Nargis was a hugger. She gravitated towards my mother, nestling within the warmth of her arms. Her father, my uncle, drowned his evenings in whiskey, flooded his days with work since his wife’s death. Nargis and her two brothers took the 12-hour train journey from Calcutta to North India to our family home for summer vacations.
Then the visits became infrequent. They stopped entirely when their father’s liver finally gave out. The first time I saw my father cry was when he left for the funeral.
Nargis eloped, married, disappeared when I was a child. For me, she was eternally eighteen. Her own twin sons were toddlers when she got back in touch. She sent photos of her grownup version hugging her family with cheerful desperation. Looking at her husband, she glowed with fierce adoration. He looked straight into the camera.
A phone ringing in the early hours of the morning never brings good news. I was 16 when her brother called to tell us: Nargis was in the hospital.
Her husband claimed they had a fight. He claimed she went into the bathroom; he pretended to be asleep. He claimed she locked the door and poured upon herself the contents of a can of kerosene she’d hidden. She lit a match. She went up in flames. She left no note. He claimed he hadn’t heard the screams.
This much was certain: He’d been having an affair. Less than a year later, the twins were dispatched to boarding school. The mistress became the new wife.
This much was certain: Nargis burned for ten minutes before the door was broken down. Strips of her charred skin had to be scrubbed off the bathroom floor.
Her vocal cords were ruined, her body was 90 percent covered in burns and could make no tears. Ten days before she slipped away. The police closed the case. Unresolved.
Nargis means Narcissus in Persian, but Nargis wasn’t in love with herself. She was in love with the searing flame of love, never realising her quest would consume her.
