She Will Build Him a City (12 page)

~

Where have we come to? How long do we have to wait here? It’s getting cold, my shawl may not be enough to keep you warm. I hold you close, cover you completely, feel the rush of your breath against my neck, your lips moving in sleep. Your father stands underneath a broken awning, looking at the empty road, waiting for the rickshaw or whatever it is that will take us home. The only brightness on the platform is from the one 60-watt lamp above the timetable, written in chalk on blackboard, and from a long, fluorescent tube strung in between the rafters that stammers light white and yellow.

Everyone in Opaar is waiting to see our baby, to bless our baby, says your father, speaking aloud so that his voice can carry to me. What he says next I cannot hear because a sudden clap of lightning lights up the entire station, sends a rainbird flying in circles, screeching, its wings dripping, and then it’s dark again, the bird is gone, the roll of distant thunder muffles all sounds, even that of falling rain.

MAN

Balloon Girl

When he walks into his building in Apartment Complex, Security Guard says he’s been waiting for him. It’s been almost three hours since he left with Balloon Girl and her mother.

‘Sir, I didn’t find your bag,’ says Security Guard.

‘Did you look carefully?’

‘Yes, sir, I rushed back to tell you but Main Gate told me you had already left.’

‘Maybe I kept it somewhere else.’

‘Sir, one request, please do not complain against me to the supervisor. If I lose this job, where will I go?’

‘You should be careful, more responsible.’

‘I will, sir, I will. Please.’

‘Now get back to work.’

‘Anything I can do, please tell me, any time.’

‘I am tired, I am going to sleep for a while, do not allow anyone to knock on my door, not even the maid. Tell her it’s her day off today.’

‘Of course,’ says Security Guard, ‘I know your maid. I will tell her to come tomorrow. I will tell her you are not feeling well.’

‘Don’t tell her anything like that, just tell her I am not at home.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he says, ‘please don’t complain to the supervisor.’

He gives Security Guard a 500-rupee note.

‘No, sir, this isn’t necessary.’

‘Keep it,’ he says.

~

Security Guard feels the crispness of the note between his fingers. Quite generous, that’s three days’ salary. Every month he gets Rs 5,000 – to feed himself and his family of four. Three children, one wife, who he has left in the village, all wait for the first week of each month to receive money that he sends. One of his children, the youngest son, is doing very well in school. His teacher says, you are lucky, maybe he is the first one in the family who will go to college. He told him last week, Father, get me a new pair of shoes. Maybe this 500 will help.

~

He wants to sleep in the bed in which Balloon Girl and her mother slept. He undresses.

The two damp smudges on the bedsheet are still there. One big, one small. Like two clouds in the summer sky. He lies down, one side of his face pressed against mother smudge. He switches his cellphone off, removes its battery, just in case anyone’s tracking. He unplugs the land phone, too, lowers the air conditioner’s temperature to 9.

Because he wants harsh winter in the room, the opposite of what it is outside.

He falls asleep.

~

Balloon Girl and he are flying over the city, above the scattered cloud cover, each has one arm outstretched, the other holding the string attached to Red Balloon. A sudden wind pushes them down into a free fall through the clouds. Balloon Girl shouts with excitement and fear, pointing out the city, spread out below like a puzzle. There is the hospital, she says, from where you picked us up last night. He marvels at her telescopic sight, wonders how she can identify that cluster of buildings, but she is right. There is the AIIMS Main Building, the flyover exchange where six roads cross, loop into each other, between them the sprawling patch of manicured grass punctured with steel pods that glint in the sun. There’s the population clock, its numbers ticking, a billion plus, the digits in so many places he loses count. The wind has changed, they are flying upwards now, farther away from the ground, the street and the grass below beginning to blur as clouds swirl around their feet. They are next to an aeroplane, the wind blows them right up to its windows. Look inside, he tells Balloon Girl, this is the first time she is looking into a plane, they see passengers getting ready for a meal, breakfast, dinner, he’s not sure, the seatbelt signs are off, stewardesses walk up and down the aisle, each one with a French wig, a deep blue skirt. Both he and Balloon Girl knock on one window and wait for the passengers to notice them but no one does.

