She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

  ‘He is right about the insects, none of us has seen such things before. From a distance, it looks like someone has taken chalk and marked all the trees with dots and when you get closer, you see each dot move.

  ‘Deepak Das, the head of our group, the supervisor, picks up one of these white insects. It doesn’t fly, it crawls down his finger, across his palm.

  ‘So tell me what can be done, says Estate Manager, the residents say it’s my fault that I hired people like you who know nothing about trees. We need trained gardeners, they say, not manual labour freshly arrived from villages.

  ‘We are silent, we stand listening, what can we do? I am a little frightened because I know he’s right, I don’t know anything about trees except that they need light and water.

  ‘Find a way out, says Estate Manager, we must have these insects gone as soon as possible. Otherwise, I don’t know what answer I will give to the residents. If you can’t clean this up, I will have no option but to call your contractor, tell him that it’s over, we don’t need your services.

  ‘Don’t worry, I will find something, Deepak tells us when Estate Manager has gone. I have some medicine, he says, and if that doesn’t help, I know someone who knows more about this than I do. I will go meet him this evening, maybe get him here tonight, show him these insects. In the meantime, let’s try to remove as many as we can, he says, with our hands.’

  ~

  ‘He gives each one of us a black plastic bag – he says, this will help you see the insects clearly, white on black – and tells us to pluck and pinch. Walk from tree to tree, pluck the insect, pinch it to death, drop it in the bag, leave the tree only when there is no insect left, not one. Each tree takes at least an hour.

  ‘Pick, pinch, drop, pick, pinch, drop.

  ‘My plastic bag soon turns white. Some insects fall in my hair, one drops on my face, I try to brush it away, trip over a brick on the pavement, twist my ankle.

  ‘By lunch, I have only finished two-and-a-half, three trees, there are so many I cannot count. We are all drenched in sweat, this makes it easier for insects to stick to us. We go down to the basement parking lot to have our lunch because that’s the only place where there is shade. All of us, like the trees, are now covered with white dots.

  ‘Be careful, says Deepak, these insects look like rice, don’t let any fall into the food, it will be very difficult to pick them out. We will tell Estate Manager we ate them all.

  ‘He makes some of us laugh.

  ‘After lunch, it’s back to work, tree by tree, insect by insect. By evening, we finish clearing all the trees that line the driveway. We have at least a hundred more trees to clear, it will take us this whole week, maybe the next one too. When the bags are full, we take them to a corner and set them on fire. The smoke is white and thick. Smells like human bodies at the cremation ground, says Deepak.

  ‘When we leave for the day, Estate Manager comes and says we have done good work but he isn’t sure if the insects are gone. Maybe they have left eggs behind, he says, let’s hope they are not back tomorrow.

  ‘I ask Deepak what if we cannot get rid of the insects and he says, don’t worry, this Estate Manager gets angry all the time and blames us for everything. Why can’t he, instead of just standing there and shouting, help us? We aren’t educated but he is. He can read and write, he can talk to someone who knows. Anyway, I am going to get some medicine tomorrow from my friend.

  ‘I hope that works because none of us knows what to do.’

  ~

  ‘I got one of the insects for you all to see,’ says Bhai. ‘It’s dead.’

  He opens his palms and they crowd around him in a circle, Ma, Baba, Kalyani and Pinki. They cut off the light and in the dark, the insect glows white, a pale dot of lifeless light.

  WOMAN

  Night Laugh

  It’s four months, five months after your father’s death. Winter has come, we are in the last term of school and you ask me, at least once a week, when is Father coming back? To which I have no answer except to look into your eyes, try to search for a clue beyond our tears.

  ~

  One night, the noise of something falling wakes me up. The alarm clock on the bedside table shows 3.16 in the morning, I am so precise about the time because both clock hands are together, I remember looking at the clock and wondering where the hour hand had gone. The room has turned cold, I must have left a window open. You sleep next to me, curled up under your quilt. This must be some noise from outside, something in the kitchen sliding, falling over under its own weight. Perhaps, the broom propped up against the wall. I try to get back to sleep but hardly have I closed my eyes when I hear you get up, the flick of the light switch. I know you cannot reach there unless you stand on a table so who has switched it on?

  I am scared, I don’t open my eyes because I think it is a dream but, no, there’s no mistaking your movement. I open my eyes and see you climb down the bed, let the quilt fall to the floor, walk towards the door. I try to call out to you but I cannot speak. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or to drink a glass of water, you wake me up, you want me to be with you but this time, I see you walk out of the room on your own, like someone grown-up trapped inside a child.

  I lie in bed, my eyes follow you. You don’t walk towards the bathroom or the kitchen, you walk towards the balcony.

  ~

  I trail you at a distance, I am on tiptoe. You have dropped the quilt on the floor, you take a detour to the dining room, you walk up to the table, stand there for a while, you look at the chairs. I am at the door, pressed against the wall, looking in, and I see you pull a chair out, drag it by its legs. The chair is heavy but you hold it as if it’s a toy, where do you get that strength from?

