of my hair. “Almost at your waist, Maya. Where will it have grown to by the time I’m back?” I could smell onions frying although it was almost midnight. On our neighbour’s radio, a prosaic voice reported floods, scams, train accidents, cricket scores. Michael’s hand wandered downward till it reached my hips. He said, “Your hair will be here – or maybe longer? This far?”
I switched the light off.
* * *
The news came to me by way of my landlord, who had a telephone. They had found Michael’s body after three days of searching. It was close to the lake, I was told, he had almost made it there when the landslides, rain, and snowstorms came and separated Michael from the others with him. His body had a broken ankle, which was no doubt why he had not been able to move to a less exposed place. And the face was unrecognisable, burned black by the cold.
They brought him downhill to a tiny village on the route and cremated him there. They saved the backpack they had found beside him, and the mountaineering institute sent it to Hyderabad along with Michael’s ashes, which they had put into an empty ghee tin. I tried going through the contents of the backpack, but after taking out the first two sweatshirts, with the scent of him still in them, I found it too painful to unpack further and locked it into the suitcase it had come from, below our bed.
The day the backpack came, I went down our alley to the little paan shop which had a tin box of a phone booth tacked to one side of it. We used to be regulars there. A small group of people hung around, smoking, chatting, waiting for their paan to be made, for their turn at the phone. I waited too. Eventually my turn came. Conscious of curious ears all around me, I murmured my questions into the phone. The mountaineering institute was in the hills, hundreds of miles away, and it sounded as if we were speaking through a wild storm. “What, what?” the voice at the other end yelled. I spoke louder, then louder still above the crackles and echoes. “What? Who is it?” the voice still demanded. I began to shout: “My husband has died in that accident. Could you give me more details?” The crowd at the paan shop edged closer, stared at me without blinking. The tiny booth oozed the thick scent of old chewing tobacco, cigarette smoke, and incense. An old woman patted my shoulder, said, “Paapam, paapam,” in pitying tones. I pushed her hand away. Finished explaining all the facts to the distant voice, its unfamiliar Hindi-accented English. “Madam, I am not authorised,” the voice said, “hold one minute.” After a long silence another voice arrived and in cautious tones began, “Am I right, Madam, that you are – ” Again I repeated: “My husband died on that trek. Tell me what happened, I need to know what happened.” The second man’s voice ebbed and flowed into my ears, the storm on the line intensified. I could hear nothing. I could no longer see or speak for tears. I thrust the telephone into the nearest hand and stumbled away from it.
I could not face the thought of another crowded call from that booth. The next day, I started a letter to the mountaineering institute instead. “Dear Madam or Sir,” it began, “I am writing to find out … “ I put it aside, then picked up my pen again a week later. I needed to know how Michael had died. How, exactly? I had a hundred questions. Could I get answers? I stared at the white, unlined sheet of paper. Faces frozen black with cold appeared before me. I heard the crack of bone as Michael’s ankle snapped. Set aside the pen again.
I lay back on the bed and saw that the ceiling was hung with sticky cobwebs in that corner which only Michael could reach with the broom, if he stood on a chair. The spiders would live there in peace now. I knew that at the back of the cupboard there were letters from an earlier girlfriend of his. I would burn them without reading them. Had he loved her as he had loved me?
I was afraid to know. I needed to not know.
I never finished my letter to the institute. Nor did I telephone again. A terrible restlessness took hold of me. I began