She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

  ~

  I realise how little you have. Three shirts, three pairs of trousers, two pairs of socks, one pair of shoes. Two vests, two pieces of underwear. That’s all. It all fits in one suitcase. Sometimes, when no one is at home, I put the suitcase on our bed and I lie down next to it. I hear voices from inside – of you and your students.

  ~

  Yesterday, cleaning the house, I come across your handkerchief. The big blue one, the one you get the ice in. It’s washed and folded, smells of soap, I don’t remember washing it. It was in your pocket on the day of the accident.

  ~

  They give me your shoes and socks. I don’t wash them, I won’t wash them. Yesterday, I pick some dirt from one sole, I eat it.

  ~

  What if, just like you, I am hit by a bus? What happens then? Have you thought of that?

  ~

  Yesterday is the first day I don’t think of you.

  ~

  We have the two ticketfoils. For the first and the only English movie we went to, Ben-Hur. I keep them in that suitcase.

  ~

  Your daughter, our daughter, needs you more than I do.

  ~

  You push me to speak up, you push me to go out and work, you push me to do the interview, you push me to stand on my own feet. Why don’t you push me to learn how to live without you?

  ~

  I miss you the most in the morning.

  ~

  I am not going to change the newspaper you have used to line the bookshelves. I want to find out how long it takes for newsprint to turn brittle, crumble to paperdust.

  ~

  They never find out who the bus driver is who hit you. Some nights, when I cannot sleep, I think of him, the driver. Where is he? Is he sleeping? It’s possible that one day I may board a bus the same man is driving.

  ~

  Did you visit me last night? I hear someone talk, just like you, I feel someone get into bed. My eyes close, I reach out to touch you but you are gone.

  ~

  Some nights, our daughter frightens me. Because she says she can see you even if we all know you are dead.

  MAN

  The Leela

  He decides he will not go home tonight, he will check in at The Leela, the hotel so beautiful, so clean it clears his head. Free of the flies who rub their legs, stalk him day and night with their sour smell of damp. He loves how the hotel gleams at this time of the day when it’s past twilight, how its countless glass eyes, its windows, polished, unblemished, reflect the red from the sky, blue and white from the neons of The Mall, yellow from the traffic on the highway backed up on the thirty-two lanes at the toll gate. Exactly where he was last night, with the mynahs.

  Maybe, if he’s lucky, he will watch the birds again tonight. In the windows of his Single Deluxe Suite. Bent and blurred, as if seen through tears. The Leela will send a BMW 6i to pick him up from wherever he is but, no, he will spare them the trouble.

  He drives up in his own car which carries the remains of the day: streaks on the windshield, marked by water from police cannons; smudges left behind by flies – the fat woman on the highway, the VIP who jumped the line. In the car, there’s the smell of Balloon Girl and her mother. Laundry and lavender, sweat and street. On his clothes, he smells formaldehyde from the AIIMS mortuary and feels the warmth from the bodies on their backs, cut open and stitched closed. He shivers, a bit of the Paris wind that ripples the surface of the Seine is caught in his hair. On his fingers, between them, and on his wrists, the lories of Singapore have left the farm-odour of their feed.

  He will wash all these away tonight.

  Two cameras blink red and yellow as they scan the surface of his car at The Leela entrance. Two men in cheap black suits smile as they request him to open his door so that they can run a hand-held sensor over his dashboard.

  All is clear, he hands them his keys, walks into the hotel, it’s the hour when The Leela rests because the late lunch crowd has gone, evening has just begun. Most of the rooms lie in wait, beds made, fresh and cold.

  In the lobby, in the centre of an atrium that soars into the sky, a fountain gurgles around a sprawling Japanese garden.

  ~

  The woman at reception who checks him in has fuzz on her arms, gold in colour in the light. His bill comes to almost Rs 50,000, including taxes and breakfast.

  ‘I can walk up with you, sir, do your check-in right in your room,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to stand here, would you prefer that?’

  ‘No need, please do it here,’ he says.

