The prominent historian and epicure was floored by a cardiac shock at the climax of a sumptuous meal in Paris, upon being told that the restaurant was entirely
out of his preferred flavour of ice cream. Carried supine from the premises by a turbulent mass of gendarmes and emergency workers, his inert form was placed
in a comandeered Citroën 2CV stretch limo and rushed to the Glacier Berthollin for emergency treatment, but the attempt was to no avail. Too weak to do more
than grab at a passing tray of maxixe cherries on the way out, he was ultimately delivered to his literary atelier in the Montparnasse where he was attended
the next day by leading specialists from the Salpêtrière while the entire city bit its collective knuckle in anxiety.
In a hand-tinted etching released by his family to the press, the semi-conscious Narayan is seen attended by a grief-stricken Morticia Addams (apparently wearing some sort of tweed hoopskirt, or perhaps it is some sort of tablecloth) and by Dr. Wick Dilhelm, the society yachtsman and amateur surgeon, either taking a pulse reading or simply debating how long decency requires him stay before he trumps up an excuse to depart. In the background a housemaid is presumably scouring the premises in an effort to locate the last will and testament before it's too late to pencil in a few extra last-minute benficiaries.
UPDATE: While perhaps not yet actually dead by strictest scientific definition, Msr. Sengupta hovers uncertainly between life and eternal damnation, and the French press has taken down his "last words" so many times now that they are beginning to become impatient, and I for one am scarcely able to finish the remaining crumbs of a tiramisu and a raspberry flan as I type this message so dejected is my outlook. For if Narayan should pass from this mortal plane it will surely also be the end of the glittering epoch of this message board, whereas on the other hand, if he lives it will seem a bit of an anticlimax and even a rather annoyingly dramatic on his part. Therefore let us pray accordingly.
In a hand-tinted etching released by his family to the press, the semi-conscious Narayan is seen attended by a grief-stricken Morticia Addams (apparently wearing some sort of tweed hoopskirt, or perhaps it is some sort of tablecloth) and by Dr. Wick Dilhelm, the society yachtsman and amateur surgeon, either taking a pulse reading or simply debating how long decency requires him stay before he trumps up an excuse to depart. In the background a housemaid is presumably scouring the premises in an effort to locate the last will and testament before it's too late to pencil in a few extra last-minute benficiaries.
UPDATE: While perhaps not yet actually dead by strictest scientific definition, Msr. Sengupta hovers uncertainly between life and eternal damnation, and the French press has taken down his "last words" so many times now that they are beginning to become impatient, and I for one am scarcely able to finish the remaining crumbs of a tiramisu and a raspberry flan as I type this message so dejected is my outlook. For if Narayan should pass from this mortal plane it will surely also be the end of the glittering epoch of this message board, whereas on the other hand, if he lives it will seem a bit of an anticlimax and even a rather annoyingly dramatic on his part. Therefore let us pray accordingly.
