My obituary said I had no children.
I read that line twice while my daughter was telling me about a leaking water bottle. Her voice came through the phone on the bed. The obituary was on the laptop. For a few seconds I could not make the two objects belong to the same room.
“Papa? Are you listening?”
I closed the laptop.
“The blue bottle or the steel one?”
“I already told you.”
She had. I asked her to tell me again.
After she finished, I stayed on the line until she asked whether I wanted her mother. I said yes. When Leela came on, I told her not to let Anu see anything mentioning my name that evening.
“What have you done now?”
I deserved that question for several things. This was not one of them.
* * *
Three weeks earlier, my name had been above a glass door in Nagpur. AJAY DESHMUKH, MATCH DESK. My partner, Viren, had ordered the lettering. He liked telling visitors that a voice needed a proper home.
I had spent twelve years describing cricket for small broadcasters. I knew how to fill a rain delay without pretending the rain had stopped. I knew the groundsman who would speak after everyone else's cameras went away. I had never earned enough to buy a glass door.
Viren paid for one with money I did not ask enough questions about.
We produced paid match discussions and recorded previews. Betting chatter followed us everywhere: in comments, outside tea stalls, in messages asking me to turn an opinion into a promise. I refused the promises. I was less careful about the company using my face to collect subscriptions.
I spoke. Viren handled accounts. It sounded efficient when I explained it to Leela.
Then strangers arrived at our office carrying payment records for something we did not sell.
* * *
Their money had gone into a betting arrangement run by a man Viren called a distribution associate. My photograph appeared on the material. A document carried my name below a statement accepting responsibility for customer balances.
I had not signed it.
Viren said that point could wait. The men downstairs wanted money, and technical arguments would only upset them.
“Talk to them. They know you.”
I stood in front of people who had lost savings and said I would find out what happened. One man asked whether my daughter ate with their money. I told him to leave her out of it. Somebody filmed that answer without the question.
By evening, the clip was everywhere our programmes had been.
Viren released a statement about my independent dealings. My access to the office stopped working. Two employers cancelled commentary assignments while they investigated. The glass door remained. A strip of paper covered my name.
* * *
Leela did not leave because of one video. She left after I admitted that I had used household savings to keep the studio running two months earlier without telling her.
“How much?”
I gave her the exact amount. Sixty-two thousand rupees.
She asked when I had intended to tell her. I offered an answer about a delayed invoice. She put her clothes in a bag while I was still explaining.
She took Anu to her sister's house. I moved into a room over a stationery shop so the landlord would not keep answering strangers at our old flat. My mother called from Wardha and asked whether she should sell her bangles.
I said no too sharply. Then I apologised. Then she apologised for asking.
That was the part I hated most. People I had hurt were beginning to sound as though they had inconvenienced me.
* * *
The first farewell message arrived on Tuesday.
A former colleague forwarded it with sixteen missed calls. It appeared to be a final statement from me, accepting the debts and asking people not to blame Viren.
I was eating a banana over the basin because the room had ants.
There were sentences I had never written, including a request that nobody contact my family. The account name resembled mine. The photograph was from a broadcast I remembered enjoying.
I called the colleague. Then my mother. Then Leela. I spent that afternoon proving I was available to answer the telephone.
Viren called once.
“You need to stay quiet until this settles.”
“Someone is writing messages as me.”
“People are worried about you. Don't make them more worried.”
I ended the call and saved the message. That night I stayed with an old sound engineer instead of going back to my room alone. I wanted another person nearby who would answer a question plainly.
* * *
The obituary came on Thursday morning from a copy editor called Farzana.
She did freelance work for several publications, including Viren's match newsletter. She had been asked to prepare an announcement under instructions marked confidential. Before returning it, she checked my name online and found a recent public statement in which I said I was alive and disputing the claims.
Her message was cautious: Can you speak now?
When I answered, she went silent long enough for me to hear a pressure cooker in her kitchen.
Then she sent the draft.
It described me as troubled. It said Viren had offered every possible assistance. It repeated my supposed acceptance of the financial responsibility. It said the company would respect the family's privacy.