The plane is below them now, he can see the flaps of the wings move, the red light blink. When he looks down, his head reels, he is so high up that descending safely no longer seems an option. He wants Balloon Girl to drift down slowly, to let her land somewhere near AIIMS, she can find her way to her mother, leave him in the sky above the clouds because he is frightened of what he wants to do to her. To do with her.

‘Get away from me – I will hurt you,’ he says.

‘I can’t hear you,’ she says.

‘You leave me, you go down,’ he shouts above the roar of the aeroplane engine. ‘I will hurt you.’

‘You will never hurt me,’ she says.‘Mother and I came to your house, we took a bath, we slept, you washed our clothes, you fed us.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ he says, ‘that was last night.’

‘Just as you told us to do, I will never tell anyone about last night, you will not hurt me, you will never hurt me.’ She holds his hand tighter.

‘Get away from me,’ he says. ‘I am telling you, get away from me.’

He shouts, almost screams, but the wind is hard, it whisks his words away from Balloon Girl as she looks down, smiling one moment, laughing the other, at what she sees below her.

‘We are over the Zoo,’ she says, pointing out three elephants in their pens, a man preparing to feed them.

They are descending now, flying so low they can see the bird cages, the lion enclosure, the hippopotamus, dustbins shaped like a monkey and a penguin. A wind lifts them up over the ruins of a fort, over the lake where boats, brightly coloured, wait for passengers.

‘That tickles,’ she laughs.

His fingers are in Balloon Girl’s hair, soft after last night’s bath with the scrub and the special butter soap. He smells her smells.

Winter cream and red wool, girl skin and shampoo, one night old.

He wants to swallow her lips, so small that just one gulp will do. She will bleed and he will then move up, up her face, over her nose, her pencil-line eyebrows and her eyes, each one half his little finger long, across her forehead, into her scalp. He will enter her, as gently as he can, in the sky, under the clouds. No one will see because the aeroplane, with its passengers, has gone, and down below no one has the time to look even if her blood drips, mixes with the rain, long overdue in the parched city, its red will slide down the double-glazed windows in Apartment Complex, turn brown as it will clot throughout the day and merge with the mud.

He wakes up. The room is cold. He gets himself a quilt, pulls it over his head and this time when he closes his eyes he slides into the calm of dreamless sleep.

CHILD

The Separation

Kalyani Das walks up to Little House director Mr Sharma and hands him her resignation letter written, with help from Dr Chatterjee, on a sheet torn from her exercise book. She says, in her letter, that she’s got a job at a bigger hospital that will give her more money – and she needs more money. Also, two nurses from this hospital, she tells Mr Sharma, went to America last year and the head of the nursing section has told her that she, too, stands a chance because they value those who have worked in an orphanage.

Mr Sharma tries hard to persuade her to stay on, promises to waive her one-year traineeship period, a significant concession given the rigid rules of the Child Welfare Department. He offers – don’t quote me to anybody, he says, because I am not supposed to say all this but I am saying this because I like you – to help her go abroad.

‘I am respected in international circles, my word carries weight, I will give you a very strong recommendation at the end of your training period,’ he says.

When none of this works, Mr Sharma gets Mrs Chopra to speak to her as well – ‘Talk to her as if you were her mother,’ he tells her – but Kalyani has made up her mind.

‘Mrs Chopra, you will understand because you are a mother,’ she says. ‘It’s very difficult at home. My mother has to work in at least four homes, my father drives a cycle rickshaw the whole day, I need more money.’

‘What about Orphan, Kalyani?’asks Mrs Chopra. ‘Who will take care of him?’

