Destiny Exposed

Vikram felt the bile coming into his mouth, he felt his feet giving way, he supported himself somehow and walked up to the house of Khatoon Khan who was weeping, emptied his pockets of what money he had, maybe somewhere around a few hundreds and put all that in the palm of the old lady. He promised her he would come some other day to deliver the parcel, although he knew he would never return. Have the child remembered by these wanton, guttersnipe pictures? Oh no! The sooner he destroyed them the better he'd feel. He walked out of the stink and the slum, almost in a trance.

What if he had taken her up on her proposition? Suppose he had gone home with her to photograph her in nude? Had made love to her. Her place or his place, it would not have mattered, she at least would not have gone to the works. She would have missed the explosion. This minute she would have been alive.

As he passed the place where he had met her, the place where the pigeons flew, Vikram thought 'at least she won't be waiting here for somebody who would take her up on it.'

Then Vikram remembered what the Master had said, "Nothing is impossible with a camera." How had this one, this foolproof gem of a precision machine made a double exposure?

Or had it? He remembered something else: "The face of the angel" that's what the Master had said. Was it double exposure, or had he photographed Kismat after her death or at the instant that life was passing out of the fragments of her body that were somewhere beyond recognition on that frame. Was it her naked body on the frame with the soul divided into infinite fragments at the body's wish to be framed naked on the film. Was it, was it, was it?