She Will Build Him a City Page 2

  ‘No, no, nothing doing,’ says Mrs Chopra, ‘your hands are wet, we can’t let anything happen to him. He doesn’t look more than a day old, look at the red patches on his head, the skin peeling off his fingers. You go tell the day nurse to prepare some milk, God knows how long he’s been unfed, we need to clean him up, we need to fill him up with water. Imagine, this poor child, left alone in this heat. What if a dog from the garbage heap had scented him out, attacked him last night.’

  According to the rules of Little House, Mrs Chopra’s first task is to report this new entry so she walks to the director’s office but not before she has recorded a clip of the baby on her phone, the blink of one eye, the slight wiggle of one toe, and checked the boxes in the form: ‘normal, male, infant’.

  ~

  In his thirteen years as director of Little House, Rajat Sharma – Indian Administrative Service, 1988; MPA, Kennedy School, Harvard, 2000 – has never seen a ‘normal male infant’ being left on his doorstep.

  ‘Who lets go of a boy, Mrs Chopra, tell me who? Which mother has done this? And, that too, in so killing a heat wave? Which father’s heart is so hard?’ says Mr Sharma, himself the father of a son. ‘Let’s immediately get his files in order, I want all paperwork done before I leave for home today. And if we get this right, Mrs Chopra, I, you, all of us, will be on TV. English, Hindi, all channels. Boy deserted on the hottest night since Independence. I can already see the ticker: “Breaking News, Coldheart Mother Dumps Baby In Record Heat”.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ says Mrs Chopra. ‘What name should we enter in the file?’

  ‘Name?’ He pauses but only for a second. ‘Call him Orphan. That’s it, Orphan. It’s an unusual name, that’s what TV people want.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ says Mrs Chopra.

  ‘Also, it’s a common noun,’ says Mr Sharma, ‘like a blank. Like “Baby”. Any family which adopts him can fill in their own, whatever name they like.’

  ~

  Over the next hour, Orphan is fed, changed, washed, all the while lying next to the red towel he has been found in.

  ‘This must carry the smell of his mother,’ Mrs Chopra tells Asma, ‘until Kalyani the night nurse comes, this will help calm him down.’ And help it does. His hunger fed, his thirst quenched by milk and water spooned into him, his body cooled by a sponge-wash and wind from the aircooler through which running water gurgles like a stream, the sound of a lullaby, Orphan slips in and out of sleep, his head resting on the red towel left behind by his mother.

  Where is his mother?

  Where’s Bhow, that first eyewitness?

  The dog has watched it all and although, in the normal course of things, her little head and heart should not register any of this, they do, and so she finds a cool corner in the garbage heap to sit where she sheds a drop of dog-tear that no one but herself can see.

  WOMAN

  Old Child

  I speak so softly I wonder whether my words carry to you. Up the stairs, so weak, do they slip under your door, climb into your bed, reach your ears? Because if they don’t, please let me know. I will retell this story, of the giant, the very tall woman.

  ~

  Last night, I hear nothing. I am in bed, tired, my legs hurt, my eyes begin to close, I hear neither the door knock nor the window rattle. Or the sound of her footsteps up the stairs, her fidgeting with the lock, her walking into the house, all 12 feet of her. She knows where I am, she knows where everything in my house is because she walks without disturbing a thing, no tripping, no stumbling, she walks into the bedroom, to the edge of my bed from where she lifts me up, she carries me out of the room, she walks with me and the strange thing is that I am not aware of any of this because I have fallen asleep, I don’t know when exactly, and it’s only when my eyes open that I realise I am not in bed, the floor is at least 9 feet, 10 feet below me and it’s clear this is the woman you asked me about that winter afternoon thirty years forty years ago.

  She is here.

  The woman, at least 12 feet tall.

