The Age of Shiva (47 page)

Only later, while scanning through the afternoon
Midday
for similar news items, did I realize what Sandhya meant. I had accepted what I was going to do, I had taken the next step. These articles that I would have squeamishly avoided before—wasn't I already trying to find the best way to do away with myself? I got the nail scissors from the cupboard to cut out a piece on a poisoning death, then sat down in front of the stack of old newspapers to scan through them as well.

By the end of the day, I had a small sheaf of clippings about suicides and suicide attempts. Most people used a handful of popular methods, each one strongly linked with a particular circumstance. Students who failed their exams made a statement by hanging themselves. Burning seemed to be the method of choice for brides harassed by their mothers-in-law, though swallowing Tik-20 was a popular alternative. Financial problems were solved by throwing oneself under cars or trains, while both jumping from heights and drowning generally indicated an unsuccessful love affair.

None of these methods seemed appropriate for me—not so much because of the mechanics of the death itself, but due to the danger of being branded by the associated motive. Although I felt bad for the people in the accounts I had clipped, their reasons were a lot more transparent than mine, their problems more mundane. It would not be a simple case of hurt or disappointment or despondency in my case—I planned to relinquish my life simply because it was something I'd outlived. I wanted this to be understood after I left, for people to realize the integrity of my reasons, their visionary aspect.

For a while, I wondered if I could simply will myself to die. Go to bed one night under a directive to pass away in my sleep. But my brain never obeyed. No matter how strong my resolve, no matter how forceful my command, I always woke up again.

I pondered other methods, ones not as heavily subscribed. Taking sleeping pills seemed very peaceful, but I didn't know how many I would need and where to find a chemist who would oblige. A bullet through the head was instantaneous, but guns in Bombay were even harder to procure than sleeping pills. I had heard of more exotic techniques, like standing with one's feet in water and electrocuting oneself, but I was unfamiliar with the exact modus operandi.

It was an old black-and-white Hollywood movie I had watched once on TV that came to my aid. I remembered a scene of the heroine (who had it been? not Garbo, not Bette Davis…) stepping into the bathtub and slitting her wrists. She had lain back and closed her eyes, the water had turned dark and turbid, there seemed nothing to it. True, I didn't own a bathtub—perhaps I could use a pail to improvise. The fact that almost nobody else in Bombay had a tub either ensured that this method would indeed be unique.

In the bathroom stood the same plastic pails between which you had enjoyed being sealed in your childhood bucket games. The yellow one had lost its handle and the red one had a cracked rim. It seemed terribly improper to use them now for the purpose I had in mind, so I went to Grant Road and bought a shiny new pail. Blue, I guessed, would be the most appropriate color for suicide, but they only had the size I wanted in green.

I decided to do it in a week and a half. Then, recalling Sandhya's exhortation to hurry, I moved it to the coming Sunday instead. I told the newspaperwalla to suspend delivery after the weekend, and stopped the ganga from coming for a few days as well. I went to Nana Chowk to pay my phone bill and made out instructions for you on how to cash the signed checks I left.

It was already Thursday, so I began composing my farewells. I wrote a long letter to Sharmila, in which I explained the fine points of my decision and asked her to treat you as her own son after I was gone. I glued shut the envelope, then unsealed it to use the good parts in the letter for Zaida as well. I tried to put down something comforting for Biji, but gave up after several wrenching attempts. There was a short note for Hema, and something for Roopa that I wrote but tore up, listing all the ways in which I had been wronged at her hands.

To be a parent is to be guilty
. For you, I started with this line from Paji's farewell.

I AWOKE AT 7 A.M.
on Sunday. I had debated whether to try and do something special with Zaida the night before, or make one of my rare calls to your hostel. But I decided not to, in keeping with Sandhya's advice about slipping quietly away. I tried to take interest in the headlines about Indira's rally at Chowpatty the evening before, about the HRM demonstration against her which had been broken up with lathis and tear gas. But I felt too detached to read. It occurred to me that I should have had the paper stopped on Saturday itself.

