HE WAS STILL relatively young, probably only in his early fifties, and had looked after himself, judging by the body revealed by family and friends as they awkwardly stripped off his clothing. Hands reached out or came together in front of faces bowed in final farewell. A few broke down and had to be led away from the pyre. Many shed tears. The son came forward and touched his father’s toe with the tip of flame from the torch he had carried from home before handing the brand to a sombre-faced undertaker who, with precise movements, lit the fire that quickly engulfed the corpse until its shape was lost in mesmerising orange flames. The crack of bones echoed off the scorched iron roof of the open-sided structure as I watched the slow collapse of the pyre until all that remained were glowing embers to be later sifted for shards that would be dutifully wrapped and given to the next of kin.

     I have no idea who this man was, or what he did with his life, or even if the tears shed were real or contrived, but I couldn’t help wondering as one does at such events: Is that all there is? I was in the realm of smasan vairag, overcome by a sense of the futility of life, the struggle to succeed, the pursuit of elusive happiness, the greed, the jealousies; all that makes us who we are, and for what … a handful of ash and bone to be cast into sacred waters? It was with similar disillusion that Prince Siddhartha left his kingdom, his beautiful wife, his young son – denouncing the temptations of samsara – and crept out into the night, a vairagi in search of Nirvana, turning his back on the deceptive world of Maya.

     It was the familiar chant of death – ‘Ram bolo bhai Ram, Ram bolo bhai Ram’ – that had drawn me out of my thoughts and into the funeral procession to Sonapur and this cremation. Perhaps it was the teenage boy at the head of the procession that trailed the four men bearing the thathdi, probably the dead man’s grandson. He was carrying a flat round clay pot containing a burning piece of wood in the Hindu tradition. In an instant, the boy was me and the thathdi held my grandfather and it was the height of summer and the soles of my feet were being seared by the road’s sticky hot tar and I could only try to quicken my pace as the procession clipped at my ankles. Entering tree-shaded Sonapur, I followed the relatives and friends of the deceased to the open-air crematorium and watched as other bodies were reduced to the contents of a copper urn. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A fresh pile of wood was arranged on the pyre, including a small bundle of sandalwood. With one final chant of ‘Ram bolo bhai Ram’, the body was laid on the pyre and the corpse was rubbed with ghee to hasten combustion.

     After, I went to Chowpati Beach and sat on the sand, waving away the bhelpuriwallahs and kulfiwallahs offering ‘special’ deals for their delicacies. I looked at the horizon beyond the waves and thought about Rajen and what I had to do. ‘Haresh, don’t you dare!’ a voice inside me threatened, not for the first time. But I could think of no alternative. ‘Babuji?’ The kulfiwallah was in front of me, lowering from his head a heavy insulated ice box. ‘Kulfi babuji?’ He watched my eyes in anticipation. ‘Aare khalo! Have one, it’s really delicious!’ Rajen escaped from my mind. ‘Okay, give me a leaf.’ He took out a tin cone and rubbed it between his palms to release a frozen kulfi, which he slid with professional flair onto a dried leaf, cut the cone into bite-sized pieces, stuck a toothpick into one and presented the leaf to me with a bright white smile. I watched the sun go down, kulfi melting slowly in my mouth. I knew I was procrastinating, but it felt nice to let time simply slip by.

     There was no getting around the fact that the task of killing Rajen had fallen squarely upon my shoulders. It was something I had agreed, understood and accepted. I was having trouble crossing the gap between idea and action, but the inevitability of Rajen’s impending death had to be faced, sooner rather than later, and only two questions remained: the how and the when. Everything else had gone according to plan. It was just a matter of pulling the plug. And I had, if I pushed it, only two days left to bring about his demise. But why couldn’t I do it? The cancer was terminal. Dr Mehta said there was nothing else they could do and maintained that Rajen’s hold on life was but a thread. I could end his life that very night. Instead, I sat on the beach, savouring kulfi, and watched the cremation of someone I didn’t know, rather than that of someone I knew almost better than myself.

     I dreaded the idea and wished I had never started the thing at all.

