The Illicit Happiness of Other People

7. The Folly of Two

THOMA HAS TRIED EVERYTHING to diminish Mythili in his mind. He has searched her face for the hint of a moustache, he has imagined her naked and laughed at her shame, he has imagined her on the commode though he does not really believe she would ever do anything as cheap as that. But all his methods have failed and he now accepts that he must quietly suffer his adoration.

‘Do you know about the sun and the moon?’ he asks to show her his range of interests. They are in her room, she sitting with her legs folded on her bed, and he sitting on a plastic chair facing her.

‘What about the sun and the moon?’

‘The sun is a thousand times larger than the moon.’

‘So?’

‘But they are positioned in space in such a way that from Earth they appear to be the same size in the sky.’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘Unni told me that.’

‘So what if they are the same size?’

‘They are exactly the same size in the sky, Mythili. It is a mystery how they ended up where they are in space so that they look equal in the sky. They are where they are because that is the only way there can be life on Earth.’

‘But that is circular logic,’ she says.

Thoma pretends he knows what circular logic is, he nods his head.

‘I have an English teacher,’ Mythili says. ‘She tells us, “Girls, isn’t it amazing that the boiling point of water is exactly one hundred degrees. What a nice round number the Lord has given us.”’

Thoma laughs to show he understands. They fall silent, as they usually do. But he knows they have a lot to talk about these days. He does not have to bring up Unni any more, she asks him herself. She is very curious to know what his father has discovered. Thoma tells her the bits and pieces he has gathered from his father’s drunken confessions to the ceiling fan, and from what his mother has told him. Mythili’s face grows sad when she listens.

She usually lifts her mood by recounting her memories of Unni — most of them unremarkable things, which she greatly exaggerates. Like Unni’s mind-reading abilities. ‘How could Unni know which card I had picked. Remember, Thoma? I started taking the whole pack of cards to my room, shutting the door and then picking a card. And when I stepped out, Unni would guess it correctly. Then I started going to the terrace like a fool to pick the card. But he would always guess what was in my mind. I have picked a card and torn it into many pieces, too, but he would always guess it.’

She goes on and on as if she really believes that Unni could read minds, and she has this annoying smile on her face. Thoma cannot bear it any more. He tells her, ‘It was a trick. He didn’t read your mind. Nobody can read minds.’

‘But then how did he do it?’

‘He didn’t do it. He didn’t do anything.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I did it.’

Mythili’s face turns serious; she has never looked at Thoma with so much concentration. He tells her, ‘Remember? I was always around when you picked the card. I was this little boy whom nobody noticed. I was invisible. That’s what Unni told me and he was right. I would be standing right behind you when you picked the card. In your room, on the stairway, on the terrace, I was always around. But you never saw me. Unni taught me how to make the signs to pass the message to him behind your back. Sometimes Unni would pretend that he could not guess the card. Then we would wait for you to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and I would slip the card in one of your books.’

She folds her arms, and looks away with a sad smile. ‘I wish you had not told me, Thoma,’ she says. ‘It was my sweetest memory of Unni.’

Thoma had once promised Unni that he would never reveal the secret. ‘Many, many years later, Thoma, she will ask you, “How did Unni do it?” But you should not tell her. You must never tell her.’

‘I will not tell anyone, Unni. It is our secret.’

‘Our secret, Thoma. Only two people in this world know this secret. Unni Chacko and Thoma Chacko.’

Thoma feels a powerful silence within him. It is not sorrow or shame, or anything as ordinary as that. It is merely silence, there is no other way to describe it. He sees his betrayal of his brother for what it is — an act of pettiness. Thoma asks himself why he is petty and why Unni never was. Unni did not want anything. Unni Had No Expectations from Life. So Unni had no reasons to be afraid. Thoma wants so many things from the world, from people. That is why he is afraid, and that is why he is petty.

Later in the evening, he walks to the churchyard, leans on the bare white trunk of a eucalyptus tree and stands facing Unni’s grave, and tells him what has happened. Thoma does not move his mouth when he speaks to his brother. There is too much shame in appearing to talk to yourself, as he knows better than most people. He talks about this and that, updates Unni about their mother and the state of their father. And he describes Mythili to him. ‘She is taller than her mother now, Unni. She speaks very softly now, she does not scream, she does not fight, she does not sing, actually she does not talk a lot now. She is not a motormouth any more.’

Thoma remembers the times when he was in the care of Unni, how they walked hand in hand, how they played and how they laughed. How Unni would come steaming in when boys tried to push Thoma around. And he remembers the day Unni took him all around Madras in a suspenseful search for ‘the white sugar cane, which does exist, Thoma, somewhere in the city there is a white sugar cane’. They went in crowded buses, and in the train, they walked and ran down the roads in search of the white sugar cane and returned home telling each other that they would set out again to hunt another day.

Thoma stands in the churchyard until it gets dark, and when he leaves he is glad that he does not feel scared to be alone in a place like this any more. He wants to believe in ghosts, he really does hope that in this world there are ghosts.

THE CLOSEST OUSEP HAS come to seeing the future is when he goes down the mud lane to Somen Pillai’s house. This evening, too, he knows what is about to happen. Before he reaches the gate, the door on the pink front of the house opens and the man and wife emerge on to the porch, whispering to each other. They stand with their elbows on the short iron gate, and wait for him to arrive. Somen’s father is bare-chested, his mother is in a sari. Ousep can see their bellies. And their deep navels that gape at him as if they are the alert eyes of a long, indestructible tropical marriage.

‘Somen is not home,’ the mother says.

‘Where has he gone now?’

‘He has gone to a friend’s house and he will be late.’

Ousep searches the windows, searches for the furtive movement of a shadow, for a curtain moving an inch, anything that would give a sign that his quarry is inside, but there is nothing.

The father says, ‘You’ve started coming here every day, Ousep. What has happened?’

‘Does he live here any more?’ Ousep asks.

‘This is his home.’

‘I have been trying to meet him for the last six months.’

‘We have told you many times he does not want to meet you.’

‘Why?’

‘You must ask him that,’ the mother says.

‘That is what I have been trying to do. I’ve been trying to meet him. But, obviously, you don’t want that. You refuse to tell me which college he goes to, you refuse to tell me where he goes every day and what he does.’

‘It is not our fault if he does not want to meet you,’ the father says.

‘Is he in the house right now?’

‘We’re getting a bit tired of this, Ousep.’

‘I met a boy,’ Ousep says, ‘Sai Shankaran. You know him. He says Somen has run away from home.’

‘That’s nonsense — you go and tell Sai Shankaran that. Our boy is with us.’

‘Sai Shankaran says your boy may have gone somewhere to die in peace.’

‘Ousep,’ the father screams, ‘I have sympathy for you because of what happened to your son. But don’t wish that on everyone. I am not a drunkard. I feed my family, I keep them happy. My son has no reason to kill himself.’

‘Can I come inside? Let’s talk.’

‘The ceiling fan is not working,’ the father says. ‘So it is very hot inside. We must stand outside and talk.’

Somen’s mother looks incredulously at her husband and goes away inside as if she wants to search for a far corner and burst out laughing. Ousep holds the hand of Somen’s father and asks him softly, ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘What am I doing?’

‘Why don’t you let me meet your son?’

‘You see a deeper story in things, Ousep. Boys these days are busy. They leave early, they come home late. He is twenty, he is busy. And when they don’t want to meet someone they just don’t meet them. They are young people, they have their own minds. He does not want to talk about Unni, and there is nothing we can do about it. He will not meet you. He will never meet you.’

The man leans forward and whispers, ‘Ousep, just give up. Children do strange things when they are seventeen. That’s the age of madness. What can we do? Maybe there was a girl. There is always a girl. Move on. Get back to your life.’

‘This is my life. Unni is my life. I will be coming back, Pillai.’

Pillai goes back into his house and shuts the door. Ousep tries to understand the home. A home is a person. If you stare long enough at its face you begin to see beyond the façade. It is a small, simple house embedded at the end of the lane in such a way that there is only one point of entry or exit. All the windows are shut, which is strange for a house in Madras, and all of them have curtains, which is not surprising. On the terrace, just about twelve feet above the ground, there are some clothes drying. From what he can see, there are no jeans or T-shirts among them. There is nothing on the surface of the house that indicates the presence of a young man.