As I ate my omelet with toast, I realized that this would be my last egg. The thought did not distress me. Food, I realized, had never played so important a part in my life—unlike with my father, for instance, who had always considered himself a gourmet. Dev had been very interested in cuisine as well—how curious to find an interest shared by him and Paji.

I soaped my pubic area thoroughly while bathing—I didn't want there to be any odor if the morgue people examined me. I trimmed the nails both on my fingers and toes, and plucked some stray hairs on my chin. I thought about dressing in a sari, but decided it was too formal, settling on my blue salwar kameez instead. On an impulse, I put on a full set of jewelry as well—the diamond earrings and necklace and gold bangles Mataji had given me just before we'd come to Bombay. Then I took all the pieces off and laid them aside—I didn't want my blood to smudge them.

I had imagined I would perform the act in the drawing room, but the oversized bucket I had bought proved to be too heavy to move when full. So I spread a towel on the floor of the bathroom and set the kitchen stool on top. I unlocked the front door—I had told Zaida I would need some help emptying my cupboards, that she should come in without knocking, around noon. I felt guilty about choosing her to be the one to discover me, but I hadn't been able to think of anyone else. Before returning to the bathroom, I fanned out all the farewells I had written on the floor, with the one addressed to her on top.

I sat down on the stool and stared into the bucket. Tiny ripples lapped at the sides. In the center, I could see my wavering reflection, and behind my head, the bulb in the ceiling fixture. I was surprised at how calm I felt, as if my mind had been drained clean of emotion. I had entered this state at least a day ago, going through all the preparations for my death with single-minded automation. Perhaps all suicides felt this detachment, one spontaneously initiated by the brain to complete the task. It would not be wise to tarry—there could be a hidden reservoir of misgivings somewhere, waiting to be breached. I bared my wrist over the bucket and picked up the kitchen knife.

How exactly had it been done in the movie? Did one hold the wrist underwater, as if trimming the stems of a bouquet of flowers? And what about the blood—should I empty out the bucket halfway to make room for the liquid to come? I didn't quite understand the purpose of the water anyway. Did it serve only an aesthetic function—the clouds of blood billowing into it like in the film? Or was it something necessary—the body sucking it in through the cuts to replace the fluid lost from the veins?

The knife turned out to be a bigger stumbling block. I had sliced meat and skinned fish with this blade—it seemed profane now to perform such a momentous task with it. The paring knife was just as defiled, and the other implements rattling around in the counter drawer were much too blunt. I could, of course, use a razor blade—didn't they recommend that for wrists, in any case? I got up to retrieve the box of Dev's shaving things, the one that you had squirreled away. Only a single blade remained in the box, the one in the razor itself. I realized I couldn't use it either—this was the same blade with which, all those Divalis ago, Arya had shaved.

Then I remembered you had taken the extra blades and put them with your electronics kit, to splice wires with. The kit was now with you in Sanawar, but in your cupboard, I found the packet of the remaining unused blades. I slid the top one out.
Wilkinson
the name read in silver against the black paper wrapping, with the logo of two crossed swords underneath.

About to put back the things I had taken out of the cupboard, I saw the handkerchiefs lying in a neat stack at the rear of the shelf. I had never managed to get them to you. Folded right next to them were more of your clothes—two T-shirts you had left behind, the blue trousers you didn't like, a pajama top that had never fit. I was tempted to put them to my face and take a deep inhalation to see if I could detect your scent. But I restrained myself—I had a bucket waiting for me, a task to fulfill.

I closed the doors of the cupboard, but it was too late. I felt suddenly overcome by a deep sense of misgiving—not about what I was doing, but
where
I was doing it. Killing myself in the home where you grew up, in the same flat that Paji had just willed to you. How would you ever be able to spend a night here again? Would you ever overcome the image of me lying dead on the floor, would buckets of blood spatter the bathroom walls in your nightmares?