 

*   *   *

 

At my desk, nervously and dangerously swinging in my chair, I felt like having a cigarette, though I don’t smoke, or something strong to drink. I kept seeing the room where my grandfather had lain, dead. Everyone, even my father, was crying. I stood a couple of feet from his body, paralysed. I looked at Dada’s face and then into the mirror across the room. I didn’t know if I really felt sad or just indifferent. Uncles clutched at my grandmother, who was banging her head against the wall, overwhelmed with grief. Elaxi would probably do the same when Rajen died. If it weren’t for their daughter Malini, she’d probably try to kill herself.

     A cloud of sadness swept over me, a sadness I hadn’t experienced with Dada. It was agonising. My hands felt icy cold. I threw my pen across the desk and fled to the relative warmth of the living room.

 

*   *   *

 

I don’t remember when I fell asleep; I must have finally exhausted myself with my tossing and turning, but I seem to recall the clatter of the milkmen as they made their rounds before dawn. Perhaps I managed a couple of hours before lurching awake with the realisation that I was late. After a quick shower and an even quicker breakfast, I cut through the crowds heading towards the Vaishnav temple for the late morning service, then down the flower lane dotted with freshly picked and bound bouquets, some still glistening with dew; the air was heavy with the fragrance of mogra. Along another lane housewives haggled with the fruit and vegetable vendors over a couple of paisa; the usually pleasant bells of the nearby Shiva temple tolled harshly; the woman who lived on the pavement with her two kids and her man was already making tea as they washed and spat and gargled in the street.

     Taxis, scooters and private cars honked incessantly. Two sweat-soaked coolies pulled a handcart loaded with heavy gunnysacks stuffed with wheat grain. The jewellery shops were still shuttered, but other stores were in various stages of opening, rolling up their metal shutters and spreading out displays of colourful bangles, delicate saris displayed in their windows. A boy sprinkled water outside the entrance to the Surti Hotel to cool the pavement, which was beginning to shimmer under the climbing sun. Jayantbhai, the owner of the corner newsstand, had already sold hundreds of copies of the daily newspapers as he cracked open another bundle. I saw the A4 bus, which goes close to my office, zooming towards the stop, but I didn’t feel like running and I definitely didn’t feel like riding a bus crowded to bursting with morning commuters. I needed to be alone, to think. I gave up my race against time and kept walking.

 

*   *   *

 

My Uncle Jaisukh has a small publishing company. I work with him. He was on holiday in Delhi and the only other person in the office, Dhondu, was in the back room sorting and packing books for shipment. I looked at that morning’s mail and put it aside; there was nothing that couldn’t be left until tomorrow. When the phones rang, I told callers I was in the middle of something important and would call them back, and returned to idly flipping the pages of the morning’s Free Press Journal.

     ‘Excuse me? The door was open.’

     I looked up from the newspaper and a man and a woman were sitting down, uninvited, in the chairs directly opposite my desk.

     ‘Can I help you?’ I was confused, and a bit annoyed at their rude, familiar behaviour. I was sure I had never met the couple before in my life.

     ‘You’re Haresh Shah, aren’t you?’ the man inquired.

     ‘No … yes … I’m … I think you have me at a disadvantage.’

     ‘Don’t you recognise us?’ he said with unmistakable sarcasm.

     ‘No, I’m sorry. Your faces look somewhat familiar, but …’ I tried to smile apologetically, stifling my annoyance in case they were important clients of my uncle.

     ‘Did you hear that? “Somewhat familiar”.’

     ‘I’m not surprised he doesn’t recognise us,’ the woman said.

     ‘Well …’

     ‘Never mind,’ the man said curtly. ‘It’s not important. What is important is that, before you kill Rajen, I want to know what gives you the right?’ The words came in a rush of anger.

     ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I pushed my chair back, made to rise.

     ‘Sit! And take care. Do not forget there is a lady in the room. Besides, you don’t have to get upset. Just listen to me. I do not like being interrupted.’

     I sat.

     ‘You have no right whatsoever to play with Rajen’s fate. The way I understand it, you are going to kill him today. But I wanted to make you aware of the fact that if Rajen dies, then Haresh Shah will be committing murder, and I shouldn’t need to remind you that murder is a sin. It is also a crime.’

     ‘Murder? What does this have to do with murder? And who are you to come here and talk to me like this?’

     ‘I am Shailesh and this is Gita.’

     The names rang a faint bell somewhere in the recesses of my mind.

     ‘You don’t seem to remember us, but you know us from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan and the annual intercollegiate drama competition.’

     I was having a hard time making a connection.

     ‘Remember Seema?’

