DECAY

 Soon, Ambika Prasad ran out of things to do. 

He had considered himself lucky to have been forewarned of his death. He used the time to tidy up his finances. He looked up debtors who had owed him for so long that their paths never crossed anymore. 

At the back of his mind, he had expected his illness to stick to its schedule and worsen in a way that matched his dwindling priorities. As his grip mellowed, his family and neighbours would step in and get him to a hospital. 

Instead, a gnawing clammy ache burned him through the day and robbed him of his sleep through the nights. It kept coiling around his abdomen like a whirlpool, as if it had nothing to do but feed on itself. For the first time in his life, Ambika Prasad was stuck with an indefinite amount of time he did not need. It was cruelty meant for a man fond of order. An unseen force was measuring out the pain, in no mood to hurry things up. He had become like others. He had no idea when death was due.

The solution announced itself just as the problem was becoming a nuisance. He had gone to bed one night and lay on his side with the quilt up to his chin. His appetite was waning, so he had skipped dinner. The Vespa's steering was turned at an angle that faced him. He lay awake looking at its sightless visor. 

It struck Ambika Prasad that he had been given an opportunity to mark out his last days from the rest of his insipid life. He was expected to abandon himself to death, not wait patiently for it. I have been blind this whole time, he thought to himself.

He got up and dressed quickly. It was a little after nine. Families were settling down to dinner in front of their television sets. The night show at Kuheli did not start before half past nine, there was plenty of time. He feared prying questions from neighbours and pulled on his brown monkey cap. Outside, he was relieved to find the world sombre and deserted, wrapped in the paled yellow mist of the streetlights.