In the houses that flank the narrow lane there are people standing in the doorways, behind their windows and on the terraces. He goes up to a woman who is standing at her gate holding her infant. He asks her, ‘Have you seen Somen Pillai today?’ The woman spreads her sari over her chest, toys with her pendant and says, ‘I have not seen him in a while. What happened?’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

That makes her think. Four men of four generations emerge from her house and step out to talk to him. They are amiable people, that is the nature of the world. People who do not know him always offer him the option of respect. He is an elegant man in daylight, a man with a greying French beard.

They have not seen Somen Pillai for a long time but they don’t remember when they last did. He walks across the lane to another house and asks the same question. ‘I see you here often,’ an old woman says. ‘I see you going to their house. Do you want some water to drink? It is a very hot day.’

‘It is a very hot day.’

‘My granddaughter says the world will soon become ice. But there is no evidence of that in Madras. Do you think the world will turn into ice?’

‘When did you last see Somen Pillai?’

‘I see his sister once every three months or so. She comes for the weekend. She goes to a medical college in Kerala. Girls are so smart these days. But the boy, I have not seen him in a long time. Never struck me before you asked. I’ve seen him grow up on this lane. I’ve seen so many grow up on this lane, it did not occur to me that I have not spotted the boy in ages. Maybe he has gone somewhere far away to study. They all go away, don’t you know? Why don’t you ask his parents?’

Ousep goes to every house and asks. Nobody has seen Somen Pillai in a long time. ‘Why don’t you ask his parents? They live right there,’ a man says, wiping his scooter, which is parked inside the house, near the front door.

‘I did ask them but they are not telling me. Something is wrong. I think the boy has gone missing.’

‘How can a boy go missing? I heard he goes to Loyola College.’

‘That’s what they told me once. I’ve checked. He doesn’t go there. He has gone missing.’

‘Why are you asking about the boy?’

‘He has borrowed a lot of money from people I know and now he has gone missing.’

By the time Ousep reaches the end of the lane it is clear to him that Somen Pillai has not been seen on the lane for an indefinite period of time. It is possible that he has been dispatched to a college in another city and his parents do not want him to be bothered by Ousep. But if that were true the boy would still be visiting home once in a while as his sister does. What Sai Shankaran had said begins to make sense. Somen Pillai has probably gone somewhere to die in isolation. The way Unni died was too conspicuous, setting off a relentless father on a trail. Somen probably did not want to draw too much attention. He wanted to be presumed lost. But why?

Ousep returns to Somen’s house at midnight, his walk unsteady, hair tempestuous. This time the house does not see him come. He stands at the gate and asks, ‘You can’t see well in the dark?’ He goes up to the front door and begins to pound it. The lights go on. Somen’s father looks through the window. He glares in fury but in a moment turns nervous. The man studies the night outside to see whether Ousep has brought any muscular friends along. When he is reassured that the drunkard has come alone, he opens the door and stands with tight fists, legs parted. Ousep withdraws, walks backwards in kung-fu steps and holds his hand as if it is a cobra about to strike.

‘Master, I’ve come to meet Somen Pillai,’ he says.

‘What’s wrong with you, Ousep, are you drunk?’

‘Is he back? Has Somen Pillai returned home?’

‘Why have you been bad-mouthing us to our neighbours, Ousep, have you lost your mind? You’ve been telling everyone that the boy has gone missing. You’ve been telling everyone that he has borrowed money from people.’

‘Is Somen Pillai home?’

‘Don’t come here ever again. I warn you, Ousep. Don’t push me.’

The door shuts, there are sounds of all the latches and locks being invoked. Ousep screams, ‘Where is Somen Pillai? Where is Somen Pillai? Where is Somen Pillai?’

Lights go on in the houses on the lane. People stare from their windows. It is a moment Ousep is familiar with, a moment in the night. Lights going on in homes, people peeping through their windows, seeing him in a way they would never have imagined in the light of day, and everybody agreeing without a word that they are better than him. This lane, too, now knows of Ousep Chacko.

He comes back at seven in the morning and stands at the gate to take the house by surprise. Nothing stirs. He waits. That is his talent, he knows how to wait. After about an hour, he sees the maid come down the lane. He is struck again by her face, a face that is hard but very aware of its own frugal beauty. She is probably in her early thirties, middle age for maids, but there is much left in her that a man can see. She does not look famished like the other maids, her breasts are full and proud, and she is fleshy in a shapely way. She must be the queen of her slum. She is an anomaly; women like her usually do not survive as maids. She walks towards him, her head bent, and when she raises her eyes they look with the incurable contempt that all Tamil maids have for men who are not film stars.

‘Is Somen Pillai in the house?’ he asks her.

She walks away without a word.

‘Does he live in this house?’

She rings the doorbell. Somen’s mother opens the door and is startled to see Ousep at the gate so early. She shuts the door in his face. Ousep waits to see how the morning unfolds. The maid leaves in about an hour, which is not unusual. When the man and wife emerge, they are in office clothes. They lock their door, and do not meet Ousep’s eyes when they go past him. They walk to an old grey scooter that lies by the side of the lane. The man kicks it many times until it roars into life. His wife sits on the pillion holding his paunch, and they leave.

The large padlock on the front door has a melancholy finality about it. Has Somen really abandoned his parents and vanished for ever? But if the truth is that Somen has gone missing, his parents just need to tell Ousep that. Considering what a nuisance he is, that would be a simple solution to get rid of him. Surely there is no shame in telling Ousep that they have lost their son to philosophy. There is no shame in saying that to Ousep. But they have not done that. In fact, they have insisted that their boy lives with them. Also, there is still the glow of life in their eyes. They do not look like parents who have lost their child.

He returns in the evening but the house does not see him any more. The door does not open, the couple do not emerge to face him. He rings the doorbell several times but there is no response. He can hear the sounds of life inside but the Pillais have decided to ignore him.

OUSEP IS IN FULL view of all the women who are standing on their balconies to bid goodbye to their husbands. He is across the lane, facing Block A, and smoking two cigarettes at once. He looks to his left once again, down the whole stretch of Balaji Lane. The car will appear any time now at the far end.

Men on scooters leave the building, one after the other, giving him cold glances. Some women on the balconies disappear, some appear muttering prayers. The figure of Mariamma, unexpectedly, stands on her balcony. She pulls his shirts from the wire, without affection it seems. She sees him and is, naturally, puzzled. Ousep standing quietly on the road, she has never seen that before. She vanishes inside, but she is probably watching through the curtains.

He sees a woman approach; she walks slowly past him carrying an empty basket. She is going to the vegetable market. He does not know why but he is unable to take his eyes off this plump, unremarkable, asexual woman. Her face is calm and unseeing, and it reminds him of the great peace of failure, the peace of simply giving up.

When the car finally appears, he is not sure whether this is the one he has been waiting for. The man had said it would be black, and the car is black, but it is surprisingly grand and obscene. He has never seen such a car before, and it comes towards him like an object from another time. A scooter going in the car’s direction veers to the edge of the road and stops because the lane is probably too narrow for the two of them to pass and the scooter has accepted its inferior position. As the car passes, the man tilts his scooter to his left, like a dog about to urinate. Guards from the other blocks run out into the lane to stare at the back of the car. One of them salutes. The car stops near Ousep. The guard of Block A, in his cheap military outfit, points a finger at the steering wheel and laughs in mild confusion, which looks like a type of sorrow. He has never seen a left-hand drive before, never knew such a meaningless trick was possible. Ousep throws his cigarettes away and gets into the back seat. The car smells like another country, which it is, in a way. Krishnamurthy Iyengar, in the back seat, looks smaller than Ousep had imagined. He is, as before, in an oversized shirt buttoned at the cuffs, his silver medals pinned on the third button, eight fountain pens and a tiny black torch in his shirt pocket.

‘A gift from my son,’ Iyengar says. ‘It took one year to reach me from America. Chevrolet Cavalier, it is called.’

‘I’ve never been inside anything like this.’

‘It is the only car I have, Ousep. I didn’t bring this to scare you.’

‘I was surprised when you called me.’

‘And you would like to know why I called you, of course,’ Iyengar says, but he does not say anything else for a while. When the old man had called early this morning he had said, in between coughs, ‘Don’t have any expectations, I just want to meet. There is nothing more to it.’

The car leaves Balaji Lane and heads towards Arcot Road. The whole way, people stare as if the Chevrolet is at once a foe and a beautiful woman, which is the same thing in a way. ‘I’ve been thinking of calling you the whole week,’ Iyengar says. ‘Then I decided that if I am ever going to meet you, now is the time. Now as in today, this morning. Because I am going to the airport.’

The old man sinks into a comfortable silence once again, so Ousep says, ‘I don’t see the connection.’