  ~

  The last time I am lifted so high off the ground, it’s on the Ferris wheel in the park with you and your father. We are on our way back from the Zoo. You are six years seven years old, I get so dizzy I close my eyes. Your father laughs, look, she’s so scared, he says. That dizziness returns last night although I have no reason to be afraid: she holds me firm, my chin rests comfortably on her shoulder, I smell the cotton fabric of her sari, bright yellow, I feel her hair, black and glossy, brush my face. I wish to see what she looks like, for that I need to turn my head but I prefer to stay still. Once, twice, she bends, tries to avoid grazing the ceiling. I try to speak but fear, like someone or something, has pushed its way into my mouth, caught my tongue between its fingers. So, my lips part but no words come as she pats me on the back like I am a baby she is trying to help fall asleep.

  ~

  Close your eyes, she says, close your eyes.

  Her face is inches from mine but her voice comes from some place far away like the rolling of distant thunder, cold and wet.

  Let’s go out, you need some fresh air, she says, stooping to walk through the door, the weight of her palm gentle on my back.

  I pretend I am asleep, her heart beats against mine. I feel the street below, through each of her footsteps, precise and heavy. I am fully awake now, perched on her, my entire body tense.

  What do I look like if somebody sees us?

  A bug in the rain that flies into you, by accident, clasps your dress and then doesn’t let go.

  My head so close to the tops of trees, I hear telegraph wires sing, crows flap in their nests as they begin to wake up, wait for the first light of day. There is no one out at this darkest of hours except the boldest of fireflies and with nothing to constrain her movement, she walks upright now, no crouch, no bend. A light wind has begun to blow, it fans my face. She walks as if she knows this neighbourhood, all its lanes and bylanes, its open hydrants, the tar of the street long gone, baby pigs playing with trash, dirt-tracks that twist in and out of empty plots with half-built houses.

  How long she walks I am not sure because my eyes close again, on their own, and I never know when I go back to sleep or when she turns to walk home, when and how she places me back on the bed until the morning when I wake up to see, for the first time, that pillows are propped up on either side of me.

  Exactly as I do with you.

  There are scratch marks on the ceiling where her head must have scraped the plaster. And a strand of her hair, more than 6 feet long, lies on my bedspread. Like a line drawn with a felt-tipped pen.

  ~

  She may return, maybe by the end of this night.

  She knows where I live, I think she has marked me out. The next time, instead of placing me back in the bed, she may take me away to where she lives, where giants live, in hiding in this city. Where there will be others like her, young and old, tall and very, very tall, who will play with me.

  Your mother, this old child.

  They will pass me, as loving adults do with a baby, from one pair of hands to another. And although I never thought I would tell you this – no child should ever have to hear this from her parent – I have to tell you: I am afraid.

  That’s why I won’t sleep, I won’t switch off the lights tonight.

  MAN

  Flying Dog

  Diwali evening, there is a terror alert across the city: security agencies suspect an attack by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a spectacular hit, say the men and women on TV, bigger than the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, this time they may come by air, breach the no-fly zone, glide down from the sky in parachutes filled with poison gas. The alarming word has spread, he sees policemen at every street corner, they prop themselves against lamp-posts. In dirty brown uniforms, they look like straggly plants in clay flowerpots. He wants to walk up to them, tear their limbs, pluck their leaves.

  One by one.

  ~

  He, Sukrit, Arsh and Aatish. Four friends and one dog, too.
Black-and-white. The dog is a bitch, teats swollen but pups missing.

  Brave Dog.

  Homeless in this city, day and night, Dog hears trucks thunder by, she hears the cough of the sick and the old, she breathes exhaust, in and out. But that evening, the Diwali fireworks reduce her to a scaredy-cat, make her stray into Apartment Complex where fountains and sparklers whistling from earth to sky, hissing rattlesnakes on fire, twinkling lights strung across balconies force her to squeeze herself flat under a blue Porsche Cayenne (Rs 1.2 crore) in Visitors’ Parking. Right next to a sprawling concrete quadrangle fringed by five apartment towers that glow in the night sky, towering lamps of glass and steel.

  (They love this game, putting the price of everything they see in brackets.)