     ‘Seema?’

     ‘He doesn’t remember Seema,’ he said to Gita.

     ‘How can you forget her?’ Gita said and gave me a peculiar look, which I did my best to ignore. ‘She played the lead in Those Were The Days.’

     Something was coming back to me. ‘I still don’t know why you are here in my office!’

     ‘Well, I am Rajen’s closest friend, and if anyone knows him best, I do. How he thinks, what his values are, his world, his dreams – the way he walks, the way he talks. I know him better than he knows himself.
And you! How could it be that I apparently don’t know you nearly as well?’

     ‘To tell the truth, I still don’t understand what you are talking about.’

     ‘You may not want to admit it, but that’s your problem. I just wanted to warn you that should you choose to kill Rajen, you better be prepared to face the consequences.’ He paused for a moment, his eyes like daggers. ‘Come, Gita.’ And they left as abruptly as they had arrived.

     I stared at their backs through the clear glass of my swinging office door until their forms disappeared. Gita’s orange sari floated in the air, her swan-like neck arched as she tossed her long black braid over her shoulders. I thought I would probably like her under different circumstances. My impression of Shailelsh was that of a happy-go-lucky young man, but his words echoed in my ears long after he and Gita left.

     Confused and disoriented, I kicked my chair back and crossed the office to our display of new titles, taking down a copy of the latest Gulshan Nanda. I turned a few pages, but couldn’t connect with the words. I put it back and took down another and then another, but the words meant nothing to me.

     I felt like pacing, back and forth, hands clasped behind my back, head down. But ours is a small office; big enough for the three of us and the various publication displays, but not what one might call spacious. The newly lowered ceiling and the covered fluorescent lights make it a cosy place to work. The walls were freshly painted and the three windows, secured with metal bars to deter thieves, were open enough for a generous dose of unfiltered morning sunlight, which reflected off glass surfaces. I sat down again at my cluttered desk and imagined the room in its original aged state – rugged timber floors, high wooden ceilings, cracked walls, everywhere the patina of centuries of office clerks.

     It was almost lunch time. I didn’t feel like going home to eat, nor did I feel like sitting around the office on my own. Anyone might barge in.

     ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so,’ I called to Dhondu in the back room as I went out. It was cloudy and windy out, but still quite pleasant as I walked past first the Chetna and then the Khyber restaurants, deciding against both. I didn’t know if I could eat at all, but I had to try something. I turned right at the corner for my favourite south Indian restaurant and found a quiet  table. I ordered idli and masala dosa. The busboy brought water in a stainless steel cup and streaked the table with his dirty rag. I watched a boy across the room pouring boiling coffee in long arcing streams, back and forth through the air, catching the contents of the higher cup with another at his hip. It was a precarious manoeuvre; one slip and it would all come splashing to the floor. In that continuous stream, I saw Rajen’s fate flow between life and death.

     My food was put in front of me, but I wasn’t hungry. I swallowed some of the idli, poked at the masala dosa, took a sip of water and walked back to the office, but the morning’s visitors had so unsettled me that I couldn’t concentrate on work.

     The idea of having to kill Rajen was excruciatingly painful. I think I have a realistic outlook, though sometimes I can be such an emotional bastard! Still, I had to do it. Procrastination was only postponing the inevitable. It did nothing but exacerbate the pain.

 

*   *   *

 

Monsoon was in the air, which was hot, humid and stifling. The heat was making me nervous. I left the office a little earlier than usual and decided to take the long way home, cutting through the crowd at Flora Fountain and walking towards Churchgate Station, from where overflowing trains carry countless commuters to distant suburbs. At Maharshi Karve Marg, I turned, rather than continuing straight as I might have, and hopped onto an approaching double-decker bus. Twenty minutes later I was climbing the stairs to the upper level of Café Naaz on Malabar Hill by the side of Kamla Nehru Park. The café overlooks the Hanging Gardens and its terrace has a marvellous view of all Bombay. The ocean front and Queen’s Necklace curving along with the high-rises of Marine Drive is a vista as beautiful and breathtaking as it is peaceful, and I had no sensation of time until I felt dusk drift across the open terrace.

     As I twirled the plastic straw in my iced coffee, I noticed a handsome young man and a pretty young woman climbing up to the terrace. Naaz is quite popular with the affluent young. A public venue of utmost privacy, and an atmosphere quite conducive to nurturing matters of the heart. I expected them to take a vacant table in a discreet corner, but instead they crossed the terrace in my direction.