  ‘I will show you to your room, sir,’ she says. ‘Any baggage?’

  ‘None,’ he says.

  They take the lift to the 10th floor, which is, in fact, 15, since five floors are The Mall.

  ‘Welcome,’ she says, opening the door to his room, waiting for him to step in.

  He wonders if she can smell the smells on him.

  He lets her step inside first, she says, thank you, he notices the nape of her neck ringed by the collar of her black blouse.

  Her sari glitters, she is wearing a fragrance, cheap.

  ~

  Single Deluxe Suite is an entire apartment, 1,200 square feet.

  Living room, bedroom, fully equipped kitchen with an entire cooking range, silverware and a china set for at least a family of ten. There is a 54-inch television screen, he switches it on, Priscilla Thomas is interviewing a woman who is crying, he mutes the TV, waits for the ticker to complete one loop to check if there’s any update on Balloon Girl, if there’s anything on the child raped, killed, mother severely assaulted, body found near AIIMS but there’s nothing. He switches it off.

  There are so many things in the room, his eyes glaze over, but what takes his breath away is the glass wall. He has seen its pictures in the hotel’s promotional brochures stuffed into his mailbox but nothing prepares him for this. Seemingly endless, the wall starts from one end of the living room, goes all the way round, wraps itself around the bedroom and ends in the bathroom. The entire glass in one sweeping, seamless curve, spotless. The bathroom and its rain shower are in an alcove also encased in glass that juts out, like a balcony, from the rest of the suite so that when he steps inside it’s like he is suspended in mid-air. Standing under the shower, when he looks down, he can see the tops of cars on the highway, the glass floor the only thing that protects him from the sheer drop to the street, almost a thousand feet. The setting sun bathes the suite in a glow that flits across the glass wall, changing colours that swirl from red to yellow like northern lights he has once seen on TV.

  He cannot let anything come in the way between him and this.

  So he undresses, takes out Laundry Bag from the cupboard, stuffs it with his vest, shirt, trousers, socks, underwear, his shoes, calls Reception Woman, tells her he has put the bag out, he doesn’t want anyone to come inside. He asks her to take everything away, wash, iron and send back, and don’t disturb me, he says, don’t ring the bell, drop a note through the door, leave the clothes outside on a clothes rail, please. I want it quick, very quick, I need to go out later in the evening.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ she says. ‘My pleasure.’

  ~

  He smiles when he hangs up and steps into the rain shower in the glass room.

  My pleasure, her pleasure.

  The shower jet drums his body. The sky, the setting sun, the clouds are just beyond the glass wall, almost within his touch, it seems. Can anyone see him? Someone from a plane above? Someone looking up from below? No, this glass has a special protective sunscreen film that keeps the outside outside. He is so high above and so clearly can he see the traffic below him that his head reels when he looks down, forcing him to close his eyes, sit down in the shower, prop his feet against the wall and let the water run, hot and hard.

  My pleasure, her pleasure, my pleasure, the words ring in his ears.

  His pleasure will be when he calls Reception Woman to his room, when he will shave her fuzz, he will be gentle, he w
ill use the woman’s razor in the bath and the liquid soap, to show her how beautiful is the skin she conceals underneath, the skin that’s the colour of light in the room. His pleasure will be when he gets rid of that shine on her sari, when he asks her to take it off so that he can pluck the glitter out but that may take an inordinate amount of time. Better if he just asks her to undress and, as she waits in his bed, the Tommy Hilfiger quilt wrapped around her, he will put the sari in the oven – why do they have an entire cooking range in the suite? – set the temperature to 450°, 500°, wait for the fabric to melt, there must be some nylon in it, switch it off before the smoke sets off the alarm in the room.

  He looks down, imagines a hole in the floor through which his bathwater drips down onto the highway, people may mistake it for the rain they have been waiting for.

  His pleasure will be when he presses her face against the glass wall. To see how the light dapples her body now that it’s free of hair.

  When he asks her to point out to him where she lives.

