On one such day, Abhimanyu found himself on the floor of his bedroom, slumped against the wall, his chin wet with drool. Morning had broken some hours ago and he couldn’t recall how he’d left his bed and landed there. His body carried the memory of sleep but he wasn’t sure how long it had been. Well, it doesn’t matter if it’s morning in Ranakpour, somewhere in the world, it is the right time for a drink, he thought, half-amused that he still had it in him to think of something funny. A drink will make me feel better, he said aloud, lifting himself from the bedroom floor. Stumbling slightly from his hangover, his feet hit a bottle that lay on the floor. It was empty and three more bottles lay next to it. Abhimanyu groaned, and started looking for other bottles in the room. But none were to be found – he’d drunk every last drop of every bottle. Frustrated, he picked one of them and threw it across the wall. It didn’t break, there wasn’t enough force in his swing. The arm that once terrorized batsmen now couldn’t break a fifty-year-old glass bottle.

He contemplated going to cellar and pick up a new round but decided that the trek down was too arduous. He thought of calling for a sentry but that too was too much an effort. Walking around in circles inside his room, Abhimanyu looked at the papers again. Sighing, he ambled over and picked up the day’s edition.

INDIAN AIRLINES LAUNCHED, the headline on Ranakpour Times read, the article going on to list eight pre-Independence airlines that had been merged to create the national carrier – Deccan Airways, Himalayan Aviation, Kalinga Airlines, Bharat Airways, Airways India and Air Services of India – Abhimanyu stopped reading. Reading had become a chore as well, due to the central scotomas he had developed in his right eye. A bright white blotch right in the center of his vision tarnished everything he saw. He fought a round blank of nothingness by corking his head on either side, and what he could see in the periphery of his right eye was tinged with a sepia tone. After blinking continuously, the white circle would contract for a fraction of second and grow again from the center, seemingly bigger than before. Abhimanyu blinked back tears and flipped through pages till he reached the sports section.