~
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, Orp
han 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.
Your father returns by the time you are finished with breakfast, he has brought your clothes right on time for you to put them on. The skirt and top, neatly folded in places where the creases should be, covered on either side by the newspaper, the pair of socks folded, placed on top. You are ready to slip into your uniform, spotless, stainless white. Perfectly straight, each pleat in perfect place.
Look at my little princess, says your father, as he walks you to the bus stop.
~
Ma, you tell me one day, there is a girl in my class, her name is Priya, there are ice cubes in her water-bottle, it’s wrapped in canvas, that prevents the cold from getting out. Every morning, she takes me to a corner of the classroom, lets me dip a finger into the water and touch the ice. Even by lunchtime, the ice hasn’t melted and she lets me drink some of that cold water. Ma, why can’t I have some ice and I tell you that Priya probably has a fridge at home and that’s why she can get ice cubes every morning and we don’t have one and you ask me why and I say we need to wait until your father has saved up enough money.
You don’t accept this explanation and you begin to cry when your father enters the room and he takes one look at you and says, what’s wrong with my little princess and I tell him the ice story and he says we need to quickly get some ice to freeze those tears.
~
Give me my handkerchief, he says, and goes out looking, this time for Ice Man, and in an hour, he walks in, a small block of ice wrapped in his handkerchief, covered with sawdust. Quick, quick, my little princess, go get a bowl of water, he says, we need to clean the ice, wash all the sawdust away. You are so excited that you laugh, you cry, you shout as if he’s got a puppy wrapped up in that handkerchief. The sawdust gone, I use a steel cup to break the block of ice into smaller pieces, one of which darts across the floor leaving a cold trail of water for you to chase.
You try to pick the ice piece from the floor but it keeps slipping from between your fingers. We cannot play with ice, let’s make a nice drink, says your father, as he takes out a bottle of squash he has bought along with the ice. We mix water and squash in a big pitcher, drop all the shards of ice in it.
You drink two glasses, you say you want to keep some for the water-bottle that you will take to school tomorrow and your father says, it will not stay, the ice is already beginning to melt. I will get some more this weekend, he says, from the Ice Man, and we drink all of the squash until we are full and the floor is cold where the ice was and sticky with sugar and water.
MAN
Kahini’s Clothes
The bathrobes that Balloon Girl and her mother wore are washed. He is going to put them back in the wardrobe. In The Room, the most special place in his house, deep inside, farthest from the door, a place he doesn’t enter until he has to. Like this morning when he has locked himself in, told Security Guard not to let the maid disturb him. The Room is where his past lives, a past in which there is Kahini, a woman he loves, and the faint promise of their child.
That’s why in one corner, propped up against the wall, there is a wooden easel with double-sided magnetic boards, blackboard and whiteboard. There is coloured chalk on the floor, erasers, wooden shapes, the letters A to Z from a brightly coloured magnetic alphabet with pictures. Strewn around, for little hands and feet to push and kick in the course of play. Yellow tennis balls, red footballs fill up a wicker basket in the centre of which stands upright, like a prop in a school play, a child’s red-and-yellow umbrella, open, planted in the middle. The basket on the floor and a butterfly mobile hanging from the ceiling, blue and white, with a wingspan of three feet, create the two bright splashes of colour in The Room which is, otherwise, painted in silent colours, its walls and ceiling in office white, drab but spotless. Across the easel and the blackboard, against the wall, is a shoe rack where in neat rows of black, brown and a dash of red-and-blue, are Kahini’s shoes. All worn, the leather veined on the heels, softened by her feet, but each one gleaming, as if freshly dusted and polished.
Then there is the wardrobe. Its veneer is light oak, it has two mirrored central doors behind which is a hanging rail on which are her clothes. Saris, salwar kameez, jeans and shirts, long skirts, trousers. He pushes the clothes to one side, makes space on the railing on which he hangs the two bathrobes. The air in the wardrobe is musty, he needs to let the sun and the wind touch the clothes so he leaves the mirrored doors open, walks across The Room to the easel, picks up a wooden letter from the floor, lets it drop down. Its weight kicks off motes of dust from the carpet. In the mirror, the white-hot light from the summer sky bounces back to hurt his eyes.
He walks to the window, pulls the blinds down because he likes the dark, he likes everything in The Room to be wrapped up in puddles of their own shadows. Like he himself is right now, cold and naked.
CHILD
Wall Collapse
‘We have breaking news coming in,’ announces Priscilla Thomas to the soundtrack of cymbals clashing, drums rolling, a globe spinning across the blue screen, the map of India scattering stars in its wake.
‘If you live in the capital and if you have looked outside, you know the weather is playing up. Playing up rather seriously. After the very, very hot days, so hot that people died in the heat, we have a thunderstorm, we have news of walls collapsing, streets flooding, trees falling, people getting killed.
‘Reporter Payal Wadhwa has braved the weather to send us this report. Payal?’
~
‘Absolutely, Priscilla,’ says Payal Wadhwa, standing under an umbrella embossed with the Camera India logo.
‘The dust storm we have seen in the cap
ital today was very much in the forecast for the last two days, not just here for Delhi but for Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh as well as Rajasthan. But when it hit today, it surprised even the Met Office which says that the wind speed and severity of the storm were much stronger than anticipated. But the storm is unlikely to continue until tomorrow which means this respite could be short-lived.
‘The reason behind the dust storm and the wind is an upper-air cyclonic circulation that lies over Haryana with another western disturbance lying over Pakistan adjoining the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Some showers have been seen here in the capital accompanied by thunder and lightning and more rain is expected through the day. As far as the maximum temperature is concerned, it was 44 degrees yesterday and today it’s come down by more than 12 degrees to 32, temperatures in the entire north are expected to come down.
‘Along with this good news, Priscilla, is some not so good. At least five construction workers have been killed and ten are feared trapped when a building they were working on in the centre of the city collapsed in the storm. Local residents say the disaster could have been averted but builders violated the construction plan cleared by the municipal corporation. Four floors were approved but workers were building a fifth floor. That’s not the only rule flouted. Police sources have told Camera India they suspect the use of poor-quality raw material to be responsible for the wall collapse, but so far no action has been taken against the authority which gives the final quality certificate to the builder for the material they are using.
‘There’s a report of another wall collapse but this is a minor one, at a place called Little House.’
‘Of course, I know where that is, that’s where we broadcast live from just the other day,’ says Ms Thomas.
‘Absolutely, Priscilla, the very same place. From where you welcomed that wonderful boy, Sunil, into your life. I have received a video from one of our viewers who captured the scene on his camera phone and we will play it for you a little while later. It shows that a section of the wall of Little House has been broken. There are no reports of any casualties but authorities are checking how and why this happened. So far, one child, yes, one child, is reported missing. We will send you an update as soon as we get one.’
She Will Build Him a City Page 9