A year’s worth of newspapers take up a surprisingly small amount of space in a room. If stacked neatly enough, by date, spread across a 6x6 feet square space in a corner, the pile is just about waist-high. Then there’s the question of preservation. Enough camphor should do the trick. Having the stack close to a window to ensure a healthy dose of daily sunlight helps. That’s where Abhimanyu had stacked the newspapers. Papers he never dared to read. Every night was a mammoth struggle to keep himself from leafing through the pages when there was nothing else to do once insomnia set in. So, he resorted to drinking – heavily. He would raid the royal cellar and pick up the most exotic wine, whiskey, rum, anything he could lay his hands on, and bring them up to his quarters. Many a heartbroken men or women will tell you that solace is found at the bottom of a bottle, and Abhimanyu raced to reach it, all the while staring at his neat stack of papers. Most nights, two bottles of whatever he was drinking would suffice; oblivion was attainable. But still, there were some long nights when sleep would elude him till the first rays of sunlight started to spread over the tower of newspapers. The alcohol wasn’t working. He would feel the urge to get up and go for a walk. Perhaps a hike down the hill to the pond, or an early morning jog around Ranakpour city, anywhere really, as long as he stayed away from the papers.

He would get up and try his best to balance his body, once so agile and sinewy but battered and broken now. He was only in his thirties, but the alcohol abused had aged him – his bones were weak and his legs always felt wobbly. Left foot first, then right, then left again, the simple act of walking had turned into an ordeal; he felt his brain had become a little slow in sending signals to his feet. Then he realized he couldn’t really see his feet. The alcohol had taken a chokehold of his body, his abilities to such an extent that walking, reading, sleeping, the simplest of tasks were daunting. To hell with the walk, he would decide, and crash on the pile of papers instead. The tower rose steadily, as Penaru dutifully placed each day’s newspaper on the stack, lightly dusting it, and never asking why they went unread.