  I am your mother, I should stop you, ask you what you want, I should switch on all the lights in our little house, shake you hard, make you snap out of whatever state you are in, help you get back to bed and fall asleep again, but I cannot do any of these things, all I do is to watch you in hiding.

  ~

  You push the chair to the edge of the balcony, climb up. The balcony has an iron grille your father got installed so I know that you are safe, you won’t fall. You hold the iron bars with both your hands, press your face to the grille, you look into the night.

  There is nothing to look at except black, a dirt-track, empty fields, the tops of trees but you stand on the chair looking straight ahead. I do not want to say anything lest it startle you, make you turn to look at me, fall off the chair. So I stand behind you, at least 6 to 7 feet away, and watch you stare into the night. For a full ten minutes, a cold wind rustles the leaves and your hair.

  I cough, clear my throat, to get your attention, but you don’t hear me.

  Suddenly, you raise your right hand and you wave at someone. I do not know who that is in the dark. You begin to laugh. You laugh like when you are playing, you laugh like someone is tickling you, you laugh as you laugh with your father. Your head thrown back, your eyes closed tight, the laugh makes your face glow in the dark. You peer down the balcony and keep laughing, keep waving, without saying a word, so loud is your laughter I am afraid you will wake people up.

  ~

  I help you climb down from the chair but you are not even aware that I am there.

  You keep looking into the night but this time you are crying. I ask you what happened but you don’t say a word. I ask you to tell me who you are waving at, who makes you laugh so much, and you look at me with a gaze so empty I can fall right into it.

  ~

  You push me away and you walk back to the bed, you pick up the quilt and you cover yourself with it. I hear you cry yourself to sleep. When I am sure you are in deep sleep, when I can hear your breaths, long and deep, I walk back to the balcony, I get up on the same chair and look into the night. There’s nothing to see except your fingerprints in the dust on the iron bars, the night stretching endless. I peer down just in case there is someone or something but ag
ain I see nothing except the fog that is beginning to roll in. Which, by the end of the night, smothers the entire city. Grounds trains and planes, pushes the air temperature to just a few decimal points above zero, brings frost in the neighbourhood.

  ~

  It’s the next afternoon that you come running to me, jumping commas, skipping breath, and you say, Ma, may I ask you something, may I ask you something, and I say, of course, baby, you may ask me anything and it’s then that you ask me about the woman, 12 feet tall.

  MAN

  Good Advice

  Who is this hovering in the air, like a fly but beautiful, tapping at the glass wall of the rain shower, drawing lines where cold air has fogged the warm glass? Who is this who has found his room and has a message for him, who else can it be but Balloon Girl?

  He gets up from the bathroom floor with a start, quickly wraps a towel around his waist because, no, he cannot let her see him like this, she is just a child. He tells her to wait for a few minutes so that he can step out of the shower and dry himself, slip into his bathrobe, but she has walked through the glass wall into the room and although there is no Red Balloon with her, she floats, gliding in and out of the furniture in the suite’s living room, her feet inches above the floor.

  ‘We do not have time,’ she says. ‘I have something very important to tell you.’

  ~

  And then she breaks into speech which he doesn’t interrupt, which he can’t interrupt to ask anything, because the words flow thick and fast, like water in the shower.

  ‘Taxi Driver knows,’ says Balloon Girl, ‘Taxi Driver knows. He is the one who brought us to your house from the hospital. He has seen your face, he has seen our faces. He doesn’t know anything right now but he will watch the news this evening and he is going to put two and two together and he will wonder where we are, my mother and I, and he will ask questions. But, right now, as I am in your room, he is at the taxi stand, waiting for passengers. His evening shift has just begun.’

  But why should he be worried, he isn’t guilty of any crime.

  There she is, Balloon Girl, standing right in front of him.

  Where is the child raped and killed?

  Where is the mother severely assaulted?

  He plans to call the TV station and tell them to take that news ticker off.

  He is about to tell her that when she says, ‘What are you waiting for? I have told you where he is. You need to take care of him, bring him here before he speaks to anyone.’

  And then she is gone, leaving prints of her small lips, small feet on the glass wall.

  ~

  She is right, he tells himself, Taxi Driver is the only one who knows.

  He is the last witness, a witness to what exactly he doesn’t know but he hopes he will soon find out. He will get him into this room because Balloon Girl says so and until now, Balloon Girl has never been wrong.

  By the time his clothes are sent up, washed and ironed, it’s shortly before dinner at The Leela.

  On the way out, he sees Reception Woman behind the counter. Working at her terminal, signing a new guest in, in the same sari. She smiles at him. Relieved that she is still safe, that he is fresh and fragrant, he steps out into the evening to get Taxi Driver home, to the Single Deluxe Suite at The Leela.

  Balloon Girl will tell him what to do next, how to take care of him.

