She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

  Some laughter, some applause.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Devika, ‘that’s a very nice story, next one, please?’

  ‘Hi, my name is Natasha. Three months ago, we moved from Boston where our son, Aryan, was born. We lived there for three years. One day, soon after we arrived here, he asked me, Mum, why is everyone’s hair black here? In Boston, he said, it was white, gold, red, yellow, so many colours. I said, that is America, this is India, people in India are different, their hair is black. He said, Mum, we should buy colours for people in India because their hair is only one colour.’

  ~

  Two more parents stand up and say something.

  ~

  Payal buys a goldfish bowl for her son’s third birthday. With a pair of goldfish, fish food, a plant and a little plastic frog that blows bubbles. She sets it all up so that he can see it first thing in the morning. He’s delighted, he sits on the floor for one full hour, rapt, looking at the fish. The second night, she finds they have died. Both float up to the surface of the bowl, the water is clouded with dirt. She calls up the store and the man says, I am sorry, ma’am, maybe it’s the temperature change, at night the water may have turned cold. She empties the bowl out, washes the pebbles and the frog, wraps it all in newspaper and keeps it away. The two fish go into the trash can in the kitchen. When he asks her about the fish, she says, they came for your birthday and now they have gone to their mother who lives in the sea.

  ~

  ‘Let’s all begin moving to the auditorium,’ says Megha.

  ‘There will be a short presentation. Refreshments are kept at the entrance.’

  The auditorium lights hurt Payal’s eyes. There’s a giant screen that shows the first page of a PowerPoint presentation.

  ‘The school joins with parents and community,’ the principal starts, ‘to assist the students in developing skills to become independent, self-sufficient adults who will succeed and contribute responsibly in a global community rooted strongly in the values that define Indian culture and family.’

  The overhead lights are now switched off. The auditorium is dark. For the first time this evening, Payal feels a calm descend on her. Like what it feels under the ocean into the depths of which she swims down, the voice from the stage a rumble in the waves. ‘At this school,’ the principal goes on, ‘the learning process is seen as one that is both challenging and enjoyable. Our students are encouraged to develop sound ethical values...’ She gets up and walks out on tiptoe, closing the huge door behind her.

  ~

  A group of teachers are huddled in the hallway.

  ‘Can I help?’one of them asks her.

  ‘Which way is the restroom?’ asks Payal.

  They show her the way.

  She walks out of the school to her car parked three blocks away. She thinks of her child, not yet four, fast asleep at home, her husband at work, the school starting next week, six missed calls from her TV station, they must be asking for a follow-up to the story about the orphanage and the missing baby. As she approaches her car, she can see, between her and the vehicle, her child’s years stretching ahead of her, Nursery, Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, Class 4, Class 5, Class 6, Class 7, Class 8, Class 9, Class 10, Class 11, Class 12 and then four years of college – and she wonders how she will pull through.

  Without an ocean to dive in and sit on its floor, without the light streaming in through the miles of water above her, without the shoals of fish swimming past her eyes, the two goldfish searching for their mother, the coral tangled in her hair.

  WOMAN

  Shaving Blade

  You will ask me when you wake up, Ma, why is this man, this student of my father, so important? You will ask me, Ma, why is he so special? Just because he says you can go to Father’s cremation, offers you a glass of water, helps lift you up when you slip down?

  That’s why I need to tell you who this man is, how he is the only one who walks up to me when your father’s lying on the floor, the only one who stands by my side to tell everyone there that there’s nothing wrong in me wanting to go to the crematorium, that no one should stop me. He is the only one who offers me his arm, the arm I hold as he helps me get up from the floor. He is the one who sits next to me in the truck, next to your father’s body, holding the ends of the wooden cot with both hands as the truck lurches and sways. He waves the incense smoke away from my eyes, he is the one who is with me when they lower your father down from the truck, place him on a raised cement platform, begin piling wood on him. He is the one who gives orders to the priest, checks the papers, pays the fee, arranges the flowers, he is the one who lights the pyre with your father’s cousin, with whom I watch the flames, the smoke and, in the end, the embers. When a wind carries smoke and ash into my eyes, he moves a few feet in front of me to block them both.

  He escorts me to my empty home.

  He is the one who opens the door when Krishna walks in, carrying you, fast asleep. She says you woke up in the night saying you want to be with your mother and your father. She gives you to me, you sleep with your head on my shoulder.

  He says, I will hold her, you go and wash.

  ~

  In the bathroom, your father’s shaving brush rests on the sink exactly where he left it, with the blade he used this morning, foam flecked on the razor’s edge. The soap he used is still wet.