‘I am going to America,’ Iyengar says. ‘I am giving a talk at Johns Hopkins. Then I am going to spend some time with my son and his family. Then my daughter and her family. Because I am a jobless old man.’

‘So, you didn’t want to wait. Is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know if you could have waited?’

‘What I want to say is that I want to talk to you in the car, when I am on the way to the airport. Yes, that’s what I want to say. Because that way I can say what I wish to say and just get rid of you. You may have questions and more questions, but I don’t have the answers. I want to say what I have to say, drop you somewhere on the way, and go away.’

‘And what is it that you want to say?’

Iyengar runs his fingers through his silver hair, and appears to gather his thoughts, though he has surely had a lot of time to do that.

‘Unni told me something one day,’ Iyengar says. ‘He told me that in the greatest stories of the world there are always opposites — there is the superhero and the supervillain, the good and the evil, the strong and weak. He asked me if the Corpse Syndrome had an opposite condition. Are there people in this world who feel very alive, who feel every moment of their days as if life inside them is the greatest force in the universe. People who are hopelessly happy. I told him that for some strange reason neuropsychiatry does not deal with such conditions — it deals with conditions that need a cure. The anti-corpse would not need a cure. The anti-corpse is the aspiration of mankind. And Unni said, “I am the anti-corpse.”’

‘Doctor, why would a person who is so happy choose to die?’

‘It is possible,’ Iyengar says slowly, with unfathomable caution, ‘it is possible that Unni Chacko was not what he thought he was.’

Ousep feels an enormous weight on his chest, as if a powerful adolescent boy is holding him in a fierce embrace. ‘Do you believe that, Doctor?’

‘Or, Unni was everything he thought he was, and we do not understand the happiness of other people. Maybe happiness has nothing to do with life, maybe we are overestimating the lure of life.’

‘So what are you trying to say, Doctor?’

‘Just this, what I told you. That’s all I wanted to say.’

‘But what do you make of it?’

‘See, that is the problem, Ousep. My opinion is not important. It would be unfair, too. I have not formally studied him.’

‘Be unfair. Tell me.’

Iyengar considers his own wrinkled fingers, then his tired palms. He says, ‘Many times in my career I have wondered if some of my patients are in my room only because they have seen beyond what the normal brain can see. What I am trying to say, very inarticulately, is this. What if Unni was a person who could see more than others? What if he saw the world in a form that he could not explain?’

‘What if he didn’t, Doctor? What if he was just deluded?’

‘That was what Unni was trying to find out, Ousep. Can’t you see?’

‘So why did he have to die?’

‘I don’t know, Ousep. I cannot answer that question.’

They are caught in the morning traffic on Arcot Road, and the car has not moved in several minutes. Urchins who have lost different body parts are banging at the car windows. They are not as miserable as people imagine, according to a boy who once claimed he was unbearably happy and then decided to jump off a building.

‘So you’ve said what you wanted to say, Doctor?’

‘I have,’ Iyengar says. ‘Ousep, before you go, I want to know if you have found the corpse.’

‘No.’

‘That boy, Somen Pillai, you could not meet him?’

‘No. I don’t know where he is. Every time I go to his house, his parents tell me he is not at home. I go at odd hours but I have been unable to meet him or even see him. But one of the maids on the lane said something odd. I don’t know what to make of it.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that she has heard from someone who has heard from someone else and so on that Somen has shut himself up in a room for over two years. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

‘It makes complete sense, Ousep. A corpse is most likely to do just that.’

‘Are you saying that the boy has been inside the house all this while?’

‘Much longer than that even.’

‘And his parents have been locking the door and leaving him inside?’

‘Possible.’

‘Are you sure about this, Doctor?’

‘Go and get your corpse, Ousep. Do what you have to do. I’ve lost all interest in mine, but go, Ousep, go and find your corpse.’

IT IS NOON, AND the people who live on the narrow mud lane take in the sight — the town alcoholic and a dwarf key-maker, who is holding three large metal rings filled with hundreds of keys, are going somewhere. To open a door, perhaps.

As Ousep had expected the door is locked. Somen’s parents are away at work. The lock looks particularly large in the small hand of the midget key-maker, who is a delicate and dignified man. He makes a sound through his nose and dismisses it as an easy job. He looks up and laughs at a joke he is about to crack. ‘What if this is not your house?’ He shoves various keys inside.

A frail old man, in a blinding white shirt, appears at the gate. He stands there with his hands joined behind his back, and looks. Within minutes four more old men and two old women appear behind the gate. They stand still, asymmetrically, as if they are in an abstract dance, and they look at Ousep without affection. The key-maker is kneeling on the doormat, scratching the teeth of several keys with an iron rod and inserting them into the lock. On occasion he turns to the small gathering of curious retired people. The crowd slowly grows, and now the housewives too have joined the assembly. The dwarf is increasingly confused and his glances are longer and more frequent. He looks at Ousep with mild suspicion but decides not to understand the situation.

Ousep sees the furious grey scooter at a distance, racing down the lane carrying Somen’s parents. As it approaches, Ousep can see that the man is in a murderous rage. When he stops the scooter by the side of the lane, he just leaves the handlebar and charges at his house. The scooter falls with Mrs Pillai still on the pillion. The crowd moves towards her but Somen’s father is unaffected. He starts kicking the key-maker, who is now delirious as he fends off the kicks with carefully observed movements of his hands. He points to Ousep and screams, ‘I thought it was this man’s house.’ He manages to run away at a full sprint, carrying his three metal rings. He dashes across the lane without slowing down or even looking back. In fact, he gains speed as he reaches the end of the lane.

Pillai thrusts a finger at Ousep. ‘Don’t push me, Ousep, this has to end right now. You are losing your mind.’

‘Somen Pillai is inside,’ Ousep says.

‘That’s not true.’

‘Then all you have to do is show me in and I will believe you.’

‘This is my home, Ousep, I decide who will enter this place.’

‘Take me to Somen.’

Somen’s mother goes into the house crying; she is followed by her man, and they bang the door shut. Ousep looks at the small angry crowd and says, ‘Think about it, when was the last time you saw the boy? Where is that boy? What happened to that boy?’

Ousep begins to come here every night, fully drunk. He rings the bell several times but he knows the door will not open. He stands outside the gate and screams the boy’s name. He walks up and down the lane, screaming, ‘Somen Pillai, speak to me, speak to the father of Unni Chacko.’ He is at the gate in the mornings, sober and elegant. He is there when the maid arrives, he is there when she leaves. He stands smoking his cigarettes as Somen’s parents appear in office clothes and secure the door with two padlocks. He stands and watches their sullen departure on the old grey scooter. He does this every night and day. He won’t stop, this is his final stand.

Thoma’s mother says, ‘Your father has gone crazy.’ Ousep has stopped going to work. He wakes up at dawn these days and goes somewhere, he returns and sits till noon in his room with Unni’s cartoons and a magnifying glass, which he runs over the comics. Some days he spreads out all the pages of Unni’s comics and cartoons on the floor, climbs on the bed and tries to get a top-angle view. Then he leaves home again. When he returns at night he is as drunk as ever, but he does not stop at giving a speech from the gate. He has started going to some of the homes in Block A, he asks to speak to the boys inside. He wants to know everything everybody knows about Unni. Last week he banged on Mythili’s door and fought with her father, who threatened to call the police. He has started wandering around the city at night and waking Unni’s friends from sleep. People have started slapping him around. That’s what Mariamma says. Some nights Ousep comes home with bruises. Thoma and his mother sit on his bed and clean his wounds, which is strangely the most peaceful moment in Thoma’s life. The sight of his father, alive, safe at home, sleeping like a child, and Thoma taking care of him. Something has happened to Thoma, too. He feels stronger. After his betrayal of Unni he is repulsed by the idea of pettiness and fear. He does not ask himself any more whether he will make it across the giant span of life. He knows he will. He sees clearly that he does not have the option of being ordinary.

Thoma has heard that his father has become obsessed with Somen Pillai. At the end of all his wanderings in the night, he goes to Somen’s house and creates trouble. Mariamma gets news from the women who live on that lane. Somen’s mother herself has come and wept and begged to be saved. Thoma hears this from his teachers, too, who take him aside and ask him what is happening. But Thoma walks with his head held high, he is tired of being ashamed. If this is his life, so be it.

But Mother has had enough. She tells Ousep one morning, ‘Stop this or I will kill you one of these days.’ He says, peacefully, ‘Get me some coffee.’