At the bottom was an instruction to keep it ready for the Sunday final broadcast.
No children.
Viren had attended Anu's seventh birthday. He had eaten two pieces of cake.
* * *
I wanted to put the document everywhere. Farzana asked me to wait until someone could verify how it had reached her.
“If they say you made it, what will you show?”
I disliked the question because she was right.
There was one reporter I trusted to be unpleasant enough to check everything. Her name was Kavita Rao. Six months earlier, she had asked about our unnamed commercial partners. I had called her report cheap attention-seeking on air.
She answered my call with, “Is this about an apology or a story?”
“Both.”
“Which one are you trying to use to obtain the other?”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“I don't know yet.”
She told me to bring the files and leave the performance at home.
* * *
Her office occupied two rooms behind a printing business. A fan clicked once each time it turned. I had walked into expensive studios with less fear.
Kavita started with the household money. She said if I hid my own conduct, she would stop.
I told her about the sixty-two thousand. She wrote it down. Then she asked which document I disputed and which payments I had personally received.
We worked through the records for four hours. My voice appeared on programmes. My name appeared on company records. Those were real. The customer guarantee was not mine. The betting collection account was not an account I controlled.
Kavita did not declare me innocent. She called Farzana, the company bookkeeper and two customers who had kept their original payment correspondence.
When I began explaining what Viren must have intended, she raised a hand.
“Tell me what happened. I can hear your guesses later.”
* * *
The bookkeeper, Suresh, had resigned in the previous month. I remembered him as a man who asked irritating questions about receipts.
He arrived with a cloth bag and refused tea.
I had once told him not to spoil a sponsor meeting over a missing invoice. Now he sat opposite me and opened the records he had retained from his own work.
The payment trail contradicted Viren's claim that I had conducted an entirely separate operation. Instructions had come through the office. Several customer queries had been sent to Viren and answered by him. Suresh had written objections before the dispute became public.
None of it made every customer claim valid or settled every legal question. It gave the investigation places to look that were not my daughter's school or my mother's doorstep.
Suresh finally accepted tea. He did not accept my attempt to turn his careful record-keeping into an amusing story about his personality.
“It was my job,” he said.
* * *
On Friday, Kavita took me to a lawyer and then accompanied me when I submitted the material through the appropriate complaint process. I gave a statement, kept acknowledgements and named the people who could provide the original records.
The officer did not promise an arrest before lunch. I did not ask for one.
We also gave my former employers enough information to verify that the farewell message was false. One removed its suspension notice from public view while keeping my assignments on hold. Another said it needed time.
That afternoon, Viren sent an offer through a common friend. I could receive some money for immediate expenses if I signed a document accepting personal responsibility and stopped speaking publicly.
The friend told me to think of Anu.
I asked him to send the offer in writing. He said there was no need to become formal between old friends.
I told him there was now a considerable need.
* * *
The final was on Sunday. Viren had bought a studio segment around an independent broadcaster's match coverage. He intended to explain the company's response to the financial controversy.
Kavita contacted the broadcaster's editor. She did not ask him to let me storm a stage. She provided the evidence her publication had verified and the questions she intended to put to Viren.
The editor changed the segment. A short interview about the dispute would precede the sponsored material. Viren was offered the allegations and a chance to respond. He agreed, insisting that I would not appear because I was unwell and unreachable.
I was sitting beside Kavita when that reply arrived.
She asked whether I wanted to participate. The broadcast would be delayed briefly for editorial control. Documents would be shown with private details removed. I could bring Leela or another person to wait with me.
I asked Leela. She said she would come, but we were not discussing the marriage in a television building.
I said we weren't.
* * *
At four forty on Sunday, a receptionist told me that my name was not on the first version of the guest list.
I almost laughed. I had spent a week appearing in documents where I did not belong. Now I had arrived for an appointment and was missing.
The producer came downstairs, checked my identification and gave me a visitor badge. She asked whether I needed water.
From behind the studio door I heard Viren practising an answer. His concerned voice was excellent. It had persuaded me to lend him my microphone, then my reputation, then far too much silence.
