DECAY

 Soumen was still laughing, though quietly now. 'Your belly must be on fire."

"It's the way life works, Soumen-bhai. You come in bawling. You go out groaning. No one wants to come, no one wants to go."

"Oh, stop being frivolous Ambika-ji," Soumen said, he had stood up to leave. "Clever men like you lead long lives."

Ambika Prasad kept quiet.

"I mean, look at me," Soumen continued. "I can barely fit my family inside that tiny flat. Half our stuff is on the landing or the stairs. You, on the other hand, have managed to make room for two paying tenants."

This time, Ambika Prasad joined Soumen in his hearty laughter. Some years ago, their neighbourhood had been roiled by a series of scooter and motorbike thefts. Two of his colleagues, without garage facilities but worried about their vehicles, had decided to put Ambika Prasad's near-empty flat to use. Ever since, he had slumbered every night with a Vespa scooter and Bajaj motorbike keeping him company near the foot of his bed.

* * * *

Ambika Prasad got busy from the very next day. He wanted to sort out his affairs, of which there were few, before his strength went. Always a careful man, he had, quite some time ago, written a detailed note to his son about the money owed to him by the government, were he to suddenly die. He had put it in a brown paper envelope and pasted it to the back of the only framed portrait of his wife and him, taken a month after their marriage. 

The time had now come to make an inventory of everything else he had. He hauled out the aluminium storage trunk from deep under the bed, another reminder of his marriage, a gift from his wife's family. He spent an entire evening going through its contents. The portrait lay at the bottom of the trunk. He unfastened the envelope from its back and took out several ruled sheets of paper. 

With a steady, even hand, he made it known to the family surviving him that he would leave them half a dozen white dhotis, eight full-sleeved white shirts, six pairs of white socks, two woollen pullovers (brown and dark grey), a brown monkey cap, an embroidered Kashmiri shawl (grey) and two blankets. 

After a while, he added a dictionary, the copy of the Gita he read every night, a dog-eared copy of World Short Stories, translated to Hindi. He updated the amount of money in his bank account, adding the interest earned since he had prepared the note.