  I sit on the red-tiled floor, pour water over myself, I cry.

  MAN

  News Ticker

  ‘CHILD RAPED, KILLED, MOTHER SEVERELY ASSAULTED, BODY FOUND NEAR AIIMS’, the news ticker should move to the next item but it doesn’t, it continues and he cannot believe what he’s seeing but there they are, the letters, the words, ‘IF THIS IS TRUE, IT RAISES A FEW QUESTIONS TO WHICH WE HAVE NO ANSWER YET AND UNTIL WE HAVE NO ANSWER YET AND UNTIL WE HAVE AN ANSWER, WE CANNOT PRONOUNCE ANYONE GUILTY, THERE IS RULE OF LAW AND DUE PROCESS IN A DEMOCRACY, THE WORLD’S LARGETST, SO LET’S HOLD JUDGEMENT UNTIL ALL THE FACTS ARE IN, WE WILL TAKE A SHORT AD BREAK NOW, RETURNING TO THE MAIN STORY OF THE DAY.’

  ~

  He switches off the TV but the news ticker is now streaming in a straight line, across the white-hot sky, like the trail of a jet plane, hard and unbroken, bending down in an arc to crawl across the windshield of his car, slide down the bonnet onto the road, then curl up to ride the trunk of a taxi in front, enter that vehicle, into the cellphone its passenger is using.

  ~

  BECAUSE OF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED, HE SHOULD FEEL IT, HE SHOULD HAVE SIGNS, SYMPTOMS ON HIS BODY AND INSIDE HIS BODY AS WELL BECAUSE JUST AS THE VICTIMS, BALLOON GIRL AND HER MOTHER, CARRY EVIDENCE OF ALLEGED RAPE AND ASSAULT AND KILLING SO SHOULD THE PERPETRATOR BECAUSE IF HE DID RAPE, HE SHOULD HURT BECAUSE HE FORCED HIMSELF INTO HER, THERE SHOULD BE TRACES OF HER BLOOD ON HIM, CRUSTED SEMEN ON HER, THERE SHOULD BE SKIN, TISSUE UNDER HIS NAILS.

  ~

  Can Driver see this ticker that’s crawling everywhere?

  He can read English but can he read this hurried stream, its blue-white letters, cold and electronic, on his skin, warm and dark? Small caps that leave no trace once they come and go.

  ~

  IF HE DOES RAPE HER, IF HE DOES KILL HER, HOW DOES HE RAPE HER? HOW DOES HE KILL HER? HE DOES NOT USE A GUN BECAUSE HE DOES NOT HAVE ONE, DOES HE STRANGLE HER? DOES HE CHOKE HER? AND WHILE HE DOES ALL THIS TO HER, WHERE IS THE MOTHER? SHE IS NOT SITTING THERE QUIET, SHE WILL SHOUT AND SHE WILL SCREAM, SHE WILL CLAW AT HIS FACE, SHE WILL BITE, SHE WILL SCRATCH, BUT THEN WHERE ARE THE MARKS, THE CUTS AND THE BRUISES? UNLESS HE BEATS HER UNCONSCIOUS, SEVERELY ASSAULTS HER, BEFORE HE RAPES AND KILLS BALLOON GIRL, AN IMPOSSIBLE

  ~

  Have we reached AIIMS? he asks.

  Driver takes the Shah Jahan Road radial exit, past the florist at the corner of the road leading to Khan Market, heads south, takes a left on Ring Road, crosses one red light, passes Jor Bagh Metro Station, towards the hospital, the ticker runs across the leaves of the gulmohur trees that line the road.

  ~

  HE DO
ES NOT USE A GUN BECAUSE HE DOES NOT HAVE ONE, DOES HE STRANGLE HER? DOES HE SIT ATOP HER, PINNING THE LITTLE GIRL DOWN, AND ALTHOUGH HE IS THIN, SHE IS A LITTLE GIRL NO MATCH FOR HIS WEIGHT, DOES HE GAG HER? WITH A PILLOW OR WITH A TOWEL? SO WHERE IS THEIR SMELL? THEY BOTH SMELL STRONG, THAT HE RECALLS DISTINCTLY, THAT’S WHY HE USED THE SOAP, WASHING MACHINE AND THE BATH. THEIR SMELL SHOULD BE ON HIM, THERE SHOULD BE EVIDENCE IN HIS HOUSE, ON THE BED, IN THE SHEETS, IN THE WASHING MACHINE? OR DID HE DO IT AFTER THEY SHOWER? BUT HE FEEDS THEM AFTER THE BATH, BREAD, ORANGE JUICE, RICE, HE ASKS THEM TO LIE DOWN IN THE GUEST ROOM

  ~

  Slow down near the entrance, he says, as they pass the hospital, there is no Balloon Girl, no Mother, no one selling any balloons. Just an endless stream of patients and their crowd of visitors, with plastic bags carrying food from home, fruit, medicine, large X-ray envelopes. Shuffling, standing, walking, waiting. Behind them, another crowd, this one better dressed, many in doctors’ white aprons, with placards. Another protest rally, his second of the day, this one against the government’s announcement to reserve seats for backward-caste students.

