Banquet on the Dead by Sharath Komarraju

nap. I saw Gauri still in the kitchen—she was probably readying lunch.’ He paused, and his hands twitched as they clutched the armrests of his chair. ‘I did not feel very hungry that day. It was as if something had killed my appetite. Now, looking back,’ he looked up at them dolefully, ‘I sometimes feel maybe I had an inkling of what had happened and maybe that had killed my hunger.’
    Nagarajan said, ‘So did you go back to sleep after you went into the room, sir?’
    ‘Yes, after maybe twenty minutes or so of reading. I only woke up when I heard voices outside—those of Praveen, Prameela, Raja... ‘His voice croaked, and he coughed a couple of times to bring it back to normal. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I slept.’
    ‘I know this is very painful to you, sir, but can you please tell us what you saw when you came out of your room?’
    ‘Sir,’ he said in a pathetic voice, ‘I honestly do not remember. I must have gone into shock or something, but for a long, long time all I could see was her face and her body, just lying there—dead!’ His hands rose to his face and covered his eyes. ‘Dead!’ His voice quivered, and he broke off, sobbing.
    Nagarajan waited patiently for the man to recover. He refused to be swayed by Swami’s show of emotion, though he admitted to himself that this was more in line with expected behaviour than what he had seen in Prameelamma. Even so, he had seen many such ‘sincere’ shows of grief in his line of work to be affected by it either way. So he simply waited.
    Eventually, the man calmed down. Rubbing his eyes with the flats of his palms, he said, ‘I remember Raja crawled to her bed and said something to her. She did not reply. Praveen was sitting there too, and he was sobbing... I think—I think Prameela was there too, somewhere.’ He swallowed, hard, and restored himself to equanimity. ‘And then Karuna came,’ he said.
    ‘Was she expected?’ asked Nagarajan.
    ‘No, sir,’ Swami answered, and hesitated. ‘Karuna— Karuna does not like coming to our house very much.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘To be more specific, she does not like me very much.’
    ‘And the reason, sir?’
    ‘Most of it is just instinctive hostility, I guess. You like some people and you dislike others. Sometimes there is no one big enough reason. There are a lot of small ones.’
    Nagarajan nodded. ‘And is this feeling of—hostility— mutual?’
    ‘More or less,’ said Swami. ‘But since I am the older person I take pains to not let it show as much as she does.’
    ‘But surely, sir,’ Nagarajan insisted, ‘you could tell us one reason, perhaps, that induces such antagonism?’
    Swami thought for a second. ‘Yes, I suppose I should. Let me give you an example. When Karuna walked in that day and looked at Mother’s body in the room, she sighed as if to say, “Finally!” and admonished all of us for crying. She said Mother had lived a long enough life and now that she was gone, all of us should get on with ours without her watching us every single minute.’
    Hamid Pasha said, ‘There is wisdom in that, miyan.’
    ‘I agree,’ Swami said. ‘But it is the way she says it, sir. She spits out the words at you as if you were some sort of cur. All of us—and I insist, all of us—were shocked with what she said. She has always been that sort of girl: mean, heartless, and insensitive. Everyone in the family keeps away from her, sir.’
    ‘And what about your mother? Did she have any love for your niece?’
    Swami shook his head. ‘None whatsoever, sir. She used to always ask Kotesh where Karuna got all that anger from. Karuna also has a weakness—as we all do, I guess—for money. She is a hoarder, and we tend to be a bit more liberal with our money, as you can see.’ He gestured at the room and its furniture. ‘That has often come between us too.’
    Hamid Pasha stroked his beard thoughtfully and said, ‘So, miyan, it looks like memsaab is not liked by anyone in the