She has started pouring water on him every morning. That is how he wakes up these days. Right now, she is walking purposefully into Father’s room with a bucket. Thoma hears his father’s sad yelp, sees his mother sprint towards the door, then his father’s tired, drenched appearance. But over time, Ousep is not so surprised any more. Thoma then understands what his mother had meant by the Law of Diminishing Returns. In fact, after Mariamma empties the buckets on him, Ousep does not even yelp any more. It is as if he has employed her to wake him up. He walks briskly to the bathroom and takes his bath. And she has stopped sprinting away after the punishment. She hovers around the house wondering what more she can do to control him.

One night she takes the scissors and slices Ousep’s shirt. She cuts its sleeves off and puts it on a hanger in the bedroom for him to see in the morning. But Father is not affected, he does not say anything, though he does hold his limbless shirt in his hand and stares at it for a long time, probably wondering what he should do. By the end of the week she has sliced all his shirts. So, in the mornings now, Ousep sits on the bed and sews his shirts with a thread and needle. She starts slicing his trousers, too, but Ousep has learnt how to sew. He looks like a beggar in rags these days.

Then one morning, as Mariamma is about to empty a bucket of water on him, the phone rings. Ousep wakes up and sees his wife standing with a bucket of water. ‘Can you do that after I take the call?’ he says. She steps back and lets him pick up the phone.

‘Hello,’ Ousep says.

The voice on the other end is strong and serene. ‘Ousep Chacko?’

‘Yes,’ he says, sitting up.

‘My name is Somen Pillai. Come to my home at six in the evening.’

OUSEP WALKS AS IF it is morning, with short brisk steps, his little finger sticking out, hair combed back. Ousep Chacko, finally respectable at dusk. The longest day of his life has almost passed in an unbearable wait and the humiliation of sewing his own trousers. As the stout house at the end of the lane approaches, he accepts that he has not walked so steadily in the twilight in many years. The front door opens and Mr Pillai, who is wearing a shirt this evening, stands in the doorway to receive him with a compassionate hand waiting in mid-air to grab the shoulder of his guest. Ousep goes beyond the doormat for the first time and takes in the small foyer, where two adolescent boys, in another time, used to play chess for many hours and talk about the nature of reality, and on occasion toy with the mind of a fool who had come to them seeking easy answers to borrowed questions.

The hall is dim, its walls sky blue, and there is the smell of soap.

The room has two cushioned chairs and a thin sofa arranged around a low table, a colour TV in a corner, and a dining table, which blocks half the doorway to the kitchen. Pillai leads him to the sofa and sits by his side, very close. In the blue wall that faces Ousep, there are two shut doors. Behind one of them Somen Pillai waits.

The boy’s father is not comfortable, his movements are quick and his eyes restless. Mrs Pillai steps out of the kitchen holding a serving spoon; she smiles without warmth and goes back in.

‘My boy is inside,’ the man says, pointing to a shut door. ‘He has been in that room for more than two years. For more than two years, Ousep. He never leaves the room. He does not speak. Not a word, even to himself. Actually, it is good, isn’t it, that he does not speak to himself? We send food inside once a day. We are glad that he at least eats. That makes him shit like any of us, which is a good thing. There is a bathroom inside, so he does not have to step out. He bathes. We are grateful for that too. Ousep, do you know why he is this way?’

‘No, Pillai, I don’t.’

‘We don’t know what has happened to him,’ Pillai says. ‘One of these days a yellow halo is going to appear behind the idiot’s head. Wouldn’t that be nice? Two years ago he told us that he wanted to stop going to college. I had sold some land in Kerala and got him a seat in an engineering college, but he decided not to take it up. He said he wanted to sit in the room and do nothing. I fought, I begged, but I soon realized that I would lose my only son if I insisted. I told him that if he wanted to do nothing he was free to roam around the entire house, watch TV and do absolutely nothing. At least I could then tell myself my son had retired early. But no, he wanted to be contained in that room. He told us that if we tried to talk to him, if we bothered him in any way, he would leave the house for ever. So we let him be. We have made our peace, Ousep. This morning, for the first time in two years, he stepped out. His mother and I were sitting where we are sitting right now, and what do we see. We see our son come out of his room. The light went on in our eyes, Ousep, just for a moment. He goes straight to the phone and calls you. For the first time in over two years we heard his voice. Isn’t that nice? We must thank you, Ousep. Your trick has worked. You made such a scene every night, the boy has decided to deal with you and be done with it.’

Pillai’s body begins to shake, he covers his face with his fat fingers and cries. ‘What is it, Ousep? What has happened to our son? Ask him to show one flaw in me, one flaw. I fed him, I loved him, I held him by his hand and took him places, I played with him. I gave him everything. And he decides to shut himself in a room for ever. You talk to him. Ask him anything you want. I know you won’t understand what he says. You will go away very confused. Trust me. We tried talking to him when it all began. But after today, please don’t come here again.’

‘Can I go in?’ Ousep says.

Pillai points to the door. ‘Don’t knock. Just go in.’

As Ousep walks to the door, his breathing becomes laboured, and for a moment he feels giddy. He pushes the door open and sees a young man in a plain white shirt and brown trousers sitting behind a wooden desk and smiling at him. He is much thinner than he was three years ago, which is not surprising. He has a thick full beard, as Ousep had expected. The boy’s hair is long, but not as long as Ousep had imagined. He has large teasing eyes, piercing eyes, but they still have some mirth in them.

‘Shut the door and latch it,’ the boy says. His voice is not deep but it is strong and clear.

Ousep does as he is told, and when the boy points to the vacant chair across the desk, he sits. Finally, Somen Pillai. He does not look mad at all. In fact, this one is going to be tough.

‘Are you afraid?’ the boy says.

‘Why would I be afraid?’

‘Sitting alone with me in this room. Are you afraid?’

‘No.’

‘I will call you Ousep,’ the boy says.

‘That’s a remarkable coincidence. My name is, in fact, Ousep.’

Somen laughs, like anybody else. ‘I can call you uncle or sir, or things like that, if you want me to be respectful, but I would prefer to call you Ousep. As you said, that’s your name.’

‘Call me Ousep.’

‘Ousep, you see this window? I have been watching you every time you’ve come to the gate. I have seen you in the mornings, I have seen you at night. You are more literary in the nights, I noticed.’

‘I am sorry for all that I did but I had to meet you.’

‘I can see you are not drunk today.’

‘You are right.’

‘I have not spoken in over two years. I am surprised I am even able to speak. But I think my speech may sound a bit strange.’

‘Why haven’t you spoken for two years, Somen?’

‘You will figure that out as we go. But before we begin I have something important to tell you. You’ve destroyed my way of life, Ousep. You are a persistent man who has no shame. I thought I should let you ask me everything you want to ask so that we are done with it and never meet again.’

‘I can accept that, Somen.’

‘It is natural that you would attach a certain importance to the fact that I have refused to meet you for so long. But the truth is, as you will see, I have very simple things to say. The only reason I did not meet you was that I did not feel like meeting you. That’s all there is to it.’

‘That’s reasonable.’

‘There is something else you must know,’ Somen says. ‘In the time that follows you will ask me questions. I will answer them. We will talk. We will have what is called a conversation. I will tell you everything I know. You can ask me anything you want. But at the end of it all you will not know why Unni Chacko killed himself. You will fail in your mission. Because the fact is that I do not know why Unni did what he did.’

‘I can accept that.’

‘In that case we must proceed. You must first tell me what you know about Unni.’

Ousep wonders where he must begin. And how much he must reveal.

Mythili Balasubramanium stands still on the narrow rear balcony, under the festoons of white undergarments left to dry on the high, discreet wire, and she listens to the voice, as she has done many times in the past. Her head is bent in careful attention, eyes staring at bare feet, hands folded. The voice of Mariamma, as powerful as ever, the voice of a woman trapped in her own play, talking to the walls in her kitchen, talking in whispers and exclamations. What her voice usually says is nothing new, Mythili has heard the same things for years. But this evening she hears a lament she has not heard before.

‘Why, Unni, that’s what I ask myself, that’s all I want to know. Why?’

It is not surprising that Mariamma should say that. It has to be the most important question in her life. But when Mythili imagines that woman standing alone in her kitchen, wagging a finger, begging the walls for the answer, something in her breaks. Mythili shuts her eyes and feels the tears. Is there a way she can end this, lead that woman to the answer she so desperately seeks, and bring the pointless search of Ousep Chacko to a close, a search whose sad little details she hears every night when he howls like a beast from the gates below? Is there a way Mythili can end all this for ever, and let the Chacko household move on?