     ‘Mind if we join you, Mr Shah?’ the young man asked politely. He wore a pair of loose-fitting white pants and a silk kurta with a Nehru vest. The woman was stylishly dressed in a comfortable salwar kameez, unpretentious loose white pants and a dark-blue long top that touched her knees. The flower-print dupatta wrapped around her neck fluttered in the evening breeze.

     ‘I’m Manoj,’ he said, taking the seat across from me.

     ‘You must be Smita, then?’ I motioned towards the woman, who sat on my right. Not that I recognised her, but who else would be with Manoj?

     Unlike Shailesh, Manoj was quiet and rational. He and Smita almost put me at ease, but by their expressions I knew our conversation would not be convivial. They had sought me out with a plea for mercy, for Rajen, and especially for Elaxi – her suffering would be beyond words. I heard them out, for they were the most charming of couples, and for a moment my resolve weakened. But it was no use.

     ‘Let me think it over,’ I said, concluding our conversation. Manoj and Smita thanked me for the courtesy of listening and as I watched them go in the gathering evening, my dissembling, to them of all people, made me feel miserable. I really didn’t know what I should do. Ela and Rajen were closer to me than blood family, and I was going to destroy them both. I paid my bill and, waving off a taxi outside Café Naaz, made my descent on foot. Beyond the waves of the Arabian Sea, I could see the tears rolling down Smita’s face and the deep sadness in Manoj’s eyes.

 

*   *   *

 

Don’t ask me how I managed to end up walking the most notorious street in Bombay, known in equal measure by its three distinct names of Falkland Road, Golpitha and Kamatipura, but most commonly as Randi Bazaar – the market of whores, displaying their wares so blatantly and with gestures so vulgar there is nothing left for the imagination.

     At the foot of the Malabar Hill, I walked past Wilson College, opposite Chowpati Beach. Filling my lungs with fresh ocean air, I turned left on Sardar Patel Road, which at some point forks into two diagonal streets. I haven’t a clue what lead me to take the left fork instead of right, which ran directly past my home, but I found myself on a road less travelled by me and most denizens of Bombay. A cacophony of music blared from every little café and restaurant, kebab house and dhaba, as if my ears were but inches from a cymbal clash. I knew the street as a short cut to somewhere else, and usually from the interior of a car or taxi. Up close and on foot was an entirely other experience and the yellow glow of incandescent light bulbs turned otherwise drab human mannequins, sun-bleached and cracked dark skin barely disguised by cheap make-up and powder, into women.

     The perch outside every cage door on both sides of the street swarmed with closely huddled females in their crudest and most revealing rags.
My eyes lighted on one, probably sixteen years old, if that, in a midriff-baring blouse with pushed-up conical breasts and a skirt that flaunted more than it covered. She sensed my look before she saw me and extended a hand to pull me in, puckered her lips and thrust her crotch at my face – ‘Aa jao babuji, thodi maja kar lo’. I recoiled, spying through the gap of a quivering curtain made from a tattered sari that beyond the bars of the caged door was a small cramped bed. I pulled away as if stung by a scorpion and jumped backwards off the pavement. A car-horn blast broke the spell. I was in a cold sweat.

     It was only nine at night, but deep darkness had already enveloped the city, except here in the street of disgust and desire where lights blazed and qawwalis blasted from opposing restaurants, colliding in my ears, and traffic crawled through crowds worse than rush hour in the business district but far more dangerous as hands reached into pockets, slipped off watches, snipped at indiscreet golden chains from oblivious necks. My eyes began to see things that were invisible in daylight – narrow dark and dirty alleys that ran off the main street and each other like capillaries that feed off a major artery. Now I was scared. Here, in Golpitha, someone could kidnap me, rob me clean, even kill me and dump my body on a garbage heap in a back alley and no one would ever know what happened to me. A young Gujrati man, properly dressed and from a respectable middle-class family, does not walk these streets alone at night. Even if I escaped unscathed, if someone I knew saw me walking here I faced the kind of blackmail that could ruin my life and reputation. All around me women whistled, blew kisses and squeezed their thinly bloused breasts. One shouted, ‘Aadmi ho ke hijda?’ At that moment, I felt neither man nor impotent eunuch. Another lifted her skirt, exposing a thickly tufted triangle, and shot me a look that went beyond the definition of lewd. I wanted to run, as fast as possible, but was afraid of being mistaken for a thief and being chased down and beaten by a spontaneous mob that would scatter like pigeons at the approach of a police car or ambulance, leaving the officers to rescue whatever of me was left.