  He stands and watches as, crouching on all fours, craning their necks to see under this car, Aatish and Sukrit dangle one Kentucky Fried Chicken leg each (Rs 119 for half a bucket). Part chewed, mustard-ketchup-mayo smeared like ointment on an open wound. Dog is frightened but she is hungry, too. She trusts the four, so she crawls out, even lets Sukrit clamp her jaws with both his hands, lets Arsh grip both her front legs, lets Aatish lift her tail, tie four rockets (Rs 245 for a packet of six) to it with a plastic string.

  Dog lunges for the chicken leg which has fallen to the ground now but Arsh kicks it away, Aatish pulls her tail hard, she pulls, she pushes, she strains against hands and fingers that hold her down, she tries to wriggle out but with her jaws forcibly shut she can only twitch, muffle her bark.

  In one deft flick, Aatish lights the four rocket wicks with his cigarette lighter. The first sparks sputter, they let Dog go, they watch.

  Flames leap, saffron, green and white, a bit of blue, colours of the flag.

  Dog makes a sound.

  ~

  It is a sound he has never heard before. It comes from Dog all right but it is more than just sound, it has a shape and texture too, hard edges that scrape his skin like a knife. He smells flesh burn. Dog runs but she can go only a few yards before she trips. One by one, each of the four rockets rips the plastic string, embeds into Dog’s back, a jet of fire that gouges a hole in her black fur, mats its fringe with charred skin and blood. Three clear holes, the fourth one bleeds into them.

  Dog crumples like a balloon, its gas draining out.

  ~

  My turn, says Sukrit.

  He opens Dog’s mouth, parts her jaws, she offers no resistance, he lights a chocolate bomb and drops it inside. This is how they do it in Iraq, Sukrit says, they do this to people, with real bombs, I watched it in a documentary.

  Arsh flicks his cellphone (Rs 41,245), records the explosion, its aftermath. Seventeen seconds.

  Bitch, Arsh says.

  Like the dogs in Amores Perros, Sukrit says.

  They like movies, they run backwards, Dog pieces raining on all four.

  ~

  Past midnight.

  He showers and scrubs with a Body Shop seaweed sponge he bought as part of a special Diwali hamper (Rs 5,657), he stands under the shower, steams Dog’s singed flesh and fur out of the pores of his skin, coats himself with Buriti Baby Body Butter (Rs 795), and lies down. He switches the air conditioner (Rs 62,550) on although it is cold but he wants to shiver under his blanket. He tries to sleep but can’t, he wonders what Sukrit, Arsh and Aatish are doing.

  Lying in bed, he turns around to look at the sky through the window, thick with smog. Most of the revellers have gone home, there is a no-fireworks midnight deadline set by the court to cut down on noise levels and pollution. But fireworks are still going off far away, their noise, from a distance, soft and muffled, the sky coughing its smoke-filled throat.

  ~

  He cannot sleep so he gets up, walks onto the balcony and when he looks up, he sees Dog, with flesh-coloured wings, flying into the moon, her jaws open so wide she may soon swallow a star or two, her tail a plume of fire, slashing the night sky.

  A shooting star.

  Wish, wish, he tells himself.

  And he wishes for all that he will never have before he goes to sleep.

  ~

  The Metro announcement wakes him up. It’s Gitanjali Aiyar’s voice, the woman who read the news on TV once upon a time.

  Next station is Race Course, she says, doors will open to the right.

  CHILD

  Kalyani Das

  For a newborn without a mother, Orphan is the least demanding baby in Little House. Which is the best thing that can happen to Kalyani Das, trainee nurse.

  ~

  Kalyani is the only one from her family who graduated from school when they migrated from their village in West Bengal to New City. Each day, her mother works as a maid in four homes; her father drives a cycle rickshaw for sixteen hours; her brother, Bhai, does the day shift as a gardener’s assistant in Apartment Complex; and her sister, Pinki, ten years eleven years old, works as a nanny to a four-year-old boy. They live in a one-room, one-lightbulb house with tarpaulin as door, a sheet of tin as roof.

  Shelley Madam, Kalyani’s teacher at nursing school, where she takes morning classes, has told her that, just like her daughter, if Kalyani works hard, if she takes a CL exam (Commission and Licensure nursing exam but the words are too big for her to remember), she can move to America or England. Where they pay more, where they don’t treat you like a maid.

