Doctor Narlikar’s bachelor apartment at Escorial Villa is the setting for the immediate aftermath of his death and the upheaval that follows. The room first holds his body in state; then it fills with female relatives who take over his affairs, while Ahmed Sinai’s family stays away and loses its place in Narlikar’s business. The apartment makes private bereavement visible as a struggle over memory, authority, and property.

Setting and the death

The apartment was Narlikar’s bachelor residence within Escorial Villa. After his death, children gathered around the garden hedge outside, asking what had happened. A hamal employed by Lila Sabarmati told them that Narlikar’s death had been brought home wrapped in silk.

Saleem was not allowed to see the body on its hard, single bed, where it lay wreathed in saffron flowers. He nevertheless learned about the death through the Estate servants, who spoke freely about death even when they rarely discussed life. Narlikar’s bearer described the death as having swallowed so much of the sea that it had taken on water’s qualities, changing in appearance with the light. The apartment thus becomes a place known through circulating testimony as much as through direct sight.

Mourning and its witnesses

Stories about the apartment’s atmosphere give mourning consequences beyond the room. A gardener employed by Homi Catrack warned that looking too long at death could leave a little of it inside the observer. Purushottam, a sadhu who had spent years beneath the garden tap at Buckingham Villa, said that the presence of death made the living see themselves too clearly, exaggerating what was already in them.

The narration links this claim to changes in people who had seen Narlikar’s body or helped arrange the room. The apartment is therefore more than a backdrop for funeral observances: in the servants’ accounts, it is the center from which death seems to radiate into the lives of those who attend it. The narrative presents these effects through rumor and reported observation rather than a detached account, preserving the scene’s uncertainty.

The relatives take over

Two days after the news appeared in the papers, Narlikar’s apartment filled with female relatives who had not previously been part of his bachelor life. They arrived from different corners of the city and crowded the rooms and verandah; their mourning was so loud that the Estate servants could not sleep for a week. The scale of their presence turns a private apartment into a public gathering place.

Their mourning accompanies practical action. The women took over the running of Narlikar’s Nursing Home, investigated his business dealings, and cut Ahmed Sinai out of the tetrapod project. They then took Narlikar’s body to Benares for cremation. The servants’ account continues the apartment’s afterlife beyond its walls: they said his ashes were scattered on the Ganges at dusk, floated instead of sinking, and were carried out to sea like glowing firebugs.

Ahmed Sinai’s absence and the apartment’s significance

Ahmed refused to pay his respects and would not name his former friend, referring to him only as a traitor. The family’s absence contrasts with the packed apartment and the female relatives’ command of the business affairs. Their arrival leaves Ahmed with nothing from the tetrapod deal after years of involvement, making the room the point at which mourning and commercial reversal meet.

As a remembered place, the apartment gathers several competing accounts: the children’s questions, the servants’ vivid reports, the relatives’ public grief, and Ahmed’s refusal. Its rooms hold Narlikar’s body only briefly, but the consequences attributed to that death spread outward—from control of the Nursing Home and business dealings to the breakup of Ahmed’s partnership. The apartment’s significance lies in this passage from a secluded bachelor residence to a crowded center of mourning and contested inheritance.