  She will then tell him, between her screams, that one reason she wears that sari which he does not like, one reason her arms are unshaven is that there has been no water and no power in her home for the last three days. He will ask himself is she lying, saying this to save her skin? Because as Reception Woman at The Leela, she may not make a lot of money but, certainly, she makes enough to go to a beauty salon and get herself waxed or threaded or whatever women do these days for men like him. But he will like her answer. Because he will be able to connect that, instantly, with reality. Because he can see her neighbourhood, he can see it through glass, far away, a grey smudge on the horizon, as he stands in the rain shower. He has seen the anger, he is an eyewitness to the protest rally on the highway. He has seen the water cannons, the police, the bedraggled men, women and children trooping back home, wet and spent.

  That’s why he will understand her when she sits on the floor of this Single Deluxe Suite and breaks into tears, when she begs him to let her go.

  He will let her go, he won’t harm her at all, he can restrain himself, but his pleasure will be when he asks her to step into the shower.

  If you have had no water for three days, if there has been no power for three days, how have you been cleaning yourself, he will ask her. With a towel soaked in water from a glass? With tissue paper, wet? Or do you sneak into a room at the hotel, when no one is looking, and take a shower? She will say, no, in the building in which I live, we store water in a Sintex tank on the roof and we store extra water in buckets and I use that to take a bath every day but by then he has pushed her inside the shower.

  He tells her to undress, he says I will turn the other way, I won’t look, so you don’t have to feel embarrassed, and he hears water flow down her and along with that noise, he hears the sound of her crying hard, her breaths, she shouts, let me go, please let me go, my parents, my brother are at home and he says, of course, I will let you go, who do you think I am, I just want you clean and smooth, all the needless hair gone from your arms, and because this is the best shower I have ever used, I wish to share it with you, and above the sound of these words in his head, he hears an unusual sound, he sees a blur. A shape moving fast.

  Who is this hovering in the air, tapping at the glass wall of the shower, drawing lines where steam has fogged the glass?

  CHILD

  Cinema Theatre

  When Orphan’s eyes open, all he sees is the dark. He has never seen such darkness before. Not at Little House, where light always streams into his room from the hallway – sunlight during the day, lamplight at night. From the nurses’ station where Kalyani sits, from the overhead 60-watt bulbs. Or the glare from headlights of passing cars that slips in through the window to spray arcs of yellow and white across the walls.

  Never such darkness before.

  Not even on the pavement, under the highway, his home for these few nights. Where even in the darkest hour, just before the first light of day, everything is lit by neons. From The Mall, up above, from the traffic, down below, and from the streetlights in between, suspended in air.

  Maybe one day, when he has the words, Orphan will be able to tell what this is like, this sudden dark. This seeing without seeing. Where the eyes are open, waiting for light, and then catching nothing but black.

  If Orphan doesn’t cry, if he shows few signs of fear, perhaps it is because in the dark he has the assurance of things solid.

  Like Ms Rose’s soft shoulder on which his head rests.

  Strands of her white hair that brush against his face.

  Her arms, which are wrapped around him, one patting him gently below the neck, the other holding him straight, behind his small knees.

  And, of course, her voice. That, like a slight wind, floats in and past his ears. With words he doesn’t understand but senses, exactly, what they mean: that he is safe.

  ~

  Bhow is right, Ms Rose knows her way in Europa. A mere wisp in the dark, she carries the child like a plant carries its flower. All the theatre’s lights are switched off but she walks briskly down the steps as if her feet can see, veers suddenly to her right to enter Row O (maybe O for Orphan).

  She then heads straight for Seats 12 and 13, right in the centre.

  Carrying the child, she sits down, adjusts her seat to recline. And then she stays there, gently rocking Orphan, her eyes closed, her lips moving as if in prayer. She holds him like she’s holding a gift she has been waiting for and which has finally arrived. The only sound in the theatre her breath, the rocking of her seat, a long, slow creak, noise the wind makes with a solitary window left open in an empty house.

