Fiction: 68-year-old Gajanan casts aside his meek old self and embraces his new homicidal avatar

COVID got my wife, Sumitra. In the second wave. I didn’t get to see her dead. COVID protocols and all. So, Sumitra got a state-sponsored cremation, and I didn’t have to do a thing. Not that I was in any position to, for COVID almost got me too.

But I survived. No one thought I would – not the doctors, not the nurses and ward boys, or even the young patient next to me in the ICU. But then that’s the thing about me. I’ve often pulled through in life pretending to be half-dead.

My name is Gajanan Godbole, and I am sixty-eight. As they say in the Bible or one of those holy books: “The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to all.”

I don’t remember much of my epic life-and-death struggle against COVID. It’s all a blur, and I think half the time I wasn’t even in my body. My soul however got the uncanny feeling that I wasn’t much wanted in heaven either, probably because in life, I wasn’t much of the pious God-believing type.

Also, as eerie as it might sound, I seem to remember hearing this whispered conversation, while comatose:

“Do we take him?”

“No,” replied a gruff other voice, “the one next to him.”

“But isn’t he too young?”

“When has that ever stopped us? His purpose is over…” the gruff one remarked.

“And this old man’s isn’t?”

“You ask too many questions,” the gruff one snapped. “He’s an asset…to be activated soon.”

I can’t say for certain whether I was hallucinating or if I really was privy to this purported chat between Yamraj, the god of death, and his assistant Chitragupt. But when I finally recovered, I learnt that the smart aleck next to me had copped it the previous night.

So it set me thinking. I could’ve died, but I hadn’t. That kind of made me feel lucky, even immortal, something I had never ever felt before. In fact, all my life, I had felt much too mortal, as if the slightest cockiness from me would invite divine comeuppance. That is the reason I had remained steadfastly meek, embracing the path of least resistance, since I first started going to school. It made total sense, given my physical size and the size of my heart – avoiding all confrontations whatsoever and waving the white flag, long before even the dim prospect of any battle with anyone could arise.

But COVID did something to me. Something strange. I felt reborn – a different avatar of me, sans my trademark meekness. It was inexplicable, indescribable – that feeling of waking up as an altered Gajanan Godbole – as if my meekness had just been a tight-laced corset which I had worn all my life, conned into believing that the shortness of my breath and the squeezing in my chest were the natural states of my being. And now that it had come undone, I had discovered that my chest could heave freely, and my breathing was no longer constricted.

“Papa,” shrieked my daughter Trupti, as soon as I picked up my ringing mobile.

I frowned. A call from Trupti was always a strain on my nerves. Mercifully, doctors didn’t allow patients to receive calls in the ICU, even from kin who were calling from foreign lands, or my recovery would have promptly reversed, if obliged to speak to Trupti. But now that I was home, there was no way of avoiding a conversation.

“Yes, dear…”

“Papa, I was so scared I’d never hear your voice again,” Trupti continued shrilly. “Thank God you beat COVID!”

“Yes, yes,” I replied, “it was a narrow escape…”

“But Mum, poor Mum…She wasn’t so lucky,” Trupti cut me short, “Did she suffer a lot, Papa?”

“Ah well, I don’t know, dear…I hope not,” I said. I had not really given a thought to whether my wife, Sumitra, had suffered. Normally, anyone or anything that came into contact with Sumitra suffered. But maybe COVID was an exception and had turned the tables on her.

“Didn’t the doctors tell you anything?” Trupti asked, dissatisfied with my reply.

“No, no…They thought it better not to tell me the details.”

“But why didn’t you ask them?” Trupti demanded indignantly.

“Well…I…I was kind of dying myself…so…”

“Oh Papa, I’m so sorry! I hate myself for not being there when Mum breathed her last.”

I cleared my throat, but stopped myself from comforting her that she wouldn’t have been able to be anywhere close to Sumitra, because of COVID protocols. Besides it was a moot point whether anyone would have been comforted by Trupti’s presence especially when they were breathing their last. So, I restricted myself to saying, “There, there child, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Was she given a proper funeral, Papa?” Trupti asked.

“I am sure they did, dear.”

“I mean, we have been watching all these horror stories about mass cremations and bodies being disposed of in the Ganges,” Trupti said melodramatically. “I’ve been having nightmares imagining Mum’s fate – visualising her body floating down the Ganga.”

I could feel the irritation gnawing at my vitals, but I tried not to snap. “We live in Maharashtra, dear. No Ganga here…the situation isn’t all that bad.”

“Thank God, Papa, thank God,” Trupti wailed, “will you ever forgive me for not being there for you?”

Wasn’t she a drama queen, just like her mother! For a moment I wrestled with the idea of hanging up – feigning a call drop or bleating “hello, hello” as if I couldn’t hear her, then ending the call and switching off the mobile. But I just made some appropriate noises that sounded long-sufferingly affectionate. It was a mistake.

Trupti was immediately consoled and encouraged to pile on more suffering. “Just a minute, Papa, Swanand wants to talk to you.”

I winced and again thought of hanging up. Swanand was my son-in-law, Trupti’s husband – a pompous ass and a bore – an IT coolie who acted as if having settled in the US, he was entitled to be patronising with every acquaintance back in India. Actually, I ought to have been grateful to him for having taken Trupti off my hands and making her his own problem but there are limits to how grateful one can humanly feel towards an overbearing prick named Swanand, meaning someone who finds happiness within their self.

Excerpted with permission from The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole, Salil Desai, Hachette India.