Chapter Twenty One

The monsoon had just begun. Men and women gathered outside malls and on streets to soak in the blessings of the shooting rains and temples to sing prayers of gratitude. It was the end of a scorching season and a time for rejoicing. Children splashed in their yards and threw water balloons off roof terraces. Gutters overflowed and train stations flooded and food went rotten but jade and gold peacocks danced. Bu was with Mangal and nothing mattered, not their names, the family that they had loved or even their own bodies that they were leaving behind. Together they looked over Tardeo, the oily dishes served on plastic plates in the Rosewood Hotel and HajI Ali, floating on Arabian waters like a white toy. At Marine Drive they saw the sea rising, trying to catch the sky. They were free, peace lapped all around them and pain had gone.

Seven Years Later

Police officer Ajit Yadav is no longer in Mumbai, he was transferred to Bihar, a part of India known for its lack of rich people, for incompetent police behaviour. Just after Gopal’s death, he was sitting at his desk and greasing his hair with coconut oil. He took out his service revolver and pointed it American cop show style while gazing at his reflection in his mirror. His slippery fingers set off the trigger and he accidentally shot himself in the left foot.

The Mumbai police never investigated the death of Mangal Avasthi. Mr Mudhvani’s name in connection with the murder never appeared in any police file at the station opposite Bhatia Hospital, or at any other police station in India. The Mudhvanis continue to live on the fifth floor and no ghosts only gossip from the rest of the Maya building follows them. Kalpana Mudhvani is about to be married to a wealthy land owner in Delhi, but her fiancé has been regularly receiving text messages warning him that he is about to marry into the family of a murderer. Kalpana is referred to as the ‘spinster upstairs’ even though she is only twenty-two. She often visits the Sharma flat in the middle of a nightmare. She sees herself standing in the living room, waiting for her father to finish wiping his red stained hands and hears herself saying, ‘I won’t tell anyone Papa, I promise.’ Running her hands through her hair, she loses one of her hairgrips.

Gopal will never come back to India. Currently he is the daughter of a French Judge. Her parents are not able to understand why their young daughter insists on keeping an antique object on a specially made altar opposite her bed - a Remington Noiseless Eight, Portable.

Mr Khosler got a handsome loan from the Sharmas. He is back in his old flat and at his old job. His wife’s photo has a new frame. He has made up with his old friend, Dutta.

Bu was not able to talk for five months. She had lain still and silent almost like Mangal had been when she first saw him in Vivek’s bedroom but she was not dead. Her dreams still carry Mangal in them, now he is smiling, kicking a football around Vivek’s bed and putting his lips up to the TV screen and kissing himself. Every Saturday afternoon Mrs Sharma prepares a Tiffin box for two that Bu carries in her cloth bag to Vivek’s office. She eats with Vivek and they talk about their lives and about the passing dead that only Bu can see. Bu often tells him that she knows they will end up living together in a leafy suburb in New York with room for two little girls and a golden Labrador named Mangal, but Vivek does not believe her.

The End