     I slowed my breathing. The street only stretched two blocks, I reasoned. I was already halfway to the end, where the residential area began. A further two blocks and I would be home. I kept walking, as fast as I could.

     Would this be the fate of Ela, driven here by a widow’s poverty and desperation? And Malini? Would she one day be cursing men and lifting her skirt? Surely not. They were a good family and their circle of friends would rally around them. Surely not. The very thought made me sick to my stomach. I reached the end of the fork and rejoined Khetwadi, the street I had missed, but didn’t dare slow down until the familiar sights of Kamal Talkies, and the corner café, the pasti shop where everyone brings their old magazines and newspapers for recycling and gets paid cash per pound. I smelled the familiar stench of the public lavatory and the huge garbage area next to it filled with rotting waste. The shops on the right side of the street were now closed and seemed deserted compared with the left, where street vendors had rolled in their flat trolleys equipped with gas burners and lanterns, all offering wonderful delicacies of the night, the best food in Bombay. Their clientele comes from the homes nearby, including ours. We go for midnight snacks and slabs of kulfi – a family favourite. Other customers include the overworked traders from the nearby Bombay Stock Exchange, which has a link to New York and brings out the night owls playing the world markets. They are always hungry and devour freshly cooked aloo chole and bhatura, potato cutlet, pattis, samosas and dozens of other things that tasted like heaven. I swallowed my hunger and kept going until I saw the gates of our compound and the lights burning in our first-floor flat. Street sleepers were already unrolling their bedding in front of the shuttered shops specialising in stainless steel; soon there would be just enough room in the middle of the street for pedestrians and cars to pass.

     Once inside the flat, I leaned back against the locked door behind me, exhausted. I needed to wash and change, and my mother had prepared an evening meal for me, which I ate without tasting to quiet my hunger. I felt tired, but it was too early to sleep. I went to my room and sat at my desk. There was a new stack of mail, which I ignored, a book I’d been reading, opened face-down, which I pushed aside. There were piles of paper, typewritten pages covered in scrawls, my writing pad vivid with blue ink. This too I ignored. I tried to make sense of the day, make sense of my encounters with Shailesh and Gita and Manoj and Smita, make sense of the turmoil into which I had been plunged. It is sad to die, but it happens all the time, everywhere and to everyone. The end comes for us all. For Rajen, that end was sooner rather than later, and for them to try to sway me from my path was both unfair and unrealistic. There was no other way. I could see it. Why couldn’t they?

     Weariness settled upon me from too little sleep and I was struggling to keep my eyes open, to keep my thoughts clear, but they began to wander and I knew that if I didn’t surrender to sleep, sleep would take me anyway. I had one day left, which should be time enough. I made for the bed. The morning would resolve everything, I thought, my head dropping onto a pillow, and let the quiet and stillness and peace take me.

 

*   *   *

 

It was the first good sleep I had had for a long time, a dreamless nothing some might call the sleep of the dead that left me feeling recharged and full of purpose. At the office, I went through the mail collecting on my desk, sorting it into piles, handing to Dhondu the ones concerning orders and shipments and bills, putting on my uncle’s desk those specifically for him, stacking those in need of my attention, and dropping the rest, by far the bulk of it, in the bin. I was a model of efficiency, and rewarded myself by ordering a coffee from the corner south Indian restaurant. I was in my chair, reading the Free Press Journal, when I saw a young man and an elderly gentleman standing hesitantly at the door, as if they were not sure they had found the correct office.

     ‘Please, please come in,’ I said, but my encounters the previous day put me on guard.

     ‘My name is Naresh and …’ the young man began.

     ‘… and this is Sohanlal Sheth,’ I said, finishing his introduction.

     ‘I am not Sheth today,’ the old man said. ‘I am just a beggar.’ His eyes were already moist.

     ‘Please don’t embarrass me, vadil.’ I addressed him with the respect one accords the elderly in a family.

