She Will Build Him a City (30 page)

What if the TB carries on living inside her? What if weeks become months become years? What if it’s the other kind of TB, the one that may never be cured? What will happen when Baba’s money runs out? What will happen to her plans to take the nursing exam? How many more days and nights of being a burden to everyone? Each question rattles, shakes the house of dreams Kalyani has built for herself, she doesn’t know how long before it begins to crumble.

MEANWHILE

Where Was Red Balloon Before Balloon Girl?

Once upon a time in a shop that sells balloons wholesale, in one packet of a hundred balloons, Made in China, exactly a hundred, lives a red balloon. Red Balloon is bright and sharp as most things red should be. Like apples and blood, the setting sun, or, Mars, the planet. But Red Balloon is always unhappy because it is shy, its colour is against its nature, it wishes it were Grey Balloon.

Dull, easy to miss, last to be picked up.

That’s why whichever way you hold the packet, upside down or downside up, Red Balloon will always find a way to slip to the bottom. Where it comes to rest underneath the flashy balloons. The blues and yellows, the greens and golds.

That’s how Red Balloon lives in the shop.

Until one day, a thin, tall man with long grey hair walks in and buys the packet whole.

~

This man’s name is Kailash Sahu and there is only one thing he loves to do.

No, make it two.

He loves to blow up balloons, some with his breath but most with helium so that they can fly. And he loves to push his balloon trolley all around the city, stop at places where parents bring children. There is an iron hanger rigged to his trolley to which he ties the balloons. So when he walks, the balloons float over his head, cover his face and, from a distance, it appears as if balloons are pulling the trolley across the city.

~

Red Balloon is nervous, a little.

Because gone is the comfort of the shop, the safety of numbers. Now, it’s in Kailash Sahu’s trolley and it’s out on the road. It doesn’t know who it will go to. Red Balloon is a very observant balloon. So while other balloons gossip, chat, tell tales about imaginary adventures, Red Balloon keeps watching the sliver of sunlight that slips in. He watches it change colour – blue to white – as the sun climbs the sky. As Kailash moves from National Railway Museum to Nehru Planetarium, Zoo to India Gate where he drops anchor for the day after he has sold a dozen balloons, each for Rs 10.

But Red Balloon stays in the box.

Evening turns to night, the last tourists leave, the man with the two dancing monkeys packs up his props, Kailash takes out Red Balloon, fills it with gas, ties it to the trolley and begins his long walk home.

From India Gate, left on Shah Jahan Road, down Prithviraj Road, where the VVIP bungalows are, left on Ring Road. Nobody stops him to buy a balloon. Rich children want Mall balloons, sealed mechanically, which come in all kinds of shapes, aeroplane, Mickey Mouse, Nemo, these stay afloat for days while his balloons, tied by hand, last two nights, three at the most.

By the time he nears AIIMS, it’s well past 9 p.m. Red Balloon knows its end is near.

At the entrance, Kailash sees a girl and her mother. The girl smiles when she sees Red Balloon, Kailash cannot hear her but he can see her talking to her mother, pointing to the balloon.

He pushes the trolley right up to them and stops.

‘How much?’asks the girl.

‘No,’ says her mother, ‘let him go, we cannot buy it.’

‘Take it,’ says Kailash, unties Red Balloon from the trolley hanger and ties the string to the girl’s wrist.

‘How much does it cost?’ asks Mother.

‘Ten rupees,’ says Kailash, ‘but you can have it. This is the last one and I am headed home.’

The girl runs in circles around her mother, Red Balloon at least 3 feet above her head in the night sky.

‘Play with the balloon,’ says mother, ‘but if someone wants to buy it, we can make Ten rupees.’

‘I don’t want to sell it,’ says the girl.

~

Barely two hours later, around midnight, when the crowd at the hospital’s entrance has thinned, a man walks up to the girl, a thin man, his wrist so slim his watch slides halfway to his elbow when he raises his arm, points to the balloon, and asks, ‘How much?’

‘Only ten rupees,’ says Balloon Girl, as she thrusts her wrist towards him.

Red Balloon sees itself reflected in the man’s empty eyes.

WOMAN

Asiatic Lion

One winter morning, just before you leave for school, you tell me, Ma, I need to prepare a chart on ‘My Favourite Animal’ for my class and I have chosen the Asiatic Lion,
Panthera leo persica,
and I want to watch the lion, Ma, how it moves, how it walks and how it sits, and I say, of course, that’s a great idea, that’s the best way to do this chart, your method of enquiry, observing things for yourself before you start putting them down on paper. And, who knows, I add, that little board they have outside the lion’s enclosure may have details you may not find in any book, you could take that down. Like where it has come from, which year was it born. Ma, you ask, may I meet the man who feeds the lions? I can watch him, I can ask him questions, too. How much meat does a lion need for lunch? I can put all these in my chart.

Of course, I say, you can do all that, we will go this weekend.

~

I call him.

I call him because it promises to be a beautiful winter morning, the newspaper says the sun will melt the previous night’s fog. This is the first trip out for all of us and I call him because I want him around you and me, I want him in the space your father left behind.

He says I don’t need to worry about anything. He tells me, you just ensure that Saturday night she sleeps early so that she wakes up fresh, wide awake when we set out. Let’s beat the rush, try to be at the Zoo ten, fifteen minutes before it opens so that we can be right in front of the line at the ticket counter. It’s a Sunday, it’s winter, there will be a very big crowd, he says, we do not want to get caught.

What about lunch? I ask.

I have everything worked out, he says, not to worry, you relax.

That’s his favourite, most frequent line to me:
not to worry, you relax, I have everything worked out.

