosas thrown in. (Mrs. Pathak had tried impressing upon the jamadarni that the mayonnaise alone had cost five rupees, but unfortunately, the jamadarni had not known what mayonnaise was.)

  After the cleaning had been done, there had been barely enough time to dress up for Mrs. Jaiswal. She had been unable to locate the pearl earrings that went with her necklace, and had been forced to put on a green pair that didn’t match. (“What delightful earrings Mrs. Pathak is wearing,” Mrs. Jaiswal had remarked loudly between hands. “They must be her lucky pair, that must be why she has them on with that white necklace.”) Minutes before the first guests arrived, Mrs. Pathak had remembered Vishnu again, and pulled out an old sheet which she’d been saving to give the jamadarni at Divali (but certainly not now). She’d sent Mr. Pathak down to the landing with it to cover Vishnu up as best as he could. “Make it look natural!” she’d shouted after Mr. Pathak. “I want people to think he’s asleep, not something else.”

  But it hadn’t worked. The first thing Mrs. Jaiswal had said upon walking in was, “If I’d known I’d see a dead man on your stairs, I would never have come! On a Saturday, no less! How inauspicious!”

  “Oh, that’s Vishnu. He’s just drunk. As usual—we really can’t do anything with him.”

  “Drunk? You have drunk people on your steps? What kind of building have you brought us to here, that there are drunk people on the steps?”

  “He’s perfectly harmless,” Mrs. Pathak had tried saying, but Mrs. Mirchandani had started complaining that Vishnu had lurched towards her as she’d walked past, and Mrs. Ganesh had declared that he had grabbed her foot, and it had only been the sight of the kitty pouch, hurriedly brought out and dangled in front of the women by Mrs. Pathak, that had quieted them down.

  It had surely been a sign of terrible displeasure that Mrs. Jaiswal had not asked the hostess, as was the custom, to draw the week’s winner, but had assigned the task to Mrs. Mirchandani instead. And now, here was Mrs. Mirchandani, fawning over Mrs. Jaiswal as usual, begging her to repeat the story about how she had come to Bombay on her honeymoon, and been discovered by a film producer, and acted in three films. “Tell us again, Sheila, wasn’t one a silver jubilee?”

  “Two of them, actually. And Haseena would’ve been a golden jubilee, ask anyone, if only the freedom movement hadn’t gained force.”

  Mrs. Jaiswal played with the streaks of henna painted in her beauty-salon-coiffed hair and adjusted the diamond pin in her nose. “They said that if I’d continued, I’d have been the next Meena Kumari.” Mrs. Pathak resisted the temptation to remark that at least Meena Kumari had been dead and gone for some years now.

  A sudden tickle started up in Mrs. Pathak’s right palm. She tried to ignore it, since it was a bad sign, portending more loss of money. While she was growing up, her mo
ther had always called her “the lucky one,” the one destined to be married into riches, a bungalow and car. Instead, here she was at forty-three, with two children (one of them first-year fail at Somani College), living in a two-room flat with not even her own kitchen, trying to impress this woman with orange streaks in her hair, who still believed herself to be a film star. The earrings dangled greenly at Mrs. Pathak’s earlobes, the itch in her palm seemed to get worse, but still she refrained from scratching it.

  Since they had come to Bombay, she had strived to claim her place in the circles her mother had promised her. It had taken work to get this far—she had learned to cultivate and flatter, to aggrandize her family’s status and her husband’s position, and to gamble away a few hundred rupees she could ill afford to lose. Now that she was recognized in the kitty party circle as one of the women eligible to be a hostess, what was the next step? Start her own kitty party? Try to wrest control of this one? Mrs. Pathak looked at Mrs. Jaiswal displaying the gold-and-blue silk border of her sari to the women around and scratched her palm distractedly. She would never be as rich and powerful (or even as coordinated) as Mrs. Jaiswal, she could never become her, so what was the use?

  But this was no time for self-pity. There was one thing she could do, one thing she would do—and that was to make mincemeat of Mrs. Jaiswal’s “tocos” from last week. She went into the adjacent room to assemble her tray. After the disintegration of the samosas, she had gone straight to the steel bedroom cupboard, the one where she kept all the valuables she owned. Rummaging under the pile of her Benarasi saris, her fingers had closed around the metal cylinder. She had pulled it out and looked at it—“Kraft” it said, in letters so proudly red and yellow against the bright blue curve of the tin that they practically screamed “Imported,” practically screamed “American.” (In fact, weren’t red and blue the colors of the American flag?) She had been saving it ever since her cousin had brought it for her from his trip abroad—if ever there was a time to use it, it was now.