     ‘I must speak with you,’ he said. Naresh helped him to a chair opposite my desk and took the other. ‘Ela is the only child that I have. Her mother left her and this world when Ela was barely five. Ever since, I have been her mother as well as her father. I have raised her with a mother’s heart. All her life, her happiness has been mine and her sorrow too. I don’t think I can bear to see her unhappy ever again. Please have mercy on her.’

     Shohanlal looked at me with the pleading eyes of a father. ‘I beg of you, her chudi and chandlo, I’m a falling leaf, I don’t have too many days left on this earth, but if I were to see Ela become a widow … my soul will never be able to rest in peace, never. If someone must die, kill me. Why does it have to be Rajen?’ His voice broke, his eyes overflowed. Naresh was crying too. I felt pity for the old man’s plaint for his daughter’s colourful glass bangles and the red bindi on her forehead, the auspicious symbols of the presence of a Hindu woman’s husband.

     ‘Sohanlal Sheth … Naresh …’ Silence lingered. ‘I understand your feelings. My heart too aches at the thought of Rajen’s death. But you must understand. I am helpless. I am a realist. I am bound by reality.’

     Quite out of character, the always calm Naresh exploded. ‘Reality? Reality! For God’s sake, can’t you forget reality for just one moment?’

     I looked into the face of a man in pain.

 

*   *   *

 

I loved Seema.

     My heart throbbed for her in a thousand dreams. My soul craved her. To have held Seema in my arms, my fingers brushing her face, my lips touching the petals that were hers, my eyes looking deep into her being. I was a student then and she was unattainable, to me and everyone else, except her fiancé, who was studying chemical engineering at Sayajirao University in Baroda. They had only met a few times, but she loved him and their wedding date was set. She was studying economics at Jaihind College, as was I, and we had become as close as friends can be. The more I got to know her, the more I adored her, the more I fell in love with her. We spent a lot of time together, working in such close proximity it was extremely difficult sometimes to control my emotions, but she was engaged to be married and that was all there was to it. How do you convince your heart of something as rational as that? I never confessed my true feelings.

     I chose to ignore the wedding. I could do nothing about her getting married, but I could not bear to be witness to a ceremony that bound Seema to another man forever. They said she looked radiant as the Gujarat Mail slowly pulled out of Bombay Central Station, taking her to a new life.

     Two years went by. Seema was in Bombay with her husband. He had been diagnosed with leukaemia and was under the watchful and intensive care of their family doctor and two specialists.

     ‘He can’t have too many days left,’ I said to myself, and flushed with shame at my selfishness.

     Before long, black saris were hanging from the clothes line on the huge balcony at the front of her parents’ home; they could be seen from half a block away and they told me the story. I knew in my heart I had killed him with my words. The real tragedy was that I knew she would never be mine.

 

*   *   *

 

At the very end of Nariman Point I sat on an isolated rock just a few feet from the splashing waves. I was so confused. Nothing made sense anymore. The night hadn’t even begun, but I felt I was already in a nightmare. Why won’t they leave me alone? It’s my decision, not theirs. ‘You have no right to kill Rajen.’ ‘Don’t you dare.’ Even the waves said so, over and over, as they assailed the rocks at my feet.

     I looked at the sea in search of a clue among the flotsam. Useless. I headed back to the shore and grabbed a taxi, wanting only to get it over with. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

 

*   *   *

 

‘Ela?’

     I stumbled at the doorway of my room.

     It was just a shadow at my desk.

     But why was the shadow reading my pages in the dark? And why the look of growing dejection? I didn’t have to turn on the light to know it was Ela. Of them all, I think I loved her most. More than I loved Rajen. More than I loved myself. Ela was everything that I ever would have liked to find in a woman. Brave, feminine, discreet, friendly, unique and always smiling. Like Seema. But tonight her face was clouded with suffering, her eyes shadowed with sorrow. I reached to touch a reassuring hand to her shoulder.

     She turned and looked at me, an instant without end, then collapsed into the chair, her face buried in her hands. She said nothing. Raising her eyes, she looked into mine. She had no need for words.

 

*   *   *

 

Alone.

     ‘Do you really have to kill Rajen?’

     There was no one talking but me this time.

     ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do. Life is not made up of happy endings. This is not the movies. Reality is not like that. Look what happened to Seema?’

