Read The Death of Vishnu for Free Online

descends without phuljadis. Vishnu notices she is wearing different clothes now. He notices her body is different too, it is fuller, with an allure he has not suspected before. He notices many things about her that year. “Kavita,” he thinks, as she negotiates the stairs in high heels, trailing a group of laughing friends, their perfume sweet in the landing air. “Kavita,” he wants to say aloud, as she passes by, her eyes in a dream, her lips in a faraway smile. “Kavita,” he wants to say, and reach out his hand and touch, as she glides by on an invisible plane, the edge of her sari undulating like a wave behind her.
    He says it one day, “Kavita,” and doesn’t realize he has uttered it aloud. She stops, as surely as if he has physically intercepted her. She stares at him uncertainly. A smile plays at her lips, and Vishnu sees the mischief seep into her eyes.
    “Kavita memsahib !” she says, and looks at him daringly, to see if he will contradict her. Her hands are on her hips, and Vishnu can see the skin of her midriff exposed between her blouse and petticoat.
    Vishnu looks into her face, past the defiance, and is struck by her vulnerability. His need to touch her has never been stronger. “Kavita memsahib,” he whispers, and folds his straying hands together.
    Delight springs to her eyes. She turns from him to hide her smile. “Salaam, memsahib!” Vishnu salutes, as Kavita raises her head, tosses her hair, and begins to ascend the stairs triumphantly.

    T HE FIREWORKS FADE from the night. In their place are hundreds of bulbs, wrapped in squares of colored cellophane. They light up the sky in bursts of red and blue and purple.
    He stands with Padmini at the entrance to the fair. It is two months since the first time he has been to see her. He cannot believe she has come with him. How has he persuaded her to leave her room?
    “I love melas!” she says, as they enter the city of stalls made of cloth and rope and bamboo. The lights blink on and off all around, the loudspeakers are blaring an old Shamshaad Begum song. Ahead rises the giant wheel, lifting laughing fairgoers into the sky.
    “Look! Carrots!” Padmini says, pulling Vishnu toward a gunnysack stall. A man sits behind a mound of vegetable scraps. He is inserting carrots into one end of a shiny tube and they are emerging in an unbroken spiral at the other end. “And potatoes! Look! Look!” The potatoes have been forced through a slicing machine, a stack of ridged ovals lies spread out before the man.
    “Come right up, memsahib, see what the wonders of science can do for you. Every husband should buy one of these for his wife, yes, you too, sir.” He points at Vishnu with the implement. “Make your shrimati happy!”
    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