Chandraval

The sunwarmth that had spread itself like a blanket in Basavanna’s temple came slithering out and slipped down from the threshold past the stone turtle. Although it was ten in the morning, Sannya was still sitting there, propped against the wall, lost to the world. All around him, like dead rain bugs, lay a scatter of beedi butts. Gauri had died the previous morning, and he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Hearing Gauri’s name was enough to burn his mind up with rage, set it shivering with shame; but beneath this whole pile of rags, scratching line after line in its depths like a whetted knife, was a guileless grief. Like an oil lamp lighting up the shadowed sanctum of a temple, sporting a new nine-yard sari with a dazzling pallu, she had come into his life. His eyes had taken a newborn pride in her dark, finely sculpted, polished figure. But all this had lasted just a few days. Sannya simply wanted to push all the horrible memories away; but Gauri had died after writhing in agony for two hours last morning, everything he had put behind him had been roused to life again, and Sannya’s…