She leaves the balcony when Thoma comes for his tuition. He is wearing an altered shirt of his brother’s, the same shirt Unni was wearing the day before he died. She is surprised she remembers that. They sit in her bedroom as always; the door that does not have a latch is shut.

‘If eight men can build a wall in ten days, how many days will two men need to build a wall three times as big?’

Thoma makes some calculations in his notebook. He is taking a while. ‘Thoma,’ she says. He looks up. ‘You look different these days, Thoma, you look sad.’

‘I am fine,’ he says, ‘I am strong. It has the same face as sadness but I am only stronger than before.’

‘What happened that you are strong now?’

‘Something happened to me.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘After I told you about Unni’s trick, I realized I was just a moron, like most people. I don’t want to be a petty moron any more.’

‘It’s all right. You only told me the truth.’

‘Truth is not so important. What is important is that I told you about the trick because I thought I was not good enough. I don’t want to be so afraid any more. I want to be strong so that I can take care of my mother and all the people who need my help. I want to be like Unni. I want to be strong.’

He scribbles in his notebook but she can see he is not working on the problem. He says, without looking up, ‘And I want to find out why he did what he did.’

‘What is it that your father has found?’

‘I don’t know much. I only know what I hear my father say when he is drunk. I think a few months ago my father found a comic by Unni. The day my brother died he had posted it to someone but somehow it returned after three years.’

‘So?’

‘So my father thinks that if Unni had posted a comic on the day he died, it may have some clues.’

‘What is the comic about?’

‘It is a true story.’

‘What is the story?’

‘Do you know about Philipose?’

‘It is a very familiar name. I don’t know why it is so familiar.’

‘Have you heard the name?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you hear the name?’

‘It is a name that has your mother’s voice in it. Yes, it comes to me now. I have heard your mother mention his name sometimes. You know, when she gets into one of her moods. I used to think it was one of her relatives.’

‘He is not a relative.’

‘Who is Philipose?’

‘Something happened many years ago, when my mother was much younger. One evening she was returning alone from school, and Philipose attacked her. My mother escaped because she started screaming and people came running. But she was very shocked, and from that day she started talking to herself. She did not tell anybody about this. But one day she told Unni about him and about what had happened. Unni was so angry he took a train and went to meet Philipose to beat him up. But Philipose was already dead. He died of old age, I think.’

‘And?’

‘That’s all. That’s how the story ends. I don’t like that story.’

She turns the pages of the maths book, and tries once again to make up her mind. There is the bleak quiet of twilight all around. The children have quit their games, the birds have gone, it is as if nothing exists in the world but the two of them in a small room. ‘One hundred and twenty days,’ Thoma says. She looks at him and sees a flow of events that is now inevitable.

‘Mythili,’ Thoma says, ‘it will take two men one hundred and twenty days to build the wall. That’s a lot of time for a wall.’

‘Philipose should have killed himself, not Unni,’ she says.

‘Philipose led a normal, peaceful life, my mother tells me,’ Thoma says. ‘I don’t know if she is angry about that.’

‘Thoma, when Unni died, where were you?’

‘I was sleeping in my room. I sleep till late morning on holidays because I don’t sleep well most nights.’

‘Did Unni come into your room?’

‘I think so but I am not sure. I think he kissed my forehead, but I am not sure.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘I am not sure. He always kissed me on my forehead when he saw me sleeping, so he might have done that. All I remember clearly is that I had a dream.’

‘What was your dream?’

‘I dreamt that a woman was running away from a giant sea wave.’

‘Who was the woman?’

‘She did not have a face. Does it make sense?’

‘Yes, that’s not unusual.’

‘But she was screaming as she ran.’

‘You heard her scream?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it a voice you have heard before?’

‘I don’t know. A scream is a scream.’

THE SILENCE IN SOMEN’S room is deep and ordained, and filled with indecipherable meaning. It feels like marriage. When Somen Pillai finally raises his gaze from the floor, he smiles and rotates the index finger of his right hand as if to stir the air.

‘You may have realized,’ the boy says, ‘as you were recounting the many bits of information you have so painstakingly gleaned, you may have realized the problem with your story. What you need is a chronology. When you understand the chronology you understand a lot.’

‘That’s true, Somen.’

‘So let me begin at the beginning. Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘Without a doubt.’

‘In the beginning, Ousep, there was nothing. There were no stars, there was no space, there was no matter, there was no time.’

Ousep rests his chin on his fingers and tries to achieve an impassive face. The boy bursts out laughing. ‘Don’t worry. I am just playing with you.’

‘I must admit, my heart did sink.’

Somen leans back, puts his arms behind his large head and studies his visitor with a relaxed superiority, which is not very different from the arrogance of doctors when they face their patients. It would be useful to puncture his confidence, see him collapse. Something always comes of that, but for the moment, though, the boy looks formidable as he speaks in his slow, scholarly way.

‘What I know about Unni is what he told me and what I observed in the classroom sitting in my corner and later in my home, which he visited very often. As you have so competently gathered from your sources, I came to know him well only when we were seventeen, just months before he died. There are many things he did not tell me. But what I know I will tell you.’

It is disturbing for a father, even if the father is Ousep Chacko, to hear the story of his son’s childhood from a stranger. He can accept the fact that he did not know the life of Unni the adolescent. But Unni the child is a different matter.

Ousep never hugged his son, never carried him on his shoulders, never took him to the circus or did any of the things that fathers do these days. Like the other fathers from a pastoral time and place, from the golden age of men, he had imagined that he had appointed his wife to do all those things. But now, as Somen speaks of Unni’s childhood, Ousep feels a fierce ownership towards his little boy. It offends him that an odd young man in exile in his own room is telling him things about Unni that he did not know. He feels a great desperation inside him to touch his child, hold his little fingers and walk with him, put him on the table and somehow charm out of him the strange world that he claimed he saw in his head.

‘Unni was normal most of the time,’ Somen says. ‘Normal means that the world he saw was identical to what others saw with their senses. Are you offended that I described the meaning of normal to you?’

‘I am not offended.’

‘Normal is a majority state.’

‘That’s a reasonable definition.’

‘Unni was normal most of the time. But he was born with a condition. His earliest memory of the phenomenon was when he was around five. It probably started much earlier but he realized that it was a condition and that it was odd only when he was five. What happened to him was that there were moments when one or more of his senses shut down. For a few minutes or even an hour some days, he would go deaf, or he would go blind, or both. Sometimes he would lose his ability to tell the difference between faces, everyone would look identical to him. On rare occasions he would not feel anything even if he pricked himself with a pin or hurt himself in another way, which he often tried to do to understand what was happening to him.’

‘He was not just imagining all this?’

Somen lets out a gentle infuriating laugh, but he does not react to Ousep’s question. He continues to tell his story as if the question is not important.

Unni is not terrified by what is happening to him. As he is just a child he considers it a game. He imagines there is a person inside him, a friend whom he calls Abu, who is playing with his senses — switching things on, switching things off. Unni would shed Abu around the age of seven.

By the time he is ten, something else begins to happen. The sporadic shutdown of his senses continues, but there are also moments when his senses are enhanced. He claims that he can see the textures on the skin of an ant, see the details of people standing hundreds of metres away, claims that he can hear things others cannot hear. But there is nothing special about Unni’s sense of smell or taste, which are actually a shade below normal. His nose does not easily differentiate between coffee and tea.

The collapse and escalation of the senses visit him for short bursts of time. There are phases when they occur every day, times when they do not appear for days. He tells his mother about what is happening to him but she finds it hard to take him seriously because he tells her about his condition in a happy, excited way and not as a complaint. In time he decides not to tell his mother or anyone else about his condition. He is happy in his weird state, even eagerly waiting for things to happen to him.

Unni goes through an enchanted boyhood, losing his senses sometimes, seeing more than he is meant to at other times. But when he is around fourteen the condition disappears.

‘He became normal. All his senses became consistent. He waited for weeks, for months, but his condition did not return. But his experience left him with an insight that would never leave him, that the world is a charade created by a combination of senses. His was not a philosophical view. It is important that you understand this, Ousep. As I get deeper into the story of Unni, it is natural that you should form your own explanations in your mind, and many times you will imagine that Unni was pursuing an abstract philosophical line of thought. But the fact is that he was merely converting experience into understanding. As a boy whose reality kept changing depending on what was turned on and turned off inside his brain, he could see more clearly than others that reality is merely the myth of the senses. When you do not experience but accept a phenomenon, it is philosophy, which is a form of religion. But when you experience it, it is different. An experience is a plain fact, experience is truth.’

