#rajesh

The last thing Siddharth Chowdhury ever wrote was a letter to Rajesh asking him to get rid of his unfinished manuscript. To read it, and then get rid of it. Not to publish it, not to let their mother see it, “Because surely she will try, and I am not Vincent Van Gogh. This is not Starry Night, it is something shameful. It is a representation of a man’s selfish pursuit of his silly dreams. I do not know if it is any good, but if it is I do not deserve posthumous praise for something that was the death of my wife, that was the death of me.”

In Siddharth’s usual style, the novel was extremely autobiographical. In its pages Rajesh discovered quite a lot about Siddharth, including that he was gay. Rajesh had seen plenty of other signs of this and on some level he knew, but the novel was confirmation. The novel was Siddharth’s explanation that it was a major part of his life and something he couldn’t change about himself.

The last night Rajesh ever spent in Jaipur, he sat for hours in the room where he and his brother slept throughout their childhood, with a manuscript and a request to destroy it and anger and confusion and intense indecision over whether or not to honor the last thing Siddharth asked of him. With a lighter and a shaking hand, Rajesh lit the bottom corner of The Philosopher King and watched his brother’s final work begin to burn for exactly ten seconds before relenting and putting out the flame. Instead he took it with him when he estranged himself from his parents and left India for good.

Four years after Siddharth’s death, at an Asian market in Bethesda, Rajesh and Priyanka ran back into each other. They had both received their Ph.Ds and were working, Rajesh in toxicology, Priyanka beginning a career as a chemist in research and development at a pharmaceutical company she didn’t really like. Rajesh didn’t know whether to ask her for a date or set her up with an interview at the company he was working for so he went with both. Priyanka accepted the former and politely declined the latter.

It became clear to Priyanka immediately that Rajesh’s mind was clearer this time around, though it was also clear that he harbored a great sadness, and there was something about it that tugged at every last one of Priyanka’s heartstrings, even when—or maybe especially when—it wasn’t the kind of thing he seemed keen on talking about. He wasn’t a prideful person but he was satisfied in the work he was doing and considered it important. He was a hard worker in every aspect of his life. He thought quickly and made decisions slowly. It took him nearly a year to propose and when he did it came with the confessions she was waiting for, reasons his own family was not invited to attend a wedding. He told her his story only in terms of the facts, and Priyanka was grateful, like he’d given her the only key to solving his mysteries. They were married in India, in the village where Priyanka was born. 

There’s something beautiful about a sad face until you see glimpses of it in your wedding photos. Priyanka waited for Rajesh to express emotion, about the things he told her. She was patient. She romanticized his tragedies, a little bit, at first, but soon enough she started to wonder if her husband wasn’t a ticking time bomb. Or maybe something closer to a leaking battery, slowly oozing enough acid, little by little, to quietly ruin something.

Rajesh treated Priyanka with courtesy but not respect, not quite. Priyanka expected nothing different. It was the way she was raised herself, to defer to her husband, to follow his lead, for him to make their life, and her to make his life easier in return. 

When Priyanka told him she was pregnant it was June of 1985 and Rajesh simply nodded. He said nothing about it until the following day when he got home from work with a list of plans and said, “Okay, here is what we’re going to do.” He could get transferred to Baltimore, which was a better place to raise a child, so he would do that. They would buy a car, something reliable, and put a downpayment on a house, not a fixer upper, something newly constructed. They would begin a college fund. They would both get life insurance. They would hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Priyanka was five months pregnant when she found The Philosopher King, slightly singed, in the bottom of a moving box meant for the attic. It was over six hundred pages long and still unfinished and seemed to almost be three separate, messily entangled stories in one. It told Siddharth’s and Rajesh’s story in a not-very-covert manner and was set in a version of the future wherein the past had gone a different way and the Ottoman Caliphate was a major world power composed mostly of genetically enhanced people. It was revelatory and prescient and strange and profoundly emotional and very, very good.

In the least developed storyline of the three, the main character was the reigning khalifah—an honorific title that means, in literal translation from Arabic, “leader,” and refers to the leader of a Caliphate. The character was an unusually honorable man trying his best who seemed in many ways based on Rajesh (but in a much less overt way than the other character who was very clearly based on Rajesh). Perhaps some mixture of Rajesh and the Buddha. Other characters, and the text itself, referred to this character only as Caliph. An English transliteration of khalifah.

Rajesh had never mentioned anything to Priyanka about the existence of this manuscript. When he came home to find her reading it he was angry, but not at her. He simply took it from her hands and left the room. He didn’t blame her for reading it, but it occurred to him that he violated Siddharth’s last wish and this is what happened — spilled secrets. Siddharth’s shame and in many ways also his own.

One Sunday afternoon a few weeks later, Rajesh did, at last, destroy the manuscript as he made the inaugural fire in the fireplace of their new home. He didn’t expect to regret it immediately. He didn’t expect to be sobbing when Priyanka returned from an errand. 

But there was comfort and closeness that came from it and he opened up to Priyanka in a way he never had before, in a way he had never opened up to anyone before. He mourned for Siddharth’s manuscript in a way he couldn’t quite mourn for Siddharth. And his relationship with Priyanka had never been closer or better. It was a shining moment born from tragedy. It was an affirmation of Priyanka’s faith in her husband. It was Rajesh finally exhaling the breath he’d been holding for he wouldn’t even know how long.