Alleluia Cone’s fatal fall from a building

Alleluia Cone’s fatal fall turns a public report of two deaths into an unresolved account of responsibility. The morning papers connect her fall from a skyscraper roof with the murder of S. S. Sisodia in Gibreel Farishta’s apartment; Gibreel later describes Rekha Merchant as present and attributes the push to her. His account, however, is broken by uncertainty and insistence, so the event’s crucial question—who made Alleluia fall—remains contested rather than settled.

The report of two deaths

The newspaper account places Alleluia’s death beside the discovery of S. S. Sisodia’s body. Domestic staff find the respected movie producer lying at the centre of the living-room rug in Gibreel’s apartment, a hole through his heart. Alleluia, identified as Miss Cone, has fallen from the roof of a skyscraper. The report treats her death as a believed-to-be related incident, not as a demonstrated consequence of Sisodia’s murder. The two deaths therefore arrive together in public, while the nature of their connection remains unspecified.

The headline invokes the curse of Everest Vilas, and the report supplies a concrete precedent for its language: a couple of years earlier, Rekha had hurled her children and herself from that same skyscraper towards the concrete below. The recurrence gives Alleluia’s fall the shape of a return, but not a proven cause. The newspaper makes the building itself the link between the deaths, drawing attention to the earlier family tragedy without explaining how it bears on the present one. Its phrasing preserves a distinction between a pattern that looks meaningful and evidence that would establish why the pattern has recurred.

The public account also frames the deaths through Gibreel’s celebrity and sudden disappearance. The papers describe him as under suspicion and report that he has absconded. That headline makes him an object of investigation, but it does not state that he caused Alleluia’s fall. In this first version, his flight, Sisodia’s murder, and Alleluia’s death occupy the same news cycle; their proximity creates an expectation of connection while leaving the essential particulars unanswered.

Gibreel’s fragmented recollection

A later account attributed to Gibreel does not resolve the newspaper’s uncertainty. Addressing someone he calls Spoono, he recalls that Rekha was there, floating on her carpet. He adds a second, indistinct presence: a man who looked mad, dressed in Scottish clothes, and whom he says he did not identify. The recollection offers images rather than a stable sequence of events. Rekha appears in an impossible or apparition-like form, while the other man remains nameless; Gibreel himself cannot say with confidence whether Rekha saw them.

That uncertainty is built into the way he tells the scene. He qualifies what happened, breaks off, and repeatedly marks the limits of what he can be sure of. The account does not provide an independent confirmation that Rekha was physically present, nor does it clarify the Scottish-looking man’s identity or role. Instead, its disjointed form makes the reader confront the difference between a reported death and a witness-like recollection whose speaker openly lacks certainty. The memory contributes possible details, but it cannot be treated as a conclusive reconstruction.

The disputed push

Within this recollection, Gibreel says the idea of taking Alleluia upstairs was Rekha’s. He describes going up with her and invokes the summit of Everest as the point from which the only way is down. The Everest image echoes the newspaper’s headline and turns the roof into a figurative summit. It connects the present fall to the building’s earlier catastrophe through language as well as location, but it does not establish that the two events have the same agent or motive.

Gibreel is emphatic about the decisive action: he denies pushing Alleluia and says that Rekha pushed her. He then repeats that he would not have pushed her. The force of these assertions sits uneasily beside the scene’s uncertainty. The account has not established that Rekha was there in an ordinary, verifiable sense, and Gibreel’s own description of who saw whom remains unsure. His denial and accusation consequently sharpen, rather than close, the question of responsibility. The claim that Rekha pushed Alleluia is part of Gibreel’s version of events, not an independently confirmed finding.

Recurrence, evidence, and aftermath

The event is structured around competing forms of evidence. The newspaper offers a concise external account: a body in Gibreel’s apartment, a woman dead below a skyscraper, an earlier fatal leap from the same building, and Gibreel’s disappearance under suspicion. Gibreel’s later speech supplies a possible scene behind the report, but gives it in fragments, with a ghostlike Rekha and a push he attributes to her. Neither account fully explains the relation between the deaths or establishes the circumstances of Alleluia’s final fall.

The recurrence of the skyscraper is therefore consequential without being an answer. Rekha’s earlier act supplies the public story with a precedent; Gibreel’s recollection brings Rekha back into the scene as an alleged agent. Together, these elements make the past appear to repeat itself, while the uncertain narration prevents repetition from becoming proof. Alleluia’s death remains caught between a reported connection and a disputed memory: the fall is certain, but the account of who caused it is not.