Fiction: 70-year-old Unnikrishnan calls a press conference to announce the date of his death

Your name is Unnikrishnan.

Your mother is Lakshmikutty and your father Goyindan, a document-writer and stamp paper vendor. You, Unnikrishnan, erstwhile movie-house manager, are the fourth of their five children. The oldest one, Ramakrishnan, runs a grocery store, the second son, Shivaraman, is a tailor, and the third, Vasudevan, is a clerk in a company owned by a Gujarati. Chubby, mischievous Kausalya, your baby sister, completes the family.

Although you are now over seventy, the muscles on your chest and thighs are still supple. Your age shows more in your hair; occasional dark strands peep from between the dominant grey, like distant memories of a youth long gone. As with everyone else, there was a time when you were a young man; before that, an adolescent; a child. And before that…

Why have you come to the city now, taking a bus from Kundachira?

Rare are the occasions when you leave home these days. Your house remains hushed, like nature during an eclipse. There’s a sticky darkness everywhere. A little light may still be milked from it, but you have no intention of doing so. You’ve become one with the darkness. You’re also aware that this universe has more darkness than it has light.

On Friday, 14 November 2019, you...

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