Sujata Mitra's Death in a Car Accident ends Sujata’s life and brings her relationship with Satyasundar Bose into sharp focus: although Bose had postponed marriage while considering his career, she had continued to recognize him as her closest partner. Her death leaves him grieving, with no one else to turn to, and helps precipitate his departure from Calcutta.

The Accident and Its Immediate Aftermath

Late one night, Bose receives a telephone call informing him that Sujata, a flight attendant, has died in a car accident on the way to the airport in Delhi. The airline’s records list Bose as her closest person, based on a form she had filled out for the company. The authorities treat her final wishes with care and arrange for her body to be flown to him.

Bose has just returned from scattering her ashes in the Arabian Sea. The movement from the airline’s formal notification to the private act of dispersal marks the passage from the practical arrangements after her death to his solitary mourning. He describes his memories as an unending dream, conveying how the loss unsettles his sense of the present.

Sujata and Bose’s Relationship

Bose acknowledges that he had put off marriage while thinking about himself and his career. Sujata, by contrast, had never hesitated to regard him as her man. Her place as his named emergency contact gives this attachment a concrete consequence after her death: among all the people in the world, she had chosen him as the person nearest to her.

Bose remembers Sujata as someone who accepted matters more readily than he did, despite repeatedly crossing the boundary between life and death. He also emphasizes that she did not put her own interests ahead of other people’s. These recollections make his regret personal: he had delayed commitment, while she had continued to claim the relationship without hesitation.

Grief and Departure

The airline appears to have instructed that Sujata’s compensation be paid to Bose. He recognizes the material consequence with bleak irony, imagining that others might now consider him rich, but immediately contrasts that prospect with the loss of his former identity and security. He feels unable to survive alone in Calcutta.

Returning to the Shahjahan Hotel is not an available option. Bose therefore decides to take work at Marco Polo’s hotel on the Costa Dorada in Africa. Sujata’s death does not resolve the life he had postponed; instead, it leaves him bereaved and prompts another departure, carrying his grief into an uncertain future.