He says this first at your father’s funeral.

~

The next morning he is at our door with a red cloth bag, lined with newspaper and towels to keep the heat in. I have got sandwiches for her, the kind she likes, with eggs and tomatoes, he says. I have samosas and tea for us, hot milk chocolate for her. And because they will not let us carry food inside, I have hired a taxi for the day, we will keep all this in it and at lunchtime we will step out, eat, and then go back inside. Along with the food, he has brought a new drawing book and a box of crayons, unopened, because I have told him about the chart you have to make.

She can sit in front of the enclosure and draw the lion, he says, with the moat and the cage and the grass and the trees.

~

We are in the taxi, in the rear seat. You sit between him and me. The bag with the food and the drinks is on the passenger seat in front. The drawing book is in your lap, the box of crayons balanced on your knees.

That’s when it happens.

The taxi lurches to a stop at a red light, the box of crayons slides down, flies open, pencils spill out into a bright puddle of colour on the black mat on the taxi floor. Some roll under the seat in front.

He bends down to pick it up when the drawing book falls too.

You are crying.

I see your tears, I see your shoulders shaking but I do not hear anything. He is crouched on the floor of the taxi, picking up the pencils and putting them back into the box.

What happened? I ask.

You scream in reply.

~

Ma, you say, breathing deep, in and out, in and out, I tell you, yes, please tell me, tell me what’s the matter, did something, someone hurt you, tell me, I am listening, and you shake your head, you ball your fists and start hitting the seat in front, you knock the box of crayons from his hand. I don’t want this, Ma, throw this out right now, you say, the lights change to green, the taxi driver asks me if he should pull over, I say, no, keep driving, we will sort this out, and I know right then that I have made a mistake, that I should never have said that because you take my words,
we, will, sort, this, out
, and you throw them back at me, loud and hard. Ma, you cannot sort this out, you say, I do not want to go to the Zoo with him, and you point to him sitting next to you holding the drawing book and looking at you, at me with not one expression on his face. I don’t want him in the taxi, Ma, you say, get him out, get him out of the taxi, I do not want anyone in the taxi except you, except Ma and Papa and I know that Papa isn’t dead, Ma, you know that, too, don’t you, you know that very well, he isn’t dead. I am not going to say a word because I need to let you speak, I need to listen to you. So I sit there, my eyes on yours, my ears catching your words as they rush headlong down a slope unchecked, gathering speed, cutting, bruising themselves as well, and you say, Ma, you know something?

Papa comes to our house almost every other night.

I am sleeping, Ma, we are sleeping when I hear him knock on the door, I hear him walk downstairs, some nights I run to the balcony and he is there, waiting for me downstairs. And he waves to me, he makes funny faces, Ma, he makes me laugh, you say this with tears streaming down your face.

Ma, I tell him to come inside the house and he says, no, I cannot come in any more and when I ask him why, he says, you ask Ma because Ma is with someone else now and when I ask who, he says, you ask Ma.

Last night, Papa had come again, he told me, you are going to the Zoo with Ma and I will also come with you, and that’s why I don’t want him in the taxi, Ma, and before I can say anything, he taps the driver on his shoulder and asks him to pull over, he gets out of the taxi and comes to my side of the door, waits for me to lower the window to tell me that the taxi has been paid for, that we can keep it as long as we want to.

Standing in the street, cars honking for ours to give them the right of way, he shows me where he has kept the sandwiches and the chocolate milk and then he smiles at you and says, draw a nice lion, have a great time at the Zoo, do not forget to ask the man what he feeds him.

And he is gone.

It’s only then that you calm down.

~

All this happens so fast that, at first, I am not even sure whether it’s happened. And then I see he isn’t there in the taxi, we are moving, you are looking out of the window, your face marked with tears. I see scratches your nails have left on the taxi seat. On my arms, in little red lines of blood. Your words, which had tumbled out in a fury unrestrained, now sit in my ears, in a little painful pile.

I don’t know what to do with them.

Right now we are going to the Zoo, you have a lion to watch, you have a chart to make.

~

We rent an electric trolley, tell the driver to drop us off where the lions are, no stopping anywhere along the way. We are the first ones to reach the enclosure. It’s empty, the lions are inside, two of them, male and female
.
A Zoo employee passing by stops and tells us that we have come right on time, we are lucky, breakfast is ten minutes away, that we should be able to see the lions eat.

You are so excited you cannot stand still.

I want to see the lions, Ma, you say, I want to see them right now.

Quiet, says the zookeeper, let’s not disturb them.

~

The Asiatic lions walk out of their cave: the male, Sheroo, followed by Durga, the female. Both are old, frail, their faces sunken, but you don’t notice that. This is the first time you are watching real lions and you stand rooted, as if the slightest movement will scare them away. Your eyes follow them as they walk, majestic even in each tired step, across the grassy ground that separates their cave from the moat, from one end of the enclosure to the other and then back again.

Slowly, inch by inch, you lower yourself so that you sit down on the ledge that runs parallel to the railing. From your new vantage point, you get a better view, you watch them, your lips parted, your eyes sparkling with awe. And then you open the drawing book and the box of crayons we got from the taxi. You take out two coloured pencils, black and yellow, and as you begin drawing, I look at the pencil in your hands, the drawing book in your lap, the things he got for you with so much love, and I try to smile but I have to turn away from the lions, away from you because I don’t want you to see the tears in my eyes.

Behind me, I hear the lions walk and the scratching sound your crayons make.

MAN

Taxi Driver

There he is, Taxi Driver. Exactly as Balloon Girl says, leaning against the tree at the taxi stand. His night shift has begun.

And, then, Taxi Driver is gone.