The 13th death. [Text by Shujaat Khan; photo by Yuvan] On a lazy winter afternoon of 12 January 2088, Shujat Khan shifted from his 1 BHK abode in Pratap Nagar, Jaipur, to his heavenly abode. Phew! At last, no more house shifting! His whole life had been a balancing act between the real and the surreal, till the weighing scale went… snap! Mr Khan’s soul is not resting in peace. It never did. Just gave up the shit. He strictly instructed his near and dear one (there is only one) against glorifying him ad nauseam. “A damn arrogant man, nevertheless a passionate lover,” says his girlfriend ‘abc’. That woman could never keep her trap shut. Mr Khan caved in to an abrupt asthmatic bout

The 12th death. [Text by Sanchita Guha; photo by Deepali Guha] Sanchita Guha, a journalist by profession, both remarkable and unremarkable in many ways, was always a vocal opponent – at the risk of getting much flak – of the human tendency to cling to life despite age and infirmity. It had been her desire, as friends knew, to die when still young, still at the peak of physical and mental strength, somewhere far away from home, far away from the drama of grief that always follows the news that the inevitable was here. “Human life is a drop of water on a lotus leaf.” This line from a Bengali classic poem guided her goals. Ms Guha never deferred her travels, never waited

The 11th death. [By Somak Ghosal] Somak Ghoshal, who spent the better part of his adult life torn between the urge to write books and to edit them, was found dead at his desk on a glorious morning in April. Other than the novel he had been working on for the last fifty years, he had a bottle of Prosecco, his chief source of delight in his last years, lying next to him. His cat, Muffin, was found chewing on his unfinished masterpiece dolefully, having meowed near his food bowl for hours. Woody Allen’s Manhattan was playing on the television, and a pile of DVDs by the American master lay on the floor. It is said Mr Ghoshal had resolved to watch one

The tenth death. [Text by Krishnali Pratap; photo by Zakir Khan] The death of Krishnali Pratap defies exactness in totality. This is the only thing she wanted -- no certainty. Ms Pratap’s life had been a mysterious concoction of assumptions. Nothing much is known about her except for the fact that at the time of her death she was at her ancestral country house in Esauli village, Uttar Prdaesh. On March 18, her mother in Dehradun received a worried phone call from Shanti Tai, Ms Pratap's sometime-caretaker. For the last four days, the elderly caretaker said, she had heard no word from their daughter. On entering Ms Pratap's room, her parents found lots of books and handwritten manuscript pages strewn around her;

The ninth death. [Text by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri; photo by Tanushree Ghosh] We are thankful that she at least died doing what she loved, eating her favourite food at home while watching a Bollywood award function on TV. As Salman Khan came on stage and tried to pretend like he had some talent which did not involve him baring his chiseled, enough-already, torso, Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri snorted way too hard on her fish curry and rice and choked on a bone. She is at peace now. Her ghost will wander the Earth and live in her office’s pantry (because that’s where the tea was). So if the machine starts refilling at an inconvenient moment, know that she is right there fuming with you

The eighth death. [Text and photo by Raza Rumi] Raza Rumi was a wanderer who came to Delhi in his 30s and found another home in the city - in the shrines, lanes and by-lanes of the mythical Delhi. He wrote a book on the city called Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveller. His other books were about himself and finding his place in a cruel world. It was Delhi and its Sufi shrines that gave him comfort so he kept on visiting the city and became its honorary part-time resident. Mr Rumi’s plural identity was not liked by some in his homeland, the neighbouring Pakistan, and they tried to kill him in 2014. He survived the attack but had to

The seventh death. [Text by Manika Dhama; photo by Unknown] Manika Dhama, a Metro-loving poet and writer, had a great fall at the Rajiv Chowk Metro station in Central Delhi early Monday morning. It did not end well. Witnesses noted that she missed a step while poring over “a fat book”. The staff have since identified it to be Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Ms Dhama was a lover of dusty libraries and bitter coffee. Her little known blog Eggfacemomhead carried stories from her life as a Delhi woman, poet and mother, some of which had been published in local newspapers. An avid traveler and amateur photographer, she had only recently discovered the Joy of Cooking (both the book and the

The sixth death. [Text by Indrajit Hazra; photo by Arunava Sinha] Indrajit Hazra was a fine exponent of the one-liner and, like Nature, he abhorred a vacuum, especially in conversations. More of a stringer of situations than a novelist, his books brought joy to dozens, who saw him less as a serious writer and more as someone who desperately wanted to be taken seriously as a writer. Mr Hazra's first love was reading and writing plays -- although he disliked watching them being performed. Probably as a result, he didn’t write a single complete play but left only fragments, one line at a time. These would later be compiled by an admiring reader as a collection of conversation-changers. Mr Hazra had written

The fifth death. [Text by Ratan Kaul; photo by Unknown] The party is over. Ratan Kaul is finally asleep. A society hostess famous for her collection of milk-white pearl necklaces, Ms Kaul died due to an overdose of partying. Though she had a fairly spotless reputation, she majorly over-drugged on life -- according to socialites close to her. Ms Kaul lived it queen-size and on her own terms. Be it people, places or things, she was on a perpetual high on all of them. Ms Kaul was equally at ease in the High Tea conclaves of Lutyens’ Delhi as she was in the samosa stalls of Govindpuri slums. Her infectious laughter touched the lives of many, or so she believed. "Her legion

The fourth death. [Text by Nivriti Butalia; photo by Dhruv Narain] Nivriti Butalia burnt her tongue on a milkless cup of tea sourced from the pantry of the newspaper office in the Middle East, where she had been a stooge for over two years writing about the environment. In that time, she was troubled by the lack of recycling facilities - in the pantry, and in Dubai at large, the ubiquity of sodden Leone tea bags, the disease-spreading Styrofoam cups. Besides the swollen tongue, she was plagued also by a dull ache for a city she'd left behind to take herself to the desert in search of unknown wonders and well-known riches, only to then have come upon a husband. See