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By Root 400 0

burnt. My shrivelled muscles ached. My limbs, especially my feet, were swollen and a constant source of pain. I was hungry and once again there was no food. As for water, Richard Parker was taking so much that I was down to five spoonfuls a day. But this physical suffering was nothing compared to the moral torture I was about to endure. I would rate the day I went blind as the day my extreme suffering began. I could not tell you when exactly in the journey it happened. Time, as I said before, became irrelevant. It must have been sometime between the hundredth and the two-hundredth day. I was certain I would not last another one. By the next morning I had lost all fear of death, and I resolved to die. I came to the sad conclusion that I could no longer take care of Richard Parker. I had failed as a zookeeper. I was more affected by his imminent demise than I was by my own. But truly, broken down and wasted away as I was, I could do no more for him. Nature was sinking fast. I could feel a fatal weakness creeping up on me. I would be dead by the afternoon. To make my going more comfortable I decided to put off a little the intolerable thirst I had been living with for so long. I gulped down as much water as I could take. If only I could have had a last bite to eat. But it seemed that was not to be. I set myself against the rolled-up edge of the tarpaulin in the middle of the boat. I closed my eyes and waited for my breath to leave my body. I muttered, "Goodbye, Richard Parker. I'm sorry for having failed you. I did my best. Farewell. Dear Father, dear Mother, dear Ravi, greetings. Your loving son and brother is coming to meet you. Not an hour has gone by that I haven't thought of you. The moment I see you will be the happiest of my life. And now I leave matters in the hands of God, who is love and whom I love." I heard the words, "Is someone there?"

It's astonishing what you hear when you're alone in the blackness of your dying mind. A sound without shape or colour sounds strange. To be blind is to hear otherwise. The words came again, "Is someone there?"

I concluded that I had gone mad. Sad but true. Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

"Is someone there?" came the voice again, insistent. The clarity of my insanity was astonishing. The voice had its very own timbre, with a heavy, weary rasp. I decided to play along.

"Of course someone's there," I replied. "There's always some one there. Who would be asking the question otherwise?"

"I was hoping there would be someone else ."

"What do you mean, someone else ? Do you realize where you are? If you're not happy with this figment of your fancy, pick another one. There are plenty of fancies to pick from." Hmmm. Figment. Fig -ment. Wouldn't a fig be good? "So there's no one, is there?" "Shush.. .I'm dreaming of figs."

"Figs! Do you have a fig? Please can I have a piece? I beg you. Only a little piece. I'm starving."

"I don't have just one fig. I have a whole figment."

"A whole figment of figs! Oh please, can I have some? I."

The voice, or whatever effect of wind and waves it was, faded.

"They're plump and heavy and fragrant," I continued. "The branches of the tree are bent over, they are so weighed down with figs. There must be over three hundred figs in that tree." Silence. The voice came back again. "Let's talk about food." "What a good idea."

"What would you have to eat if you could have anything you wanted?" "Excellent question. I would have a magnificent buffet. I would start with rice and sambar. There would be black gram dhal rice and curd rice and-" "I would have-"

"I'm not finished. And with my rice I would have spicy tamarind sambar and small onion sambar and-"

"Anything else?"

"I'm getting there. I'd also have mixed vegetable sagu and vegetable korma and potato masala and cabbage vadai and masala dosai and spicy lentil rasam and-" "I see."

"Wait. And stuffed eggplant poriyal and coconut yam kootu and rice idli and curd vadai and vegetable bajji and-" "It sounds very-"

"Have I mentioned the chutneys yet? Coconut chutney and mint chutney and