  A young woman shouts, ‘No to Quota, Yes to Merit, No to Quota, Yes to Merit.’

  Driver stops. A policeman says, keep moving, no parking here, no stopping here.

  The news ticker moves on the crowd, its words breaking over the faces.

  ~

  IF HE HAS DONE THIS, HOW DOES HE TAKE THEM DOWNSTAIRS INTO THE CAR? YOU MEAN TO SAY HE CARRIES BOTH OF THEM, ONE BY ONE, DOWN THE LIFT, HE BUNDLES THEM BOTH INTO THE CAR, WHAT IS SECURITY GUARD DOING AT THAT TIME? HE DRIVES DOWN THE HIGHWAY, ACROSS THE CITY, CARRYING A BODY AND A SEVERELY ASSAULTED WOMAN AND THEN HE OPENS THE CAR DOOR AND DUMPS BOTH OF THEM NEAR AIIMS? SURELY YOU MUST BE JOKING

  ~

  They have crossed the hospital and are at Yusufsarai Market.

  All shops are open. Pressure cookers, LCD TVs, microwaves, OTG, LG, Samsung, IFB, Bosch, Sony, Sanyo, Videocon, cellphones, the new Gurdwara, hardware stores, tiles, pipes, Karnataka Restaurant, Indian Oil Corporation Building, its business development office, for globalisation, for petrochemicals, for exploration and production, Gujarat Fisheries, Green Park Metro Station, Rhythm Restro Bar. No balloon, no girl, no mother.

  Of course, he hasn’t done anything. He loves her, didn’t he restrain himself in the Bird Park, among the penguins and the pelicans? How can he ever hurt someone he loves so much, he tells himself, and the rest of the words are gone, the original ticker is back on his TV:

  ‘CHILD RAPED, KILLED, MOTHER SEVERELY ASSAULTED, BODY FOUND NEAR AIIMS’

  ~

  You go home, he tells Driver, I will drive, I don’t need you now.

  And he takes a U-turn at the next red light, heads back to AIIMS, he needs to check the mortuary.

  CHILD

  Night Playground

  Like children, restless and excited, out on a school trip to a magical park for the first time, that’s how they walk: pressed along one side of The Mall that faces the road, sidling against the Plexiglas billboards of the Ralph Lauren man in red, a black-and-white Priyanka Chopra in Guess, they walk under awnings, draped in shadow, towards Gate 12. This is the last gate to remain open because this is the one customers use when they are headed for the seven-screen cinema multiplex where the last show ends at 1 a.m., at least three hours after the last store in The Mall closes for the day.

  It is minutes after 3 a.m., most of the guards have gone to sleep.

  They know where to go, they know what to do – all of them except Orphan, of course, for whom this is the first night.

  He sits on Bhow’s back, fresh after being bathed and fed and having slept.

  Whether Gate 12 is open or its guard is asleep or whether they glide through glass isn’t clear, what’s clear is that, one by one, they are all inside The Mall. Unseen and unheard. Even if their footsteps make a sound, no one hears that above the clatter of traffic that thunders up and down the highway.

  ~

  They know where to go – all the spaces.

  One kilometre of shopping on each floor means countless bends and corners, sharp and gradual, alcoves and clearings, corridors that abruptly branch out or gradually meander away from the main atrium into spaces out of bounds for people during business hours. The small space in front of one of the service lifts, for example, tucked away around a corner, used only for garbage cans that go up and down, to and from the parking lot. Or, the tiny hallway behind the Baskin-Robbins store’s main display case, accessible through a small sliding door that has no lock. This is where they keep empty ice-cream cartons during the day, but at night, you can squeeze into that space and lie down. Then there are the big spaces waiting to be occupied, which fall vacant when an entire shop moves out, when its shelves, ceilings, lights all are torn down. When one tenant’s checked out and the other one hasn’t moved in. At least a thousand-plus square feet of prime commercial real estate, the entire floor gouged out. Italian vitrified tiles or wood flooring, all ripped off to expose mud and earth in which grows a forest of dead wires, walled in on three sides by smudged glass marked by crosses in chalk and draped under endless rolls of tarp. There are many such spaces in The Mall in which stores are born and die.

