He tore into pieces after Aiyya’s death.

Shredded. Entangled.

He saw it coming. Aiyya had not been keeping well for a few years and had a full-time nurse. Amma was starting to lose her hearing. She would watch television all day, not understanding a single word. She would babble to herself, mumble inscrutably, and walk with one hand cradling a small of her back. He did odd jobs around the house for little money. He had a better-paying job at the confectionary store near the town’s bus stand, but he was indebted to Aiyya and Amma. He still performed odd jobs around their house for a few hours every week.

Three decades ago, he had crawled into their house during Ram Navami. Aiyya had kept three tall brass vessels, each four feet tall, inside the railing of the house and outside the front door–tamarind rice, coconut rice, and vermicelli payasam. It was Aiyya’s yearly service to the town.

He had eaten a full meal for the first time in three months. Soon after that, Aiyya and Amma hired him for tiny errands. He climbed the tender coconut tree in the backyard to pluck fruits, bathed cows and cleaned their toilets. He watched their kids grow up–all five of them. He ate his food seated on the floor and pressed against the wall, away from the rest of the family. He ate as though he were banished. In actuality, he was - covertly, but admittedly.

The kids, especially the two boys, laughed at him and called him Picchai, which meant alms. He laughed along and soon adopted the name. He was Picchai to everyone—he was Picchai when he was asked to remove old dusty books from inside the storage room’s loft; he was Picchai when he was asked to keep a good distance from the residents of the house; and he was Picchai when he was admonished for entering the prayer room.

He was Picchai when each of the five kids got married, and when they walked in with their children. When Aiyya and Amma made their annual trips to Chennai, they travelled in AC First Class. He was Picchai when he travelled in the unreserved section, carrying their bags in a two by two space on the floor by the window. He did not mind. He thought nothing of it. He understood the social strata.

He was a part of the home’s celebrations, even if he was relegated to the corner. During Navratri, his wife and children were invited to see Amma’s nine-step gollu display. They would point at the footlong Krishna idol, the Matryoshka dolls at the bottom, and the enormity of the kolam. They were awestruck. They sang slokas before the idols and were given gifts–shiny hair clips, hair ties with tulle fabric, cotton-silk frocks. They loved where their father worked. It did not bother them when Picchai walked a few steps behind Aiyya and Amma; or when he stood far behind Aiyya and Amma in temples; or when he was handed over a candy or two from the mountain of gifts Aiyya received when he presided as the chief guest in the local school events.

Ten years before Aiyya’s death, Picchai had invited both of them to his daughter’s wedding at the temple by the river Kaveri. Aiyya visited right when the nuptials were taking place. The newlywed bride and groom touched his feet for blessings. He placed an envelope with cash on Picchai’s palms and gently patted his shoulder. Aiyya had paid for the gold nuptial chain that dangled on his daughter’s neck.

Every year, Aiyya’s foreign-return son and daughter-in-law visited with gifts. They brought new shirts, middle-eastern dates, dry fruit boxes, perfumes, body lotions, and silver accoutrements. From one side of the room, he could hear Aiyya’s son asking his father whether he could toss a small dry fruit box and a shirt over to Picchai. Aiyya agreed. Picchai accepted the gifts wholeheartedly. He had never really eaten pistachios. He took the dry fruits home, and his family feasted on them at night after dinner. He fed some of it to Aiyya’s cattle.

Whenever Aiyya’s children came into town, they would make one change in the house. Over the years, the house got a plasma screen television, an air conditioner in the bedroom, a washing machine for the courtyard, a new armchair, a three-burner gas stove, and a blender set. This one time, one of the sons sprayed a newfound insect-repellent gel all over the house. In minutes, an army of cockroaches exited all the rooms. Some flying ones. The grandkids ran out to the courtyard, shrieking. Picchai rolled the morning’s newspaper into a cylinder and proceeded to kill all of them. It was the most he had laughed in weeks.

Two years before Aiyya’s death, Picchai was allowed into more parts of the house. He was asked to go to the prayer room to fetch a few medicines stashed in a chest of drawers. It was the first time that he had seen the room from top to bottom. In the corner, cobwebs had formed, slowly seeping into the rest of the room. The table was dusty. He traced pictures of some of the Gods and touched the flowers of jasmine.

A few months from then, Amma’s back was curved with rheumatism. Her body leaned forward. She stopped folding her sarees. She changed out of her day saree and threw it on her bed. Picchai then folded her saree and stacked it in her cupboard. He even arranged her sarees based on where she wore them. The temple sarees were stacked on the right. The silk sarees were nestled at the bottom. The daily wear sarees were kept right at the front.

