The Illicit Happiness of Other People Read Online Free Page B

nature. It is, in fact, another deceit of writers. A plot device, like the idea of a beginning, a middle and an end. In the real world, are mysteries usually solved? What are the chances? Was there ever a person in this world who went in search of an answer and actually found it?
    Ousep has been searching for three years, since that Saturday when he had returned to his office after the chief minister’s lunch. He found almost the entire staff, more than twenty of them, standing near his desk, in a huddle. When they saw him they grew nervous, he could see. They stared at him. He stopped a few feet away and looked at them with his hands on his hips. It is a moment that comes to every person in the world. It may come as a phone call, it can arrive through a stranger at the door, or it can happen this way – when you return to your desk to file a quick report, people stand waiting for you. And someone gathers the courage to say, ‘Your son is dead, Ousep. He fell from the terrace. That’s what your neighbours say. They say he fell.’
    When Ousep reached the hospital he saw Thoma standing outside the gates with a neighbour. Ousep was mad with relief and joy. Obviously, there had been a mistake. The boy was very much alive, Thoma was alive. But for some reason the boy was standing outside the hospital gates. Then, for the first time in his life, Ousep went numb with raw fear. Could it be Unni? But how could it be Unni? Only little children fell, wasn’t that true, only children died falling. And if there was a person in the world who was sure of his every step it was that boy. Minutes later, in the morgue, Ousep saw the corpse, the still, cold body of Unni Chacko, a boy of seventeen. By evening, people were beginning to tell him the most absurd thing he had ever heard.
    Unni had jumped from the terrace, head first. Of all the people in the world, Unni. Why, Unni? Nobody still has a clue. After three years, nobody has a clue.
    These are the facts, they are not disputed. About three years ago, on 16 May 1987, Unni Chacko left home in the morning after working all night on a comic. He was gone for nearly four hours. Nobody knows where he had gone. At noon he got a haircut. When he returned to Block A, he played cricket with the boys. He bowled, he did not like to bat. Then he decided to go home. He took the stairs. It is not clear what happened next. He must have reached home, which is on the third floor, the highest floor, but nobody saw him on the stairs or going into his house. His mother was not at home, she had gone to attend a prayer meeting. His younger brother, Thoma, was at home, but fast asleep in his room. In all probability, Unni reached home. The house is never latched or locked in the day, so he could have entered without ringing the doorbell. About twenty minutes after Unni took the stairs, he was seen on the terrace. According to six eyewitnesses – three boys on the terrace of Block A and three women in Block B who had a clear view – Unni stood on the railing, composed and in control. He stopped for a moment, crossed his hands behind his back and plunged down. He fell on the concrete walkway that runs beside the playground. He died instantly, people say. He did not leave a note. His death came weeks after the school board exams in which, as it turned out, he had somehow scored seventy-eight per cent. He had no intention of going to a regular college, but he had plans, the boy had many plans. In six weeks he would have turned eighteen.
    Ousep did not know it then, but Unni told a lot of people that he was a Hindu, an atheist Hindu, whatever that means, but he went the Christian way. The funeral mass was in FatimaChurch. That was the first time Ousep had entered a church in over two decades. The coffin moved down the aisle towards the altar on the arms of strangers. Ousep walked behind them, hugging the shoulder of the boy’s mother, both slowly passing through rows of empty pews. How strong, the legs of dumb