The Death of Vishnu

On the steps of a Bombay apartment
Vishnu, a servant, a handyman, lays dying. The story shifts from
Vishnu's remembrances of the past to each of the apartment dwellers
and then to Vishnu's dying thoughts. Vishnu is ignored by the others
as much as possible, but becomes an embarrassment as his dying grows
more and more prolonged and more and more messy.

The book's strength, to me, was in its typically Indian focus on the
sensuality of life and the Indian casual acceptance of the horrors of
life.