For nearly two years after Dr Malhotra had pronounced the dreaded verdict, Mohan led a relatively healthy and outwardly normal life. He eschewed sex. It was difficult at first, but gradually he learnt to not let it torture him; he crowded his waking hours with work and harmless socializing with his old friends and at night he slept soundly, often after having taken a sleeping pill, he followed with great interest and greater hope the progress of doctors all over the world as they struggled to find a cure for AIDS. He was careful about his diet, exercised regularly and consulted Dr Malhotra constantly about treatments and medication.

Then, in October that year, the season changed, he caught a chill. It turned into a virulent cold. He could not shake it off. When Dr Malhotra examined him, he detected symptoms of TB in his lungs. He passed the death sentence on Mohan as gently as he could. ‘I’m afraid you have AIDS. I can control its onset with your help but I can’t cure it.’

Mohan tried to take the verdict manfully. For the next week he recited the Gayatri mantra from sunrise to sunset. He started reading the Bhagavad Gita. He had his father’s copy, which he had found at the ashram in Haridwar. Much of what he read in it made sense to him, but the passages on death confused him. ‘There is no death,’ Lord Krishna said. ‘The eternal in man cannot die; it is only a passing from one form to another. Just as a person casts off worn out clothes and dons new ones, so man when he sheds his mortal coil is reborn in some other form.’ The Lord was right in saying, ‘For one that is born, death is certain,’ but there was no proof that Mohan knew of to support Krishna saying, ‘For one who dies, birth is certain.’ Mohan knew it was an attractive idea for a dying man. But he did not understand it. He would soon die, but that he would soon be reborn he could not accept.

Mohan gave up taking sleeping pills and stored them for future use. If sleep did not come to him he recited the Gayatri mantra over and over again till he dozed off. One night he was shaken by a violent bout of coughing. The phlegm was choking him. He went to the bathroom and spat it into the basin. His phlegm was full of blood. That decided his fate. He went back to bed and lined thirty sleeping pills on his bedside table. For a moment he thought about the implications of his suicide. What would people say? What would they think? He didn’t care, he thought, as long as they didn’t connect his death with AIDS. And they could not, he decided, for only Dr Malhotra knew, and he wouldn’t talk. He thought about his children. What would they make of it all? But perhaps they would be better off without him. Besides, hadn’t he ceased to matter to them already? The image of his father, alone and content by the Ganga in Haridwar came to his mind, and he clung to it as a deep sadness overwhelmed him and tears slid down his face.

Then he resolutely composed himself and took the first Calmpose; as he gulped it down with a sip of water, he recited the Gayatri mantra. He did the same with the second, and the third, till the last: thirty Gayatri mantras with thirty pills. Then he put his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.