Delhi

Delhi appears only at the edge of the narrative, as the destination Sujata Mitra was travelling toward when she died. It is not presented through streets or scenes in the city, but through the journey that ends before she reaches its airport and the loss that reshapes the narrator’s final account.

Delhi as a Destination

Sujata Mitra was travelling by car toward Delhi airport when she died in an accident. The account locates Delhi at the end of her intended route, not as the site of the accident; it offers no further description of the city or of her time there.

The News and Its Aftermath

The narrator learned of Sujata’s death in a late-night telephone call. Her airline records named the narrator as her closest person, and the airline arranged for her body to be sent to him in accordance with her final wish. After returning from scattering her ashes in the Arabian Sea, he writes that his memories have become like an unending dream. Delhi is thus connected to the narrative’s closing grief through the journey on which Sujata died and the news that reached the narrator.