Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph

Author:Anjali Joseph [Anjali Joseph ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007360796
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

‘He was my brother, my only remaining sibling,’ Lakshmi said.

It was the first non-functional sentence she’d uttered in days; it had been two and a half weeks since Satish’s death. Mohan was in his pyjamas. He paused on the threshold of their room and waited for more, but it didn’t come.

‘I know,’ he said eventually. Still silence, and he resumed the journey into the bathroom. He passed a hand over his recently shaven head; the gesture had become a habit. The new hair, quite grizzled, was surprisingly soft.

As he brushed his teeth in the bathroom’s unsympathetic fluorescent light, he considered the cremation. It had been a depressing occasion. Not that these things were ever pleasant, but the continual, drizzling rain hadn’t helped. They had had to have it at an actual burning ground, at Banganga, because there were no slots at the electric crematorium. They hadn’t been many: the three of them, including Ashish; Vivek and his wife; and the young neighbours, who looked mildly embarrassed. Later, Lakshmi had decided to put a small notice in the afternoon paper and have an informal gathering after the eleventh day. About a dozen people appeared for this; they were elderly men and women, several of them Satish’s ex-students. He turned out to have been popular, in his way: he had been the kind of teacher, and certainly the kind of individual, whom few people forgot.

Mohan had found himself offering tea, squash, and snacks to the ageing bachelors and bachelorettes in his house. They in turn proffered their reminiscences.

‘He was so witty. Strict, but also fair,’ one woman said. She was plump, short and slight, with grey hair and spectacles; she wore a modestly cut salwar kameez. He imagined her, years earlier, slim, with long hair in a neat plait: she would have been one of the keen students. Perhaps she had had a special affection for Satish. There were others, too: a high court judge who’d studied under Satish (his driver and police escort waited downstairs next to a white Ambassador); a neighbour’s son whom he’d helped to prepare for the civil service exam; and an earnest, middle-aged woman who had come to Satish for help in writing letters to the municipality about the garden in front of her tenement – a nearby block of apartments was trying to turn it into a parking lot.

Mohan now gargled, spat, used the tongue cleaner and washed his face. He turned out the light and returned to the bedroom, where his wife was a silent mass under the sheet. He shook out his own top sheet, got into bed, and lay quietly for a while, thinking about Ashish. The boy had insisted on shaving his head too. ‘You really needn’t,’ Mohan had pointed out; after all, Satish had been no direct relation of his. ‘No, I’m coming with you,’ Ashish said. Perhaps it had been a sign of loyalty to his aunt. He’d been odd, a little down in the mouth lately, but that

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.