Book Title: The Last Song of Dusk
Author: Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Number of Pages: 392
ISBN: 978-9356998568
Date Published: Sept. 5, 2024
Price: INR 324
Book Excerpt
Chapter 44
Pg. 352 – 353
Before the monsoon swept out the leaden clouds of August, Pallavi died. Dawn crept over the sky outside her cottage and tailor-birds started work on their nests and ants went on their way. She had died inside poems and gazes and a little regret and a bewildering expanse of love.
Krishnan walked over to Dariya Mahal and told the Gandharvas.
Anuradha noticed how his eyelids never blinked as he spoke.
Now, more than before, it was true: life was a process of expanding the imagination till it could contain reality. Never in her wildest dreams had Anuradha Gandharva foreseen that she would not even be able to walk to her closest, perhaps only, friend’s funeral meet. But then, as Vardhmaan was carrying her in his arms, down to Pallavi’s place, she buried her face into his nape, its coltish elegance, and she was heartened by the awareness that this was the nearest she’d been to him in years, and that underneath the grief of Pallavi’s passing, this moment, this palanquin of arms, was lovely: a solace she had never expected in a sadness that she had.
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Looking at Pallavi’s supine form, on the bier, strewn with lilies, covered with a white cloth stretching up to her neck, Anuradha was struck by how deeply centred inside the seed of death she was. Unlike the restless mien of Mohan’s face, of he who had never wanted to die, Pallavi’s face was serene, without argument. She shut her eyes. And her mind raced back to the afternoon when she had met Pallavi for the first time, outside Church Maarkit, how she had offered to drop her home. For a moment she arranged and rearranged the memories of their friendship with unambiguous detachment, recalling the anxieties confided, the jokes bartered, the wisdom pondered, and the uncertainties they grew to accept out of a reverence for fortitude, and, oddly enough, the fortitude that came out of such an acceptance.
When she opened her eyes, it was time to take Pallavi away.
They lifted her, the bier-ends resting on the shoulders of Krishnan and Vardhmaan and two other men. As they passed Anuradha, she leaned forward and they stopped.
‘Go well, my friend … there is so much beauty in you …’
Excerpted with permission from The Last Song of Dusk by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Published by HarperCollins India.
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