Soon after, Aiyya’s legs gave in and he was bedridden. A nurse was appointed to take care of his basic needs. She would come by for twelve hours a day to change his diaper, help him release urine, and wash his body with a wet cloth. Picchai watched. He watched Aiyya’s frail, little body; the thin layer of milky skin clinging to his bones. His speech began to slur and slip, and in time, he made very little sense. He remembered Picchai though, and Picchai was grateful. He would press Aiyya’s legs softly, and remove the grime that had settled into his toenails.

Three weeks before Aiyya’s death, Picchai took a bus back to his village. His father had passed away right in the middle of the crop season. One of Aiyya’s sons had recently given Picchai a functional Nokia mobile–nothing flamboyant, and just enough to make phone calls. After his father’s funeral, Picchai rushed back. Aiyya was admitted to the hospital for obstructive pulmonary disease and was released on the next day.

Death was imminent, the doctors said. Proclaimed.

That day, Aiyya asked for Rava Kesari, Potato Bajji, and a generous side of spicy mango pickle with his curd rice. The next morning, his stools were alarmingly loose and a little bloody. His children castigated him and then hid all the bottles of pickles they had kept in the kitchen shelves. Aiyya laughed.

He asked Picchai to open the storage room cupboard and pick out the shirts he wanted for himself. Picchai refused obstinately, till Aiyya mustered the strength to yell. He went back home that night with a bag full of Aiyya’s shirts, neatly pressed.

During all this pandemonium, Amma was ensnared in her version of the world. Tamil serials played from noon to ten in the night. She consistently increased the volume of the television, till she was reprimanded by her children for not wearing her hearing aid. At points in the day, the kids huddled by the front porch of the house to talk about the arrangements of Aiyya’s will.

Two days before Aiyya’s death, Amma realised that her husband was about to die. She spent half her day crying at his bedside and asked him what she must do after he left. She took note of his savings and decided that she would live with Prasanna in Mumbai for the first year. Aiyya placed his palm on her thigh, and for a few minutes, they were motionless. From the tinted window, Picchai saw Amma and Aiyya lose each other in an embrace.

A teardrop from the corner of Aiyya’s eye opened into an ocean. His bed floated on the violent waves, and she held onto his arm. Together, they glided into the shore.

The morning of Aiyya’s death was sibilant. He was awakened for his morning filter coffee. He was made to lean over a few pillows, and then handed a steel tumbler of hot coffee. He took one sip. The tumbler fell out of his hands. The coffee stained his white vest and the sheets. The glass fell onto the floor in an elongated, slow-burning motion. It tapped against the ground a few times, echoing through the room. In less than a second, he leaned to his right before breaking into a brief convulsion. Pairs of hands caught hold of him. Picchai watched Aiyya’s life flash before his eyes.

His light, grey eyes had weathered a storm.

From his mouth, a little smoke exited. It got caught in the ceiling and found an escape through a tiny vent in the room.

The next few hours of Picchai’s life disappeared in a blur. For a few hours, Aiyya was placed inside an ice casket. Many members of his family and friends entered the house with either deafening sobs or desolate silence. Some of them wailed at the doorstep and flailed their hands in the air as they walked through the house to his casket. They tapped their heads on the plastic encasement. They slapped their heads and foreheads incredulously.

After everyone had paid their respects, Aiyya was laid on a thatched bed. He wore a pressed plaid shirt, his absolute favourite. He was seen in that shirt more than anything else he owned. His cheeks were sunken as if it were sheltering a secret between the molars. Men hurled prayers, and Aiyya was then carried outside for the cremation. Picchai followed the crowd, carefully maintaining five feet from the rest. Aiyya was taken to an open land, where he was laid to rest between a pile of logs.

He was then set on fire.

The smoke dissipated into the sky. The stench of the burning body wrapped itself around the fibres in the air.

A while later, Aiyya’s sons carried some of the ash from his cremation to the Kaveri. They stared into the eyes of the sun and deposited the ash in the water. It floated away.

All of Aiyya was now gone.

Standing knee-deep in the river, Picchai watched the sun cradle the ash that swam on the surface of the water.

Once a man, now dust.

Back in the house, clangour resumed. Lunch was being served. Picchai ate on a banana leaf, seated on the floor. Cornered. One of Aiyya’s granddaughters sat beside him. He shrugged his shoulders and shifted a little to his left so his shirt would not touch the little girl. She touched his frayed, wrinkled arm.

‘How are you so old?’ she asked him.

‘I am old,’ he responded.

‘Why are your front teeth broken?’ she asked. Her mouth opened up, gaping with a little surprise.

‘I hit it against the washing stone there. Many years ago.’

‘What is your name?’ she asked. Her mouth was stuffed with sambar and rice. She broke down the black sesame seed sweet with her fingers and made a disgusted face.

He thought about it for a few seconds. The crowd and the noises were compressed into a box and pushed into the background. The warm air inside the home turned crisp. The little girl’s bindi in the middle of her forehead was a cabbalistic-looking glass. He was siphoned into a tunnel of memories spanning the last many decades of his life.

‘Shankar,’ he responded.