  She needs to prepare for the exam at night so once Kalyani discovers that Orphan sleeps long hours, uninterrupted, she promptly signs up for permanent nightshift at Little House. Of the twelve hours of the shift, she gets, on average, ten hours free. Only once, maybe twice, Orphan wakes up, needs to be cleaned and fed, then he goes right back to sleep. A miracle, say the nurses, for a baby so young to keep so disciplined a schedule.

  Kalyani uses her abundant spare time to either sleep – waking up at 5 a.m. every day to help her mother with the housework, she’s drained by the time she starts her shift – or take a practice test from a used Kaplan guide Shelley Madam gave her as a gift.

  ~

  The only one at Little House who has a sense of Kalyani’s ambition, who has noticed her reading, writing at night is Dr Neel Chatterjee, the night resident doctor. The son of a VVIP, he has recently returned from some kind of a medical course in Paris. Who this VVIP is no one knows but whispers in Little House say Dr Chatterjee’s father is only a couple of places below the Chief Minister herself and can, therefore, order the Little House director around.

  Maybe his father’s clout has set off a rebellion in his heart, who knows, but Dr Chatterjee fancies himself a free-thinking liberal, even a Marxist, and sincerely admires how Kalyani Das, twenty-four, poor, working class, is using The Wretched System to her benefit. Many a night, Dr Chatterjee drops by to say hello to her and, less than 5 feet from a sleeping Orphan, they talk, he in a chair, she leaning against the wall or sitting on the floor. He tells her about Paris, open-air cafés, people sitting down to dinner at tables laid out on cobbled pavements. How on winter evenings, cold and clear, his favourite restaurant drapes a blood-red blanket, warm and soft, on the backrest of each chair. He tells her about bread, freshly baked, that he can smell from fifteen houses away, his walk along the Seine, a river so small, so clean it looks as if it were hand-drawn in a picture. On his phone, he shows her a clip of tourist boats gliding down this river. The crowd at the Eiffel Tower, a man go by riding a horse.

  Kalyani watches, she listens, she rarely speaks.

  One day Dr Chatterjee asks her why and she says,‘You have so much to show me, sir, what can I say.’

  ~

  So Dr Chatterjee is surprised one night when she suddenly seems to step out of her shell and tell him about her plan to go to America. She mentions the names of cities, New York, Pittsburgh, Boston.

  ‘What if you don’t get through?’ Dr Chatterjee asks.

  ‘What do you mean, I won’t get through? Maybe not America right away but one day I will go.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Dr Chatterjee leads her on.

>   ‘Shelley Madam told me that nurses will always be in demand because no one, other than your parents, can take care of you the way they can. Even your wife or husband will have problems once you are very ill. Who is going to clean you up when you wet your bed?

  ‘I will do it, I will do it very well, because I am learning not to smell the smells. I will clean up, give pills on time, do the laundry, scrub the floor, work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours, and I will smile all those hours. Sir, it doesn’t matter if I do this here or in America because shit, piss, sweat, blood, they all look and smell the same wherever you are, whoever you are. So why not work where I make more money?’

  Kalyani has never spoken so much at one time. She is suddenly aware of this, so is Dr Chatterjee. An uncomfortable silence follows which Dr Chatterjee rushes to fill: ‘What about your family, can you leave them here?’

  ‘Forget family, sir, my family only needs to see me happy and earn so much that my father doesn’t have to cycle the whole day, Pinki can go to school, Ma doesn’t need to work in so many homes.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘From here, I change two buses and then take the Metro.’

  ‘Tell me your address.’

  ‘What will you do with my address, sir? You can’t come and visit me there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘People like you don’t come there. There is no house, it’s just a row of rooms.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, I may get you a few books that will help you in your CL exam.’

  ‘Bring them to the hospital, Doctor, but if you really wish to get your shoes and trousers dirty, let me write this down: take the bus from here to AIIMS, take the Metro to New City, get off at Sikanderpur. Once you are there, call me on my phone, I will guide you through the lanes.’