She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

  Absolutely no short-cuts, he will do due diligence on her, so what if she is the most famous anchor in the world’s largest democracy.

  But, of course, Mr Sharma doesn’t say or do any of this.

  ‘I understand and appreciate your sentiment, Ms Thomas,’ he says, when he walks her to her car. ‘You fix the date for the shoot, I will get all of Sunil’s paperwork done, it’s been a pleasure and a privilege.’

  ~

  ‘You were right, sir,’ says Mrs Chopra when Mr Sharma tells her what happened. ‘To tell me that night not to tell Orphan or Kalyani anything. How would we have told him that he had been rejected by the first mother who came to see him. You were right, sir, one hundred per cent right.’

  ‘It’s experience, Mrs Chopra,’ says Mr Sharma, ‘only experience.’

  ~

  A fortnight later, in a two-hour special show preceded by a day-long telethon advertised on billboards plastered across the city, sponsored by Mothercare, Reliance Petroleum, Tata Motors and Life Insurance Corporation of India, Priscilla Thomas becomes a mother to Sunil, a Down’s syndrome child.

  The State Chief Minister and the Union Minister for Child Welfare are the chief guests. A panel of experts discusses Down’s syndrome, the public apathy to disability, the need for a new law, they all agree that The Amazing Adoption of Sunil Thomas – as the show is now titled – will do wonders in raising public awareness and sensitivity not only to Down’s syndrome, in particular, but to disability in general.

  A scientist from Brisbane, on live hook-up, quotes a new study in Australia that shows life expectancy for people with Down’s syndrome is steadily going up – his remarks are welcomed with thunderous applause and further close-ups of Sunil who has gone back to sleep.

  As for Mr Sharma, he gets as many as 420 seconds on TV, spread across six appearances, in which he is told – by Ms Thomas’s assistants – to talk about how and why Ms Thomas’s move is a ‘landmark decision’ in the history of child welfare in India.

  ~

  Orphan, too, appears during the broadcast – in one frame in which the cameraman, capturing the ‘feel’ of Little House, this home of hope, as Ms Thomas calls it, gets him lying on his bed, quietly, playing with a yellow car, one wheel broken, Kalyani by his side. Orphan is in the frame for exactly two seconds.

  Maybe appropriate given that he’s not the story today, maybe a little unfair because now he is the only boy left in Little House.

  MEANWHILE

  The Magnificent Cockroach in the Swimming Pool

  Once upon a time, at the bottom of the swimming pool in the Town & Country Resort, the most upscale club in New City, less than six kilometres from Indira Gandhi International Airport, lives a cockroach. Not your usual cockroach, half-a-middle-finger long, scuttling in the dark across the floor underneath the kitchen sink when you switch the lights on.

  This cockroach is 18 inches long, just under 10 inches wide, the size of a small cat, its body coated with an extra special secretion that keeps it waterproof.

  So special is this creature that it even has a name: CR, for ‘cock roach’.

  Like ER, the American medical drama once big on TV.

  Or like Emaar, the construction company whose huge neon sign near the airport is the first thing you see as your plane begins to descend, purrs its landing gears open, kisses the roofs of the slums just yards off the highway.

  ‘We Are Building The New India,’ the sign reads.‘7 malls. 6 Special Economic Zones. 3 Villa complexes, Andalusian, Mediterranean, American. 2 Greg Norman golf courses.’

  Once they start construction, there will, inevitably, be cockroaches. Not like CR, of course.

  Ordinary 1-inch ones. That dart in and out between bags of sand, crawl under tattered mats on which women workers sit and feed their babies. Or rest their heads which carry cement, stonechips the whole day. From machine to site, machine to site.

  ~

  CR sits on the floor of the swimming pool.

  He is glorious red in colour. Fine wine in dim yellow light.Eyes, brilliant yellow half-moons.

  Antennae, almost 2 feet long, delicate and beautiful. Like fronds of some alien plant that fell down to earth.

  Once a fortnight, when they empty the pool to scrub its floor, CR crawls underneath a raised cinderblock that covers one of the twelve drainage filters set in two rows of six.

  For food, CR never has to struggle. Because he nibbles on dead skin and salt that water scrubs off swimmers. These give CR the calories he needs. There’s another, more reliable source of food. Evenings, the club rents the poolside for dinners, office parties, birthdays. At these gatherings, something falls from a raised fork or from an outstretched spoon into the water. A drunk guest trips over his shadow, his plate crashes down, some food slips in.

  Crumbs float down to CR.