This boy overrates experience but Ousep is not here to argue. He wants to extract all that he can before his situation changes and he is asked to leave. The boy is not as stable as he had appeared when Ousep entered the room. Somen falls silent often, as if distracted by ghostly strands of thought. At times he studies his own hand or his bare feet and looks very surprised that they exist. But when he speaks he is coherent.

‘That’s why Unni was drawn to cartoons,’ the boy says. ‘He loved their distortion, their caricature of reality. He could not take the world and its preoccupations seriously. If the world is the myth of the senses, there is something pointless about all arts. Whom will you read, what will you write, what music will you listen to, what can move you, what can you adore when nothing is true? But cartoons are different. In a farcical world, farce is the true art.’

Unni at fourteen is slowly consumed by an idea. He begins to believe that what has happened to him is a glitch in a subterranean process of nature. In his magical moments as a child, when his senses were enhanced, he had seen beyond what a human is supposed to see. He believes that he has either seen far into the past of human evolution or deep into the future. He does not know which. In him are the remains of an extinct species or the portents of what is to come. He is convinced that nature creates a huge quantity of life so that, through trial and error, through the extinction and the evolution of billions of lumps of flesh over a vast period of time, it will finally attain its goal — a particular kind of neurological system.

‘He believed that the aspiration of nature is to achieve a type of brain. And that this ultimate brain is supposed to receive a set of information, which would fulfil the very purpose of nature.’

But, two years later, when Unni is sixteen, he begins to believe that the very opposite is true. That the very purpose of nature, the evolutions it has managed through the vast ages, is to prevent a particular kind of neurological condition. It is as if the system of life is a devious force that does not want any organism to look too deep.

‘Ousep, now you are thinking that your son was probably delusional, that he was making up concepts so that the world appeared more and more extraordinary than it is in reality. But then, the fact is that when you begin to see the world more clearly, what you first contradict are the very ideas that were once dear to you. Isn’t that true, Ousep?’

At some point when Unni is sixteen, a more powerful version of his childhood condition returns. Unni begins to blank out for short periods of time. ‘A few seconds maybe, a minute sometimes, as perceived through the standard measure of time in the material world.’

In these periods, all his senses collapse but he sees flashes in his mind. It is an extraordinary vision, according to him, but he is unable to describe it. He claims that what he sees is the true nature of reality.

‘In your mind, Ousep, you are trying to imagine what Unni may have seen. You are seeing a colour. You are imagining a giant black night, or you are imagining a spectacular white sky, depending on your personality type. But these are the myths of storytellers. Unni does not see a black vacuum or a giant white sun. I have not seen what he has seen. I am only repeating what he has told me. He has not told me what he saw because what he saw is meant to be beyond the medium of language. He could not even begin to draw it.

‘How convenient, you think. A boy claims to have seen something paranormal, but he is unable to describe it. But is that so hard to accept? You and a dog see a car passing by, Ousep. Now imagine, the dog has to describe the scene to other dogs. It cannot. The dog saw an ordinary sight, even to a dog the moment is simple, but its neurological system has been devised in such a way that it is not meant to convey the thought, it is meant to be trapped in its own communication channels.’

Unni feels trapped in the austerity of human communication, ‘he is trapped in language’. He wonders whether there is a way he can convey what he has seen to others. Convey the message that reality is very different from what people imagine. According to Unni, all of nature is a timeless contest between two forces — absolute reality, which is the true state of all matter, and the ‘syndicate of life’, which does not want its organisms to see the truth.

‘Because, if you see the truth, you will be in a perpetual state of ecstatic trance, you won’t fuck, you won’t sustain life, you won’t be desperate to live inside a carbon body. If you see reality you will not want to be a part of the syndicate of life. The purpose of the syndicate is to sustain itself, to exist for ever in the minds of its organisms. Therefore, from the beginning of conscience, it has eliminated any neurological network that has the potential to see nature in its true form. It has done this through a process of natural selection, through trial and error, by rewarding species that are delusional and by terminating those that are awakened. What is left of this process is what you see around you — beings that are programmed to survive and multiply but cannot think too deeply, which includes almost all of humanity.’

‘Whose view is all this?’ Ousep asks. ‘Did Unni say this or is it your view?’

‘Both of us had this view, the same view.’

‘A shared view of the world?’

‘Yes,’ Somen says, ‘a shared view.’

‘But who said it first? Who came up with the expression “syndicate of life”? You or Unni?’

‘What is more important is that you understand the rogue brain.’

‘The rogue brain?’

‘Over the ages, the syndicate of life has exterminated all types of brain that have the capacity to see too much. But now and then, by pure chance, nature accidentally creates human brains that can see more than they are meant to. So, the syndicate has inserted some safeguards — one of them is that the brain can perceive a lot more than it can describe to other brains through language and visual arts. That way, even if a rogue brain is accidentally able to grasp the truth, it will not be able to describe it. It would start behaving in a manner that would be considered abnormal or unstable.’

‘This was Unni’s view?’

Somen ignores the question. It is as if he has not heard him, but he looks Ousep in the eye when he speaks.

‘The syndicate also responds to the rogue brain by inflicting a condition that is widely known as depression — the idea is to switch off all the delusions of pleasure and make life itself seem so dull and meaningless that the organism will be influenced to self-terminate. The syndicate tries many other methods of quelling the rebellion of potential rogue brains. In most brains, including conformist brains, the system has seeded the delusions of many philosophies and the delusion of enlightenment. The idea here is to satisfy the curiosity of the brain by providing a false sense of intellectual quest. Through philosophy, God and rationality, the syndicate efficiently ensures that the curiosity of almost every neurological system is satisfied.’

Who is left, then? No one, except Unni and Somen?

‘But there are rare rogue brains, which are not fooled yet,’ Somen says. ‘And the syndicate responds through more powerful delusions. In such rogues, the syndicate enhances all the senses and shows a life that is extraordinarily pleasurable. That is what happened to Unni. Soon after he began to blank out and see the flashes of something he could not explain, he also began to feel moments of unnatural power within him. In these moments he would be filled with great happiness and he would see the world in all its colours and beauty. Even a touch of the breeze or the movement of ants would seem to him as if it were a deep experience. Life made him feel every moment it had to offer. He also became supernaturally sexual. He did not tell me much about his sexual cravings, all he told me was that he was filled with the filthiest thoughts, dangerous thoughts, but very pleasurable thoughts.’

But Unni knows what is happening to him. He has seen the other side and he knows that the syndicate of life is trying to delude him. He believes that there are more like him in the world and begins to search for them. He searches among the seemingly normal, and among the mad. He searches for the unnaturally happy and the inexplicably sad. But he finds no one who is like him.

THOMA CHACKO STANDS IN the doorway of the kitchen and wonders whether it is a good time to make the confession. His mother looks peaceful by her standards, but she is clearly lost in her own thoughts, which is what he wants. She has just returned from the Sacred Heart Family Store and is transferring things into jars and bottles. She takes the one-kilo sachet of sunflower oil in her hand and bites the tip off. This is the best time to confess, Thoma knows, because when she is pouring sunflower oil into a bottle she does it with ascetic concentration. ‘Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name,’ he says. She does not turn, she is not listening to him. Thoma must do it now. ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. I told Mythili about Philipose, I don’t know why I did that. Hope I did not do anything wrong. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts …’

Mariamma stops pouring the oil into the bottle, puts the sachet on the kitchen counter and stares at him. ‘What did you say, Thoma?’

‘I was praying.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, “Give us this day our daily bread and …”’

‘Before that?’

‘I have something to confess,’ he says.

‘What is it?’

‘I told Mythili about Philipose, about what he did to you, about Unni and Philipose and the comic and everything.’

‘Why did you do that, Thoma?’ she asks. She is not angry, she is sad and hurt, which is worse.

‘I don’t know. Did I do something bad?’

‘You cannot go around saying these things to other people, Thoma.’

‘I don’t know what happened to me,’ he says. ‘She asked me, “Thoma, what has your father found about Unni?” And I don’t know why I told her everything I know. Mythili was very angry. She still loves us, she was very angry. She hates Philipose. She said Philipose should have killed himself, not Unni. That’s what she said. She still loves all of us very much, I think.’

He stops talking because his mother looks as if she has seen a ghost behind him. Thoma turns nervously to see what has terrified her but he sees nothing. Then she takes the oil sachet and begins to pour its contents into the bottle again.