  Then there is Food Court on the third floor: twenty-six stores, only five of them restaurants with their private areas, the others share a sprawling dining hall packed with chairs and tables still littered with leftovers from last night waiting for the cleaners later in the morning. The counters are there to be climbed over so that the cooking areas, the gleaming steel ovens and sinks can be explored. Or chairs and tables joined to make beds for the night.

  And, of course, there are the stores – after all, that’s what The Mall is all about.

  Stores, stores and stores.

  Right and left, up and down.

  Big Bazaar and Debenhams, Zara, Marks & Spencer, Kidzone, the children’s play area, almost half a floor, Next, Reliance, Westside, Mothercare, Promod, Vero Moda, Nike, where you enter and hide right through the day if you know where to hide. Each has a trial room, some of these have sofas and chairs, ideal to crawl under. Each floor has toilets, too. Stalls, sinks, tissue dispensers, liquid soap gel, automated sprinklers, and optical sensor-run flushes.

  Spaces to play, places to hide.

  And all of these, at this time, dark or dimly lit, by emergency lights switched on after midnight, adding to the shadows that help them hide.

  ~

  If they know where to go, they know what to do – each one his or her own thing, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, each night something different, so endless are the possibilities.

  Depending on what you need.

  If you are tired at the end of the day and you want to rest, even sleep, you lie down in one of these spaces. Choose a spot in an emptied-out store, right next to its glass wall if you wish to fall asleep watching the sky and the stars. If you are not too particular about a bedroom with a view, it’s easier. Pick any of the hundreds of spots all over The Mall, behind the ice-cream display case, in front of the service lift, even next to the escalator. Or in the children’s play area where there are bouncies to lie down on, small tree houses, dolls’ houses to move into; a Thomas railway train, each coach so big it can serve as a bedroom.

  If you are hungry, head straight to the Food Court and on the way, keep looking inside trash cans. Most of them are cleared by late evening but an entire set is kept for the morning shift that starts at 8 a.m. You may strike gold in the ones next to Kidzone, where the carousel and the jungle gym are. Because food isn’t allowed in the play area, many parents who are new to The Mall, who buy food, have to discard it before they are allowed to enter. So on some days, the trash cans here are Leftover Heaven. You will find sandwiches barely nibbled, Cola glasses half drunk. And because of the air conditioning, chances are the food hasn’t gone bad.

  If you wish to wash, slip into the bathroom. Get up on the sink, get into the sink, each is sturdy, squeeze liquid soap and
wash your hair, armpits, between the legs, all the areas you cannot wash when you live on the highway. Dry yourself with paper towels in the stalls. On some nights, like tonight, when it’s very hot, you don’t need to dry yourself. Many nights, Aunty walks around dripping, her wet hair plastered across her face. She says it’s cooler this way, to let the water from your skin evaporate and take the heat away.

  Then there is play, this is what they do most of the time. Mischief, but harmless.

  All the while ensuring that nothing is damaged, no guard wakes up, no one is caught because one wrong step and they will tighten security, keep them out for ever.

  So Uncle will crawl into the display window of Tommy Hilfiger (Men’s), Windshield Wiper Boy and Cartwheel Dancer Girl will pluck clothes from one of the mannequins and wrap them around Uncle, prop him against the wall so that you cannot make out that he has neither arms nor legs, place a tweed cap on his head, a woollen scarf around his neck. Sometimes they will pick up a shopping cart from outside Reliance Store and give Uncle a ride in it, up and down the hallway, fast and slow, and he will say, his eyes gleaming like a child’s, I wish I had this with me on the street, so much easier to be pushed to the cars – when the light turns red – in a shopping cart than to crawl on the road keeping an eye out for phlegm and spit.

  Aunty will undress, take a shower at the sink in the Ladies’ Rest Room, and, holding Bandaged Baby in one hand and her wet clothes in the other, she will run down the hallway, naked, she will squeeze into a clothes shop and try out everything she can in whatever time she has. From jeans, blue and black, to underwear of all colours, from saris to jackets lined with fake fur. She will take Bandaged Baby to Mothercare, get her to try out the brightly coloured onesies, soft woollen caps and socks with little bows around the ankles. She will tell one of the dogs to stand outside and keep a watch just in case a guard wakes up and comes to check.

  Kids head for Kidzone where they ride the carousel, its music and lights switched off but the big wheel turning. Many of them stand there, press their noses against the glass wall and look at New City spread before them, cars and trucks on the highway, and because they are so high above they can point to where they live on the street, to the exact patch on the pavement.