  Butter naan, pasta, palak paneer, vegetable spring roll, chicken Manchurian.

  ~

  This is a healthier diet than what CR gets, on average, when he is human. When he is the third of five children of a farmer, one of the five hundred farmers who have to sell their land to developers to make way for the club and nearby Apartment Complex.

  CR is the only one who tells his father not to sell.

  ‘This is all we have got, Father,’ he says, ‘this is where we live. The money you will get will run out, what do we do then?’

  ‘That’s why I keep telling you that you should study, do well in school, but you never listen,’ says his father, brushing him away as if he were a cockroach.

  CR turns to his mother hoping she will step in and help but she sits silently, clueless, as she almost always is.

  ~

  July, 47 degrees Celsius outside, 27 inside the pool.

  Sheela is swimming. Her swimsuit is red. It has tummy control, halter neck.

  Sheela wants to pee.

  The club’s rules are clear, she should use the women’s rest room. But she is lazy, there’s no one in the pool, she thinks, no one will notice, let me pee, it’s water anyway, I pay so much for membership, she tells herself, why can’t they clean up after me? And who will object? The only person she can see is a janitor, he doesn’t even speak English – Sheela is sure that, if he objects, she will shout him down. How dare he tell her what to do.

  So she keeps swimming. Lets her pee and water mix.

  CR notices.

  Because CR feels a warm, weak, yellow trickle that flows into his eye, his antennae quiver as they sense change in his waterworld, making him swim upward. He climbs up the pool’s wall while Sheela is still inside, clambers over the edge, slips on the thin film of water that covers the marble tiles and once he’s out in the open, he crawls to the deckchair where she has put her towel, under which lies her duffel bag. Maybe it’s her pee, its smell acts like a homing signal, a beacon that guides him straight into her bag.

  The fierce sun on his back, CR feels the sudden temperature change and crawls right inside, burrows underneath Sheela’s towel, under her change of clothes, a red T-shirt and blue jeans, fresh underwear, lace, slithers over the Kiehl’s moisturiser and sunscreen bottles to sit at the bottom. Under the spare towel. Big blue, as soft as a cloud.

  And CR goes home with Sheela.

  ~

  Home is in Apartment Complex.

  Home is where the heart is.

  Her heart, the one Sheela chose to give away to Sukrit Sharma, investment banker, who is, at this moment, sitting in a restaurant on Orchard Road in Singapore waiting for his client. Sheela and Sukrit will get married in winter and she will move to Singapore.

  The first time she visits him, she falls in love with Changi Airport, the clothes stores in the city, designer and knockoffs at Vivo City Mall and Bugis Junction.

  ‘One year, honey, I am not doing anything here except loving you and shopping,’ she tells him.

  ‘Of course,’ he says, he holds her close.

  She tries out the short gingham skirt with the banded waistline and the belt loo
ps, she tries out snug turtleneck crop tops. She doesn’t like what she sees in the mirror: fat drips down her sides. That night, looking through the hotel-room window at the blinking lights on Sentosa Beach, she can’t hold back her tears.

  ‘I have six more months to go for the wedding,’ she says. ‘I will join the gym, I will swim a kilometre each day so that I lose all this weight.’

  ‘I love you,’ says her husband, ‘even if you don’t do any of this but, yes, swimming is great, both cardio and stretch, and don’t they have a wonderful pool at your club?’

  ~

  Sheela has lunch, tells her maid to clear up, decides on a nap.

  ~

  CR loses his argument.

  The size of their landholding is so small, his father says, the harvest yields nothing. Builders are offering a high value, everyone else is selling. We can use the money to buy cheap land elsewhere, we will have a lot to spare, use some of it to help you learn some skills so that you get a job. Maybe you can open a shop in the village.

  But CR says, ‘No, I am going to go on a fast unto death to protest against the sale of land.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ says his father, ‘who do you think you are? Anna Hazare? No one will care and even if they do, it doesn’t matter. Look what finally happened to the poor old man, the next time he will get a crowd is only when he dies.’

  The father is right.

  CR stops eating and drinking, sits in one corner of the house and because he is the only one protesting, no TV cameras are switched on, there is no breaking news, no one gets to know, and on the twenty-fourth day of his fast, under a full moon, CR, looking like his shadow, breathes his last. Meanwhile, for these twenty-four days and twenty-four nights, his mother keeps constant vigil praying to all the gods, so ardent her prayers, so deep her fervour, that exactly one hour after CR dies, the gods, who sit in golden chariots and move heaven and earth, shower the mother with petals from the sky and grant her two wishes.