‘What happened?’ he asks, but she does not say anything.

After she has put the bottle back on the shelf, she begins to walk up and down the hall. She does not make any violent movements, she does not talk or wag her finger. She is calm, but she is also disturbed. He has never seen her this way. He sits on a chair at the dining table and watches her for nearly an hour. He wonders what it is that he has said that has made her behave in this manner.

She will explain this moment to Thoma many years later, when they stand together facing Unni’s grave in the churchyard that lies in the shade of the high eucalyptus trees. She will by then be one of those calm, dignified, affluent middle-aged women who emerge from their long silver cars. ‘If one half of your life has been tough,’ she will tell Thoma another time, ‘the chances are that the other half will turn out all right. As Unni told me once, “In this world, you cannot escape happiness.”’

‘YOU MUST REMEMBER,’ SOMEN says, ‘you must remember what I said in the beginning, Ousep. Unni was normal most of the time. And when he was in control of himself, which was most of the time, he was hopelessly in love with all those who mattered to him. Like anybody else. They could affect him and he wanted to be affected by them.’

Unni is seventeen when he finally charms out of his mother her secret, and he is filled with a great rage at the injustice. He wants to punish Philipose. But he can also see the sexual criminality of men as a powerful force of the syndicate. His own body is desperate for women, any women, and there are times when he fears that he could do anything to satisfy it. But that does not mean he will pardon Philipose. He goes to find him but Philipose is gone. Dead after a good life. Unni seethes for days. He feels violent towards all men, he is disgusted by them. One afternoon he finds Simion Clark in the lab, massaging a boy. ‘He was more than massaging, actually,’ Somen says with a giggle. The next day, Unni dispenses justice to the man. He is somewhat comforted by his action, his desire for vengeance is quenched. And he resumes his search for people like him, people whom the syndicate has chosen to torment through abilities and disabilities, through moments of ecstatic happiness and deep destructive sorrow.

He decides to be less discreet in his search. He walks into the class one morning and reveals the rudiments of what he has seen, what he knows. Something about him, something about what he says, affects them all. Everyone is disturbed, some even feel the transient fright of coming close to a forbidden truth, some are affected in a deeper way, but they are too ensconced in the syndicate to fully see what Unni has tried to show them. There is no one who can fully understand him. Except one. Somen Pillai.

‘That moment in the class is when I really looked at Unni Chacko. And I told myself, “I think I know what that boy is talking about.” Why do I say that, Ousep? To understand that you need to know something about me.

‘I, too, was born with a condition. I was always filled with unreasonable sorrow, even when I was a child in a very happy home. I had no reason to be this way, but I was. The world around me seemed bleak and pointless. Nothing interested me. Nothing. I was a corpse. A corpse inside a living body. I thought of killing myself many times but I didn’t because I knew what it was to be dead. All my life I have been dead. What’s the point in merely shedding the body? That’s what I would say every time I thought of killing myself.

‘I went through life in silence and a pointless loneliness, wondering what all the fuss around me was about. Then one day, Unni walked into the class and said, “Something is happening around us, there is a secret we must know, everything that we know is false.” For the first time in my life I felt the excitement of hope. I thought if there was another reality, maybe I belonged to that, maybe that was what was wrong with me, I was trapped in the wrong place.

‘I started talking to Unni. In the beginning, I did not understand many things he said, but we talked for hours. He was trying to tell me something, and I tried hard to understand. He was very interested in knowing how I perceived the world and I told him things I had not told anybody. I told him I was a corpse, and I told him how a corpse sees the world. I slowly began to understand what he was trying to say and I was stunned. It was clear to me that the syndicate had attacked me long before my brain could see the true nature of reality. The syndicate of life was afraid that I would see the truth.

‘Being with Unni was bliss. For the first time in my life I felt the excitement of living in this decaying body. Unni and I went in search of many people who are considered abnormal. His search for someone like him was also a search for someone like me. Even with the normal people we became very curious about some of their quirks. There are traces of the syndicate’s safeguards in all of us. There is God in all of us.

‘Sai Shankaran was a lot of fun. We used him to understand how a confused conformist brain really worked. The corpse could finally laugh at the living. That was Unni’s gift to me.’

But Unni now increasingly believes that he has been defeated by the syndicate, he feels that the material forces inside him are very strong. He is extraordinarily happy and desperate to live. ‘Like a drug addict is desperate for his drug, Unni was desperate to live.’

He decides to fight the syndicate. He thinks that the exhilaration of near-death will give him the powers to take on the primordial forces of the syndicate. Somen joins him in this fight. They swim in powerful ocean currents and almost drown. They ride Somen’s scooter at top speed across busy junctions. They stand on railway tracks and watch trains hurtle towards them. Then, Unni claims that there is a more powerful way to fight the syndicate, a Gandhian way that he says is more powerful than near-death. Near-sex. ‘Lying with a naked woman without screwing her.’

The idea comes to him one morning when he is in Somen’s house. No one is home but the two of them. Somen’s parents have gone to meet their relatives in Pondicherry. ‘Sakhi comes home, unexpectedly, because she has realized that one of her earrings is missing. Do you know who Sakhi is?’

‘No.’

‘Sakhi is our maid. You have seen her. She is very hot.’

As she searches for the earring in the hall, Unni keeps staring at her. He feels a powerful desperation. He is fascinated by how aroused he is and how hard it is for him to restrain himself from tearing her clothes off. Somen tells him, ‘Unni, she is broad-minded.’

A few months earlier, in the backyard of the house, as she was squatting and washing clothes, Somen had lost control of himself and grabbed her. Not such a corpse after all, this boy. She screamed and ran away, but did not complain. She appeared the next day as if nothing had happened. When she was cleaning his room, she whispered to the floor that she might consider letting him squeeze her again if he gave her fifty rupees — an offer he accepted. But he was so disgusted with himself that he did not pursue her again.

When Unni hears this, he gets an idea. He negotiates with her and it is decided that, for a hundred rupees, she will sit naked with him in Somen’s room for exactly thirty minutes. He promises that he will not touch her. When he emerges after thirty minutes, he feels it is the toughest thing he has ever done. To have a beautiful woman, completely naked, by his side, and keep his hands off her. He claims that the exercise will give them the power to triumph over sexual desperation. Somen, too, tries the experiment. She tries to convince him to pay her five hundred rupees and do what he pleases with her. But he resists, he claims, successfully.

Unni leaves early that day because he has things to do. He borrows thirty rupees from Somen for his haircut. ‘That was the last time I saw him. Less than two hours after he left my house he was dead. As I told you right at the beginning, Ousep, I don’t know what happened to him. I do not know what happened to him after he left my house.’

When Ousep finds his voice he feels as if it belongs to someone else. Somen says, ‘Can you repeat what you said, Ousep? You’ve lost your voice, it seems to me.’

‘Can you guess what may have happened to Unni after he left your house?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Why have you shut yourself up in this room?’

‘To diminish the forces of the syndicate. I don’t want to see or hear the delusion of life. One day I will escape my corpse state and see what Unni saw — the true nature of reality.’

‘Somen, what makes you think Unni did not suffer from a powerful delusion?’

‘Which takes us to the inevitable religious moment, Ousep. I believe.’

‘What do you believe?’

‘That there is truth and that Unni saw it. I believe.’

When Ousep had first told the boy what he knew about Unni’s life, he told him everything except Unni’s association with Krishnamurthy Iyengar. Somen, too, has not mentioned the doctor. In all probability, as Ousep expected, the boy is unaware of that part of Unni’s life. It is now time to shake the ascetic. Ousep has nothing to lose. He has a vague idea how this meeting is going to end. It would end, as Somen had put it, in a religious moment.

‘Did Unni tell you that he used to meet a neuropsychiatrist? The man’s name is Krishnamurthy Iyengar. Also known as Psycho among some cartoonists.’

There is a look of surprise on Somen’s face. ‘No,’ he says.

‘Why do you think he did not mention him to you?’

‘He didn’t tell me everything. He didn’t have to tell me everything. He only told me what I needed to know.’

‘Unni used to discuss you with the doctor.’

‘So?’

‘Somen, your condition has a name. It is called the Cotard Delusion, the Corpse Syndrome. It is a rare mental disorder.’

Somen’s face cracks into an unhappy smile. ‘You have not understood anything I have said, Ousep. I think you must leave.’

‘It can be treated, Somen. The pursuit of truth, in most cases, is a mental disorder. Unni knew that. Trust me.’