  It lulls Orphan to sleep.

  Ms Rose gets up, holding the seat so that it doesn’t spring back because in the almost complete silence in the theatre, that would make a sound that could wake Orphan up and she doesn’t want to take any chances. With one hand tucked under his head, she lowers him into the seat next to her, adjusts him so that he is deep inside, his head safely resting against the back, his feet at least 6 inches clear of the edge so that even if he moves, there is no risk of him rolling off the seat.

  She need not worry because she will find out in a few hours, just as Kalyani does in Little House, how little trouble this child is.

  As if the fear of being abandoned has given him qualities that make caring for him a much simpler task than expected.

  ~

  Orphan in deep sleep, Ms Rose plans for his food.

  If only Bhow had told her a day in advance, she would have made all the arrangements. She can still, she can walk into Food Court, choose a stall, cook something for Orphan, or walk into Mothercare to pick up a change of clothes and shoes. She has noticed that his feet are bare. But she is not sure how long can she leave him alone in Europa.

  What if he wakes up in the dark, begins to cry? Or moves, rolls off the seat and hurts himself against the armrest or falls down to the hardwood floor even if it’s carpeted?

  No, she cannot leave him for more than five minutes, ten minutes.

  Which is all that she needs to walk into the multiplex’s café next door, right across the lounge where the posters and the big LCD screens are.

  There is nothing in the display case, chairs are upturned on the tables. She looks for a sandwich, a brownie, some bread which she can mash into paste and feed him but there’s nothing. A fistful of popcorn lies scattered on the floor of the machine but that’s no food for a child. In a corner on the display counter is a stack of cups and in a wicker basket, there are sachets of dairy creamer. She picks up a dozen of them and a cup. Moving with a speed and efficiency that belie her years, Ms Rose gets warm water from the sink in the washroom, sits on its tiled floor – spotless after being mopped by the night-shift attendants – and she empties the dairy creamer out, sachet by sachet, into the water to prepare a feed for Orphan, his first cup in Europa of almost-milk.

  Surely, she tells herself, this is no way to welcome a child into her world but she can do little
.

  How hungry Orphan is she doesn’t know, all she knows is that it will be hunger that will, most probably, wake him up, make him cry. And for that she will need something ready, something at hand. So Ms Rose returns to Europa holding the cup full of dairy creamer and water, freshly mixed. Some of the powder has got on her nails in flecks of white. All her ten fingers are wrapped around the plastic cup, also white. That and the milk in the cup, for a moment, bring light into the dark. White in the black. Orphan hasn’t moved when Ms Rose is back.

  He is exactly where he was when she left him, his hands and his legs still, as if in a picture. As if he has stilled himself to sleep just so that Ms Rose is relieved when she returns. So that she discovers that this child, who has been handed over to her, can be relied upon, that he is not much of a bother.

  It hurts her back but Ms Rose bends down, brings her left ear close to Orphan’s face and smiles as she feels the warmth of his breath.

  She settles down into her seat and, holding the cup in her hand, looks straight ahead at the red curtains behind which, she knows, lie Orphan’s new homes.

  In Europa, she has so much to show, so much to tell.

  MEANWHILE

  A Day in the Life of Kalyani’s Brother

  ‘I twisted my ankle today,’ says Bhai, Kalyani’s brother.

  Tonight, it’s his turn.

  ~

  ‘We have to tend to the trees in Apartment Complex, trim dead branches, clear fallen leaves. This morning, when we walk in, Estate Manager is waiting for us. He’s shouting, I can hear him from three blocks away. Look at the trees, he says, each one is covered with insects I have never seen before. Hundreds and hundreds. Since morning, my phone’s been ringing with residents complaining the trees are being destroyed. And you know what this means? Apartment Complex is the only one in New City which is so green, it has so many trees, that’s why in January, even migratory birds, on their way south, land here. That’s why people pay crores to buy a flat here, crores, do you understand what a crore means? It’s what you would make as salary in two hundred years, can you imagine that?