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{inferences from death} ajay vishwanathan The little girl, hair oiled, neatly plaited, looks up at me and smiles. I wouldn't have thought there was sadness in her eyes had someone not told me her father had slashed his own wrist and died. A lovely daughter who wouldn't sleep without listening to his stories, a wife so soft-spoken her words were petals slipping down a tilted urn. They said he died a coward, unable to face more gloom from an elusive job, more pity from judging glares. But I wonder, as detached strangers, if theories and conjecture floating over cups of coffee can fathom the violent forensics of a man willing to curl up and die in the scent of his own blood. Vacant speculation nevertheless - did he conclude that as a living inutile husband he was more painful to her than clingy wounds from being called sad wife of a self-slayed man? Did he assume that little explosions of doubt scalding his wife's mind were tamable? Was I not strong enough to console you? Not loving enough to feel terrible sitting hunched over your lifeless face? Speculations run wild like fantasies, loving to frisk about on brinks of improbability, of succulence: Maybe it wasn't his job, it was the other woman his wife had discovered in the smell of his lazy embraces, who seduced him away only to be found gallivanting in someone else's arms, leaving him with a staggered wife he had found insufficient. Maybe a terminal illness that would have drained their finances, leaving his family penniless and then, bereft. Wherever reasoning goes, it still scratches and labors trying to figure out where the little girl would go when she wants to listen to the favorite story father always told her in bed. |