‘As expected, the syndicate of life infiltrates my fortress. As I grow powerful and see beyond the limits of delusion, the syndicate sends its pathetic agent. Leave, Ousep. You are being used, can’t you see? You are being used by the dark forces of life to draw me out of my state. Get out.’

‘I lost a son,’ Ousep says. ‘I don’t want another boy to die because he did not understand what was happening to him.’

‘Goodbye, Ousep.’

‘Come,’ Ousep says, extending a firm hand. ‘Come, Somen. You, too, are my son. Step out of your room.’

‘Ousep, the world that you will show me outside is merely a larger room than mine.’

Ousep leaves without a word. When he emerges into the dim hall, shutting the door behind him, Somen’s parents rise from their chairs with tired faces, expecting a conversation. But he just walks out, into the relief of the night. And he goes down the narrow mud lane, probably for the last time in his life.

WHEN HE WALKS INTO his home, he startles his wife, who is leaning on the sofa, with her hands on her hips. She is still emerging from a thought and takes a moment to understand that Ousep has come home, silently, without being preceded by laments.

‘Why are you not drunk?’ she says.

‘I forgot. I don’t know how,’ he says.

‘Are you not well?’

‘I am tired. Where is Thoma?’

‘He is sleeping in his room,’ she says.

Ousep is about to go into his room but he lingers in the hall because she has been looking at him as if he is new. He returns her stare, trying to understand what is wrong with her. She now takes long breaths that she clearly cannot help, her eyes still on him, hands still on her hips.

‘What?’ he says.

She pants, a shudder runs through her body, but she says, ‘It’s nothing.’ Ousep puts his arm on her shoulder. It is a powerful shoulder that has forgotten how to accept affection. It feels like stone, so he withdraws his hand.

Ousep goes to his room, changes, turns off the lights and goes to sleep. He is tired but it will be just a nap, he knows. And it is just that, a dreamless, thoughtless, shallow nap. As he had expected she wakes him up. He hears her voice say, ‘I’ve something to tell you.’

When he rises, he can barely make out her figure leaving his room. All around him there is darkness, and the world outside is still. He is surprised by the deep, perfect calm of the night. What an assault he must be every night when he disturbs this solid quiet. He wears a shirt whose sleeves he has stitched himself, and he walks into the hall. It is as if he is stepping out to receive the news of another death.

The hall is lit by the kitchen light. She is sitting on the sofa, which is shrouded in the same old unchanging bedsheet. She is at one end. He sits carefully at the other end, trying to remember where the large hole in the foam is, into which their landlord had once sunk. They sit this way, staring ahead, like a couple about to be photographed, and waiting for their joyful sons to join them in the middle. She looks strong, even peaceful. ‘Thoma told Mythili everything about Philipose,’ she says. ‘That’s what the boy did today. Then Mythili said something to him. I have been thinking about it all evening. Mythili said, “Philipose should have killed himself, not Unni.” That’s what she said. That’s what Mythili said.’

Ousep is too stunned to speak, he just sits there without a word. He feels the same heaviness in his chest that he had felt in Iyengar’s car; it is as if he is in the fierce embrace of a powerful boy. He tries to imagine the chain of events that might have unfolded the day Unni died.

Mariamma turns to him, expecting a response, she is not sure whether he understood her. So he tells her, in a calm, steady voice, ‘You were right. Unni presumed you would know, he thought everybody would come to know. But the girl chose to keep it to herself.’

‘Yes,’ Mariamma says, ‘she chose to keep it to herself. She was just a child then. But one of these days she is going to tell me. That’s what I feel, she is ready to tell me. I’ll wait.’

‘The day our boy died,’ Ousep says, ‘he was in Somen’s house. He sat in a room with a naked woman. The idea was not to touch her. That was the game, a philosophical game. So, for thirty minutes, a seventeen-year-old boy sits with a naked woman. Then the boy comes home. He comes home in a state, doesn’t he?’

And, even though she has not asked, he tells her the story of her son, at least what he thinks he knows.

MYTHILI SITS IN THE darkness, on her narrow bed, her legs folded under her. She has been trying to make a decision for months. But now she is stronger, and she knows that to be good is to be brave. And Mariamma deserves a bit of decency from this world, especially from the people she loves. Mythili has come very close to telling her. Thrice she has crossed the short corridor in the middle of the night as her parents slept. But every time she stood outside that door, she would lose her nerve and return. But at noon tomorrow she will walk down the ten-foot-long corridor, ring the doorbell and speak to Mariamma. For the first time since Unni died, Mythili will enter their house and will tell the most lovable woman in the world why her son died.

Three years ago, Mythili’s mother hands the girl a new silk dress to try on. It is real silk, a sky-blue top and a full skirt with silver elephants embroidered on the hem. Mythili stands on the rear balcony wearing the top and skirt. She has let her thick long hair loose. When Mariamma appears, Mythili stands on a high stool to show her the full length of the dress. ‘You look like a beautiful lady,’ Mariamma says, and sings a brief song in Malayalam. Mythili tells herself that she probably does look beautiful today. She wants Unni to see her this way. But she wants their meeting to be accidental, so she does not call out to him from her balcony as she normally does. She waits for a long time on both the balconies but there is no sight of him. Her mother, as expected, keeps asking her to change because these clothes are new and they are meant for festivals. But then Mother leaves for the temple. She won’t be back for over two hours.

It is late morning now. Mythili stands on her front balcony and calls out Unni’s name in the many accents of the elders of the block. But he is not at home. It appears that nobody is at home. She waits on the balcony to see whether Unni will appear in the lane below, walking in his languid, arrogant way. She wonders whether he is inside his home, shut in his room and working on a comic, deaf to everything that is happening around him. So she decides to go to his house. She walks down the corridor and opens the door as she has done all her life. There is nobody in the hall. The door to Mr Ousep Chacko’s room is open and she can see that there is no one there. The boys’ bedroom door is shut. There she finds Thoma sleeping in the bed, but there is no sign of Unni. She decides to wait in the hall and surprise him. She will pretend that she just happened to be in these clothes, by pure chance. She takes a bunch of old issues of Readers’ Digest from the shelf in the hall, and sits with them on the floor between the sofa and the two chairs. She lies on her stomach and starts reading the magazines. She is drowsy but she tries to keep her eyes open. If Unni sees her sleeping he will draw a moustache on her again, and that would be very inelegant. But in the gentle, steady breeze, her eyes slowly relent and shut, and she lets herself sleep.

When she feels the hand running through her hair and down her spine and legs, and all over her body, she is not sure whether it is a dream. She cannot deny she has had such dreams before, but then she knows it is not a dream. She gets up with a start and sees Unni staring at her. He holds her in his powerful arms and kisses her. She is so frightened she screams and tries to extricate herself from his grip, and in her struggle, her top tears at the shoulder. That is when Unni leaves her, something in him snaps. She looks at him just for a moment before she runs away. That would be the last time she would see him alive. What she sees in that minuscule moment is Unni standing without meeting her eye, looking at the space behind her with a gentle smile. She has thought of his expression many times and tried to find its meaning. But she does not understand the face.

She runs to her home, into the bathroom. She sits on the floor and cries, she is shivering. She decides to have a bath. She wonders what she should tell her mother about the torn top. She invents many excuses in the bath. That is when she hears the sounds of men, she hears the word ‘Unni’ several times, and she is too terrified even to guess what may have happened. What an idiot, Unni, what an idiot.

In a few hours, Mythili will tell Unni’s mother everything about that day. But what she really wants to tell her, if she is not too shy to do that, is that she is sorry she abandoned her. The day Unni died, Mariamma lost a son and a daughter. Mythili is sorry she chose the comfort of hiding, she is sorry it turned out that way, but now the daughter has returned, and she will always watch over her till the end of her time. That is what she will say. She has the strength to say it now.

OUSEP HAS LONG FINISHED the story of Unni Chacko, and his wife has listened in silence but without any questions. Something about her tells him that she has finally made peace with Unni, she may even believe that his death has been resolved. But Ousep plans his day ahead.

He will wake up early and make a list of people he will meet — all kinds of people, new people. What did Unni see? What did Unni know, what could make a boy so contemptuous of happiness, of his own extraordinary happiness, and of human life, which he considered so trivial that he needed merely one honourable reason to shed it? Ousep will go in search of the answers, he will not stop. A search without an end. What is so terrifying about a search without an end?

Ousep, finally, in the search for meaning. Resolute, even though he does see Unni Chacko in another place, arching his body and laughing.