Fiction: Sammy has a privileged life, yet the pandemic has ripped open all his past insecurities

It isn’t every day you see a man with a dead body on his back. Not even in this troubled time.

The sardar watches the thin man’s slow steps as he carries his burden towards the quiet main road. The hard lockdown has halted traffic outside. Where there should be clamour is only silence. At any other time, in any other situation, he would have been thankful for this calm in the middle of what should be a working day in summery New Delhi.

But this moment is anything but normal.

He turns into the dim staircase that runs up to his old home. He, Shamsher Singh, Sammy to his friends. He is tall, slim, his erect carriage giving the lie to his 60 circuits of the sun. His slow pace up the stairs is in no way due to his age, but rather because he is in no rush. Where does he have to be?

Unless you are dead, or almost there, or your business is in any way connected with either of those two states, where does anyone have to go these days?

The staircase is broad and deep. The sun doesn’t reach all the way in. It is blessedly cool. The banister...

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