I started feeling very claustrophobic. I couldn't do it, at least not here—what I needed at this instant was fresh air. Putting the blade back in the cupboard and leaving the bucket unbloodied in the bathroom, I went down the stairs.

As always, my wanderings took me to Chowpatty. It was early, so there were no crowds yet, even though it was a weekend. The fruit and kulfi stalls were all shuttered, the chaat stands neatly bundled in canvas and rope. I walked across the beach between the cages protecting the tender new tree saplings planted in the sand.

An aerial platform made of planks and bamboo poles was being dismantled at the end near Wilson College. Indira Gandhi must have spoken here the previous evening—a giant wooden cutout of her image from the shoulders up rose from the stage. I noticed that she had resized since the Emergency, when she would appear in versions two and three times as large. But she hadn't aged in the painting—she still had the same spirited smile, the same youthful determination in her eyes. Above her forehead was the trademark shock of white, running like a lightning bolt through her hair.

I walked closer to the stage, expecting to be stopped, but nobody took any notice of me. The workers all clustered around Indira, busy attaching ropes to her periphery. I noticed they had already lowered some of the smaller images to the sand. Standing against the bamboo poles was a life-sized figure of Sanjay, the son she had been grooming to be her successor, the one who had perished a year ago in a daredevil aeroplane stunt. I remembered people heaving a sigh of relief at his death, whispering about how lucky the country had been to escape a rule under his tyranny. There had been years of rumors about how he had dominated his mother, how unnaturally intense was their relationship, how she was so mesmerized by him that she acceded, even before the Emergency, to the most reckless of his whims. I imagined the sight of his body, all mangled and lifeless when she got to the scene of the plane crash. What had gone through her mind during the desperate ambulance ride to the hospital—mustn't she have known he was already dead? They had televised the funeral procession as it had wound the next day through the blazing Delhi streets. She had sat in the open truck next to her son's sewn-up body, with only sunglasses to distance the nation from her grief.

How had she gone on? How had she managed to reassemble all the shards of her soul and continue with the prime ministership—the cycle of interviews and meaningless speeches, the touring of hospitals and factories that mattered even less than before? It wasn't as if her son had simply gone away like you—she had watched a burning pyre consume his body. I could imagine Paji holding up her example once more—an unachievable standard even in the management of adversity.

The workers began lowering their charge from the stage. Slowly Indira came down, like a goddess descending to earth—the white edge of her sari, the neck unadorned by jewelry, the green flecking her pupils to give her a visionary's gaze. A shudder rippled across her as her base came to rest on the ground—she tilted slightly against the poles behind. I gazed up at her—the top of my head only came up to her chin. She seemed less vulnerable now—she had transformed herself from bereaved mother into invincible leader on the journey down.

Now that Indira was earthborne, I wondered which leader would be the next to descend. Perhaps Nehru, swinging to and fro, his face nodding towards the water, his feet treading air. Or my old friend Gandhiji, twirling around to reveal the plywood on which he was painted, alighting on the sand before me as nimbly as a cat. But the workers were already lowering the cloth banners—there was nobody else hovering on the stage.
I will show you the way
, Indira seemed to say.
There's no reason to deal with anyone but me
. Her gaze was steady, both her chin and her nose pointing towards the sea.

What difference did it make if she had subsumed everyone else? What difference did it make, who came to power and who went? For an instant I imagined all the leaders of the past, together with the ones yet to come from the decades stretching ahead. They could replace Indira's image, any one of them, and I wouldn't care. History had ceased to count, as had the future—my bond with you was all that mattered in the minutes I had left.

I made my way over the sand, until it started turning damp between my toes. It was still too early for the hordes of children that would swarm along the shore in the evening. There was a group of pilgrims offering coconuts to the sea towards the Walkeshwar side, but otherwise the beach was almost deserted.