He captures the topography of Bombay with a slightly nostalgic lightness, but the real stage of his novel is the apartment building on whose steps the protagonist does his eponymous thing. The plot spirals through the dying Vishnu's unconscious memories and delusions of newfound divinity while a parallel coil threads keyhole portraits of the building's mortal residents and their reactions to the comatose hero in the stairwell. Vishnu ascends to his rebirth. More generally, the Bhagavad Gita is to Suri's book what the Koran is to Rushdie's. I don't mean to suggest that Suri should change his address.
Hindu fanatics are slightly less doctrinaire about the written word than their Islamic counterparts.
But the weight of Hindu mythology in this book, and the structure of spiritual enlightenment that shapes its narrative, is a corny schematic burden that crushes the life out of The Death of Vishnu right at the first floor. As a result, it's only in the closing stages of the novel that you begin to care for some of the characters. But by the time you meet the ascetic hermit Vinod Taneja in the garrets of the final chapters you may be ready to renounce the Great Indian Novel. If your heart is pure you may yet find what you seek. If you want a feminine melodrama set against the sweeping winds of history don't bother.