  She wishes: One, let my son be reincarnated as someone who should live on this land. Two, he should change back into a human being the day he’s touched by someone very special, someone who loves him and lives, with him, on this land.

  Yes, yes, the gods say to both.

  And so CR is born, in his afterlife, as an unusually long cockroach who lives in the swimming pool that comes up on the land his father once owned.

  ~

  Sheela’s maid is cleaning up in the kitchen when CR crawls out from the bag she has left in the lobby, climbs the stairs, follows the fragrance of her trail, slips into her bedroom, shivers since the temperature there is below 20, climbs onto the bed, slips in under her thin blue sheet.

  Sheela hears a faint rustle, feels something moist, soft and hard at the same time. But she is tired, she doesn’t open her eyes.

  CR’s antennae touch her face, she thinks it’s her hair.

  CR’s legs rub against hers, she thinks it’s the edges of the pillow cover. Or something in her dream. She turns, her arm moves, her fingers come to rest on the yellow half-moon of CR’s eyes. It causes him some discomfort but he likes the chill of the room blending with the warmth of the woman beside him, beautiful and lonely, in yellow shorts and a white T-shirt, without sleeves, some of her fat already cross-trained and treadmilled away.

  CR lies absolutely still, feeling love for the first time in his life, waiting for her to wake up and kiss him so that his mother’s second wish can be fulfilled.

  So that he can become human again, grow up, go looking to find out what happened to his father, his mother, his four siblings, find out where they are now, what they did with the compensation they got for the land. Do they ever visit the swimming pool? Does one of them stare into the water where he once lived? While Sheela and Sukrit Sharma will go ahead and get married this winter, live happily ever after in Singapore, which, according to World Bank, is the best country in the world to start a business.

  WOMAN

  Village Opaar

  One minute, that’s all the train will stop here for, your father says. We are travelling to his village, the first time since you were born. We need to show her to all the elders, we need to get her blessed with their love, he says. Your grandparents are no more but you have uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces I haven’t met. You are four months, five months old, winter has begun.

  The train, scheduled to arrive at 10 p.m., is four hours late. The ticket examiner looks at you, bundled up, says, don’t worry, I will alert you a few minutes in advance, you gather all your bags, wait at the door. I will help you with the luggage, he says.

  As the train pulls out of the station, it begins to rain.

  ~

  Rain I have never seen before. It begins as a shower, very slight, on the cold afternoon we leave the city. At first, I don’t even think it’s rain, so light and spidery it is when it hits my face. Instead, I think, it’s a passenger a few seats ahead. Maybe she’s rinsing her hand, emptying her water-bottle of its last few drops which the wind tears, sends flying our way.

  But, no, this is rain.

  Rain that soon swells to fill every space there is. It forces passengers to close windows, stuff handkerchiefs, towels, sheaves of newspaper pages into the red, metallic slats of the shutters to prevent water from gushing in, flooding the seats. It’s rain bent on wringing out all the water the entire sky, the moon and the stars can hold, so fierce I am afraid it will push the train off the tracks.

  Don’t worry, says your father, the train is faster, it will soon overtake the rain, will take us to a place where it’s dry.

  ~

  He’s wrong, rain follows us to our station. It drums its asbestos roof, runs down its ridges to flow in streams onto the platform, creeps towards the bench where we sit waiting for your uncle who is supposed to pick us up. I hear an electric scream, I cover your ears, there’s another train coming, each of the million drops of rain lit by its blinding beam. This train thunders by so fast it makes the rain look weak, its coaches flashing streaks of red and white. From where I sit, I see the station’s exit, past the station master’s lime-yellow room. Next to it is a flight of steps that lead to a narrow dirt-track where a bullock-cart rests like a child’s see-saw, abandoned, its tyres half-hidden under water.

  You can close your eyes, rest for a while, says your father. I think my cousin got stuck in the rain, he says, he should be here any time now.

  ~

  Funny name our village has.

  Opaar.

  Means, in Bengali, the other side, more than a thousand kilometres east of where we are tonight, at the end of a straight line that passes through towns and villages I have never heard of. Some I know, like Panagarh and Chittaranjan, towns which the train passes when it’s light but, as evening falls, slips into night, the places grow progressively unfamiliar, their names on yellow boards meaning nothing but etching themselves so hard in my mind I still remember some after all these years.

  Didori, Pili, Lohta, Koilak, Karmauli, Siho, and then Opaar.

  ~

  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
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br />   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.