The Death of Vishnu

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—”
    “You liar. Didn’t we pay half of that useless ambulancewalla your husband insisted be called? More than a hundred rupees we paid for that, and for what, I ask?”
    The inspector held up his hand. “Do either of you know who his next of kin might be?”
    “Maybe the ganga does. She’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
    “Then tell her she’s to come to the police station. Any other information you can give me?” the inspector asked.
    No one said anything, so he examined the notes in his book. “There’s a lot of discrepancy here with what Mr. Jalal says,” he said, looking up thoughtfully. “Which could become quite important,” he paused and eyed everyone in turn, “in the event his wife dies.”
    He shut his notebook with a snap, as if he had just trapped an insect between its covers. “Well, your statements have all been recorded—I’ll have them typed and ready to sign by tomorrow.” He put an elastic band around the notebook. “Of course, we’ll locate the son and see if he has any more relevant information.” He slid the notebook into his shirt pocket. “Now if there’s nothing else—”
    “Wait,” Kavita said, “I have something to add. About Vishnu.” This was it. The Sad Scene. It was her chance to prove herself. She had to produce a tear, it was the least she could do for poor Vishnu. “When I was little,” she said, trying to think of the games they used to play.
    Her mother recovered from her look of alarm, and bulged her eyes warningly. Kavita ignored her.
    “When I was little,” she tried again, and the inspector put his pencil to his lips and regarded her gravely. Why was it so hard to conjure up those images of firecrackers, of phuljadis?
    “When I was little,” she began a third time, and this time, she felt it. The moisture welling up in the corner of her eye. Growing, coalescing, trembling—and then, when her lashes could support it no more, rolling. Rolling from the cup of her eyelid, rolling over the rise of her cheek, rolling across the lush sweep of her face, like condensation tracing down the skin of an apple, like a rivulet of morning dew. Each drop radiant with the glow of her youth, each tear a pearl around a grain of her sorrow.
    Kavita raised her face to her mother, she raised it to Mrs. Pathak, to the inspector; and as the sun shone in over the landing, she felt its energy glistening in her cheeks, its warmth caressing her face.

C HAPTER S IXTEEN
    A FTER THE LIGHT comes darkness. Someone is playing a flute. It is so sweet, it makes Vishnu want to cry. He follows the strands of sound,