Leela touched my sleeve.
“Your collar is folded.”
She did not straighten it for me. I did it myself.
The producer opened the door.
* * *
Viren stopped halfway through a sentence when he saw me.
The host, Nandita, introduced both of us. She explained that the discussion concerned disputed financial claims, a false farewell statement and a prepared announcement. No finding by a court was being presented.
Viren leaned forward.
“First, I am relieved to see Ajay getting the help he needs.”
“I'm here to answer questions,” I said.
Nandita asked whether he had circulated the statement in which I supposedly accepted the debts. He said his office had received it in good faith.
She asked when they had confirmed it with me.
He said I had been difficult to reach.
On the monitor appeared the record of a call he had made to me after the false statement began circulating. Its content was disputed; the fact that we had spoken was not.
Nandita waited.
“It was a difficult conversation,” he said.
“Was it a conversation with a living person?”
“Obviously.”
She moved to the next question.
* * *
Farzana had agreed to speak on record about the assignment. The broadcaster played her account, then displayed the verified portions of the instructions she had received.
Viren called the obituary a precautionary draft.
Nandita read the sentence stating that I had accepted sole responsibility. She asked what verified source supported it.
He began talking about pressure and uncertainty.
She asked again.
He said the writer might have misunderstood.
Farzana's submitted draft and the instructions were separate records. The disputed claim was already in the instructions. Nandita put that to him without raising her voice.
Viren looked at me for the first time since the introduction. It was the old look from sponsor meetings: fill this space, make the awkward part disappear.
I reached for my glass of water.
He had to fill it himself.
* * *
“He knows I was trying to protect him,” Viren said.
Nandita asked how announcing my death would protect me.
He corrected her: preparing an announcement, not announcing anything. Then he said somebody had told the office to expect bad news.
“Who?”
He wanted to answer off air.
The editor agreed to receive any further evidence privately. Nandita made clear that no source supporting the draft had yet been provided.
Then the discussion moved to the customer money. Records showed instructions passing through the company. Suresh's earlier objections were introduced. Viren could no longer describe the business as something he had learned about only after I disappeared.
“I haven't disappeared,” I said.
For once, nobody spoke over the end of my sentence.
* * *
The broadcaster ended the interview without running the planned company promotion. Its editor announced that the commercial arrangement was suspended pending review.
Outside the studio, Viren tried to get me into an empty room.
“We can still settle this between us.”
Kavita was packing her recorder. Leela stood near the lift.
“You can send your response to the people investigating,” I said.
He lowered his voice.
“You think they'll give you your life back?”
My visitor badge had turned backwards. I straightened it before answering.
“You don't get to write it for me.”
The lift opened. Leela held the door because I was still fumbling with the clip.
* * *
The broadcast did not put sixty-two thousand back into our savings. It did not make every stranger apologise. Some people decided the entire dispute was entertainment and asked when part two would come out.
But the correction travelled with my face this time. The broadcaster published the interview and a clear notice that the farewell statement was false and no verified death report existed. My former employers received the underlying documentation rather than a dramatic clip.
One reinstated me for a small domestic fixture the following month. The fee was ordinary. I signed the agreement myself and sent Leela a copy of the repayment plan I had made for the household money.
She answered with two changes to the dates. I accepted both.
Kavita's subsequent report distinguished documented facts from questions still under investigation. Farzana's records were evidence of a prepared false account, not proof of every motive people invented online. The financial case continued.
After its own review, the broadcaster ended Viren's commercial contract. I recovered paid work before the financial case reached any conclusion.
* * *
At the next ground, the sound technician asked me to count to ten.
I did. He adjusted a cable and asked for the count again.
It was the most welcome interruption I had heard in weeks.
During the interval I called Anu. She had replaced the washer in the leaking bottle with help from her aunt. She wanted to know whether I could come on Saturday. She would show me how they had fixed it.
I checked the work sheet before promising.
“After lunch.”
“Don't forget.”
I wrote it beneath the match time.
The technician waved me back. I put on the headset, heard the familiar little hiss and waited for the signal.
Then I told the listeners who was at the microphone.