Sujata’s death and Bose’s grief

Sujata Mitra’s death turns Satyasundar Bose’s postponed future into an irrevocable loss: though he had delayed their marriage while thinking about his own career, she had consistently regarded him as her partner. Her choice to name him as her closest person makes their attachment plain, and her death leaves him grieving, alone in Calcutta, and preparing to leave the Shahjahan behind.

Death and its immediate aftermath

Late one night, Satyasundar 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. Her airline is courteous and arranges for her body to be sent to him by air, in accordance with her last wish. The company form names him as her closest person; in Bose’s account, she had chosen him as the person nearest to her among everyone in the world.

By the time he writes, Bose has returned from scattering Sujata’s ashes in the Arabian Sea. He describes his memories as an endless dream, conveying how the news and its aftermath have unsettled his sense of ordinary time. The practical arrangements around her death—her recorded choice, the airline’s call, and the return of her body—also make their private closeness legible to others.

Their bond and the marriage left postponed

Bose acknowledges that he had put off marriage while considering himself and his career. Sujata, by contrast, had never hesitated to recognize him as her man. His account thus holds regret alongside an affirmation of her constancy: the decision to delay belonged to him, while she did not withdraw her claim on their relationship.

He recalls that Sujata, who repeatedly crossed the boundary between life and death, accepted things more easily than he did. He also remembers her as someone who never lowered herself by placing her own interests ahead of other people’s. These reflections do not undo the postponement or resolve what it meant for their future; after her death, they sharpen Bose’s awareness of what he had deferred and of the generosity he associates with her.

Loss, compensation, and departure

Bose believes the airline has instructed that Sujata’s compensation be paid to him. The prospect of becoming rich sits uneasily beside his loss: in his telling, the prince has become the washerman’s son again, and money cannot make it possible for him to survive alone in Calcutta. The compensation is therefore not presented as a recovery from grief, but as an inheritance that underlines how little material security can answer his loneliness.

He would like to return to the Hotel Shahjahan, but considers that option closed. Instead, he decides to go to work at Marco Polo’s hotel at Costa Dorada in Africa. His departure gives the account a practical ending without resolving its sorrow: after Sujata’s death and the scattering of her ashes, Bose chooses distance and a new job because the life he had shared with her can no longer be resumed.