     I walked over to the window and rested my elbows on the sill. It had started raining. The sky was pitch-black. There was lightning, a growling thunder. I thought about Ela’s pensive face. So sad and yet so dreamlike and beautiful I was thrown into reverie – a cosy little cottage, far away, somewhere on the shore of a lake, the dim illumination of candles. I am kissing her forehead and brushing my lips over her eyelids. My thumb gently sliding over her lips. My whole being craving every atom of her carnality.

     ‘I love you, Ela. I love you Seema. I love you, I really do …’

     The window rattled to a too close crack of thunder and a flash of lightning threw everything in the room into sharp relief.

     Alone.

     ‘You’re jealous, Haresh,’ I said. ‘Admit it. You’re in love with Ela. Rajen doesn’t have to die. But you want him to. You want Ela all to yourself. You can’t have Seema, so you want Ela. But guess what? Ela will never be with you and all you’ll be doing is condemning her too.’

     ‘Nooo!’ I screamed. ‘That’s a lie. I will not let that happen.’

     The storm vanished as abruptly as it had come. Monsoon. Long neglected drains struggled to clear the streets below of pond-sized puddles as torrents streaming from the rooftops only fed them more. The sky cleared, but the sun was already beginning to fade with the day.

     ‘Yes,’ I said, my forehead marking the window pane. ‘Yes, it’s true. I’m in love with Ela. I’m jealous.’

     I dropped into the chair at my desk and rested my head in the circle of my arms, vaguely aware of the flickering shadows around me, the sun’s last rays dancing through raindrops that clung to my window.

     Alone.

 

*   *   *

 

Asher looks disappointed. More than disappointed. The phrase ‘silence speaks volumes’ would be appropriate here.

     ‘You’ve gone soft,’ he finally pronounces.

     Normally sympathetic, his look, often difficult to comprehend because of the fish-eye magnification of his Gandhi frame spectacles, communicates not only his disappointment but carries more than a hint of intimidation.

     I try to follow his eyes, searching for the right response.

     ‘I just couldn’t.’

     ‘You couldn’t what?’

     ‘Kill Rajen.’

     ‘And why not? You promised. We agreed.’

     ‘Because … because …’

     And I begin to tell him what happened, just as it happened. He knows them all, of course, almost as well as I do myself, so there is no need to explain who they are. I tell him about Seema and how I loved her and how her husband’s death didn’t change anything. I even tell him about my accidental walk through Randi Bazaar and all that I felt. I don’t dare look at him, but I can feel Asher’s gaze burning into my skin.

     ‘Is that all?’

     ‘Yes … No … Okay … I am desperately in love with Ela. I just couldn’t stand to see her so unhappy. She is my heart and soul. I thought that by killing Rajen I could have her for myself, but the reality is …’

     ‘… that you can’t,’ says Asher.

     I look at him, shaking my head, not understanding. ‘How do you mean?’

     ‘Because she loves Rajen and no one else. She’s never loved you and never will. To you, she is the reincarnation of Seema. But you just can’t make someone love you. Even if Rajen were dead. Shailesh and Gita tried to tell you that, but you didn’t remember how close they were to Rajen because it was just a passing line from long ago. And when even Manoj and Smita, such a lovely couple – they really are magic together, always my favourites – made it clear how selfish you were being … Haresh, you know they always speak from the heart and, though they are blessed with so much, you never thought them selfish.’

     I always listen to Asher when it comes to criticism because he is unerringly right. ‘That’s precisely why,’ I say quietly.

     ‘Why what?’

     ‘Why I couldn’t kill Rajen. He and Ela deserve to live happily ever after.’

     ‘And you?’

     ‘I guess I’ll continue to love her. After all, aren’t all true loves unrequited?’

     Asher is silent. He makes a steeple of his long fingers and looks at me from across his desk.

     ‘I must say, the last-minute reprieve, a return to life at the stroke of a pen, “spontaneous remission”. Very clever, and entirely plausible. Instant reincarnation. You must feel like almighty Vishnu. The all-too-powerful preserver of life.

     ‘And Ela’s tears as she holds his hands amid the beeping machines speaks as much of your love for her as her love for him.’

     The sardonic note in his voice was unmistakable. ‘Happy endings belong in Bollywood. I deal in realism, and the real world is brutal and mean and full of suffering.’ Asher considers the pages in front of him. ‘“Elaxi – A novel about love”. You don’t really think I would publish this mush, do you?’