Free The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph

suicides – by considering it a consequence of unbearable grief or by manufacturing motives. Or through the inordinate importance given to the final note of the dead, which is usually only a confused half-truth.
    There is something comical about a suicide note, the only known penultimate act of a living thing, and Ousep is glad that Unni had the artistic arrogance not to succumb to a cliché. But Mariamma does fear that the boy must have explained himself on a piece of paper which might have got blown away. It is areasonable fear. Ousep has always marvelled at the confidence of people in their final moments, leaving a note behind in the complete faith that it would be found by the intended recipient.
    But the truth is that every suicide remains a mystery for ever because the only person who really knows all the fragments of the motive is gone. That was why Ousep had to give up three years ago. He had tried hard to piece together the circumstances of his son’s death but in the end he had to accept that he would never succeed. But about six weeks ago, something happened.
    Ousep was going down the stairs when he saw the postman walking up, holding an envelope in his hand. It was a strange sight to see the postman so early in the day, and without his sack. The man was holding just one object – a large envelope. But Ousep would not have thought much of it if he had not seen the name on the envelope – Unni Chacko. The postman then told him the story of this mail, which was among the twelve letters he was returning that day to various homes in the area.
    Three years ago, some boys had thrown firecrackers into the postbox attached to a lamp post on Pasumarthy Street. Most of the letters were burnt. But some were only slightly damaged and they lay in a cardboard box in the post office, until a new manager there finally decided to return some of the letters whose senders’ details were still legible. So, three years after Unni had posted a letter to someone, it was coming back. But that was not extraordinary in itself.
    On the front of the envelope was Unni’s name and address, probably written by a clerk in the post office who had put the boy’s mail inside a fresh envelope. The front of Unni’s original envelope was badly damaged, its top half almost entirely gone, so nothing of the recipient’s details had survived. But the bottom half of the envelope was intact. Here, Unni’s name andaddress were written in his distinct extravagant hand. Inside the mutilated envelope was a bunch of papers that were in good condition, as if nothing had happened, like Unni’s face when his lifeless body returned from the morgue.
    What Unni had posted was a comic, fourteen pages in all, not including a covering note written on a page torn in half. It is a brief scribble that does not address anyone. The note says: ‘Just finished it this morning. I know you will do it for me.’ The note is dated 16 May, the day Unni died.
    The comic begins with a giant portrait of a smiling, bald, middle-aged man, whom Ousep does not know. He is a tough, rustic man. He is sitting in his armchair, on the porch of his home, in the shade of a jackfruit tree. The setting is clearly a village in Kerala. Unni was born in Kerala but was brought to Madras when he was still an infant. He had not visited the land since. He had no reason to because his parents had slowly broken away from their large complicated families, much to the relief of almost everybody involved.
    The bald rustic in the comic now stops smiling and slowly turns serious, as if he has seen an apparition. He is clearly terrified. He begins to run. He runs down a winding path, through a forest of rubber trees. He falls down and looks increasingly terrified as the apparition approaches him. The comic then abruptly cuts to Egmore railway station in Madras. Someone, probably the narrator, who is not shown but from whose point of view the entire story is being told, boards the train and travels