‘I think of him all the time,’ says Kalyani, ‘but better to leave now when he is so young, when he won’t notice that I am gone, that someone else has replaced me.’ She cannot hide the quiver in her voice.

‘Look, Kalyani, you said I will understand because I am a mother. Yes, I am a mother of two sons,’ says Mrs Chopra, ‘and I know when a child is lying, I know you are not telling me the real reason.’

‘No, Mrs Chopra,’ says Kalyani, ‘that’s the only reason, I need to make more money.’

‘What about Orphan? I am sorry if I am asking you again, why are you leaving him so suddenly? He may not be able to speak but he will be affected, deeply, trust me.’

Mrs Chopra sees Kalyani’s eyes fill up, she doesn’t press further.

‘As you wish then, all the best,’ she says. ‘But stay in touch, let me know if you need help with anything.’

Kalyani doesn’t reply, she quickly turns, leaves the room, she can no longer hold back her tears.

~

Does Orphan miss Kalyani?

No one in Little House knows. A day after she leaves, Mr Sharma calls in Mrs Chopra.

‘Orphan was always with Kalyani, night and day,’ says Mr Sharma, ‘but he is a baby, he has not bonded with anyone yet. Let’s completely change his circumstances. The change in setting will help him overcome her absence.’

So Orphan is moved up, from infant to toddler section. From one nurse (Kalyani) dedicated to him full-time, here there’s only one nurse, working eight-hour shifts, who has to look after twenty-five children. Orphan moves from his own cot to one bed that all these children share. A long bed, with pillows lined up to mark each one’s space. Any other baby would take time to adjust to this drastic change but here, too, to the surprise of the staff, Orphan follows the same schedule as he had with Kalyani. He’s the first one to eat when the big dinner bowl is wheeled in and the cereal poured out in cups. While it’s always a challenge to get most of the other children to eat, Orphan crawls to his bowl with a clear sense of purpose, as if, at the beginning of the day itself, when he wakes up, a magical clock inside him has been set for the next twenty-four-hour period and has taken over all his physical movements. The new nurse, too, helps reinforce this order and discipline. She chooses Orphan as the first one to be fed, cleaned, bathed, dressed, she lets him go to bed and lie down where they have marked a corner for him, farthest from the door and in the quietest section of the hall so that he is least likely to be disturbed by the noise created by the other children.

If he misses Kalyani, Orphan doesn’t let it show.

~

As for Kalyani, she cries a little for Orphan every night.

Her reason for leaving Little House is not the one she mentions in her resignation letter. She wishes to keep it a secret, at least for now. It has torn her up, wrecked her heart, but her only comfort is her belief that she is leaving Little House because that’s the only way she can protect Orphan.

WOMAN

Iron & Ice

There is Iron Man and there is Ice Man, there is a memory of hot and a memory of cold.

~

You are six years seven years old, we can afford only one set of school uniform: white skirt, white top, white socks. You return every afternoon carrying the entire school’s dirt with you, on you: chalk dust and mud spatter to grass stains and lunch, the trail of the journey back on the crowded bus. Evening, before I enter the kitchen to start cooking dinner, I wash your skirt and top, hang them out to dry on the balcony. By late night, if there is electricity, I iron them so that we are not rushed in the morning. Your skirt has pleats, each one needs to be ironed very carefully. Some evenings, however, when the clothes haven’t dried – when the air is humid or there is no wind that night, or I am too tired – I leave ironing for the morning. Those days, I get up early so that I can iron your clothes before you wake up. But at least once, twice a week, there is a power-cut. And then your father says, give me her clothes and he places them, the skirt, the top, even the socks, within the folds of the morning newspaper. We need to use today’s newspaper, he says, because it’s the cleanest. Give me my handkerchief, he says, because I need to keep myself dry, we cannot have my sweat dripping on her clothes, and he goes looking for the Iron Man who has a stall by the roadside, against a broken wall, in which he fires his coal oven to heat his iron.