  ~

  ‘Sir, may I get your car?’ The man in the suit asks him for the keys again.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he says. ‘I will wait.’

  CHILD

  Tuberculosis Report

  The reports have come in. Of her blood, her sputum samples, the X-ray of her chest. There are cavities in her lung field, the presence of bacilli is confirmed, Kalyani Das is diagnosed with tuberculosis.

  ~

  ‘Six to nine months of medicine,’ says Doctor, ‘she needs to have lots of fruits and fish, milk and eggs. Proteins.’

  Ma begins to cry.

  ‘No use crying, we will start with an injection. Your daughter is a nurse, she knows the drill. Streptomycin injections for at least three months.’

  Yes, Kalyani has read this in the nurses’ handbook.

  A set of six – or is it seven pills? – every morning after breakfast. She knows their names: Rifampicin, Ethambutol.

  ‘Collect the pills from the TB centre downstairs,’ says Doctor. ‘You don’t have to pay anything, the government pays for this. She cannot miss a single day. Who all are there at home?’

  ‘The three of us. And her sister and brother, five people in all,’ says Baba.

  ‘Can you put her in a separate room, just for a few weeks?’

  ‘We don’t have one, we live in one room, Doctor.’

  ‘Then you have to be very careful because there is always risk of infection. But keep the windows open, let there be air and sunlight in the room.’

  ‘We will do that, Doctor,’ says Baba.

  ‘And, you, you cover your mouth when you cough,’ Doctor tells Kalyani. ‘It spreads through the air but no need to be worried. If all goes well, if the medicine starts working, and I am confident it will, she should start feeling better in two weeks.’

  They get up, Kalyani holds Ma’s shoulder as they walk. Baba clutches the plastic bag – which carries all the reports – as if it were a living thing. As if all the incomprehensible letters and words typed on those sheets that confirm the disease also spell out, if rearranged, the secret to its cure which will heal his daughter, his eldest child and the one he, secretly, loves the most.

  ~

  Baba gets his rickshaw to the hospital, today he will drive them home.

  Ma holds her close, one arm around her, just like when she is a little girl in the village. Baba drives cautiously, skirting the bumps and potholes on the street.

  ‘You drop me off and you both go to work,’ says Kalyani. ‘I will take my medicine. Anyway, I will sleep most of the time.’

  ‘Shut up,’ says Ma, ‘if I don’t go to work today, nothing will happen. I have told Didi that I need to take you to the doctor.’

  Baba sees a fruit cart by the side of the road and pulls over. He buys two apples and two bananas, almost half a day’s earnings.

  As he walks back to the rickshaw, he wants to think only of his daughter. How she has become so thin he can see her ribs through her blouse. He wants to think of what he can do to help her recover. He wants to think of what he can do to save her because she is his baby, his firstborn, and although, in the village, everyone says it would have been better if he’d had a son, he falls in love with her the first time he holds her in his arms. He wants to think of how she pulls through when she is a child, every time she is struck by disease. Through malaria, typhoid, so many bouts of high fever that he has lost count. Once, everyone gives up on her, when she is eight years nine years old, but she recovers. And this when he or his wife don’t pray as much as the others. In fact, he doesn’t tell anyone but he doesn’t quite believe that prayers make a difference. So it must be something inside his Kalyani that keeps guiding her to safety, that makes her the only one in the family to finish school, all twelve classes, that makes her read and write, even English. He is proud of her and he wants to think of that pride as he drives her home.

  But all what enters his head, above the noise of traffic, the creak of his rickshaw’s wheels, the jangle of its chain, the laboured breathing of his daughter, is the thought of money.

  All the money they have saved since they moved to New City.

  About Rs 45,000, accumulated rupee by rupee, month by month, from the earnings of all five. Even from Pinki, his youngest, who should not be earning. Some of the money he keeps in a box under the bed, the balance he has kept with the rickshaw owner, tells him that he will take it when he goes to his village.

  He has big plans for these savings: to add to them each month; to use them for, first Kalyani’s and then Pinki’s marriage; to move to a two-room house; to buy a TV, because he doesn’t like that on so
me evenings his wife and children have to stand outside their neighbour’s door to watch TV. He wants to save more so that he can buy some land in his village because that’s where they will return to when they are old, when the three children have married and left to live in their own homes, he will need to go back to the village because that’s where home is, under the bright sky, not in the shadows of this little house in New City.

  But now Kalyani cannot work, for at least a year, that’s 7,000, 8,000 gone every month. Doctor says six to nine months but she will need at least three more to recover fully. There will be more tests. The medicine he can get for free thanks to the slip Doctor has given him. He needs to show that at the TB centre every time he needs to pick up fresh stocks of the pills. But he has to buy fruits and eggs and fish.

  He and Ma don’t have to eat fruit, they don’t have TB. Even Bhai, he is an adult now, he will understand. But Pinki is a child, how will they keep her away from the fruit? Maybe once a week he will get some for her, that much he can afford. But that is only if all goes well, if Kalyani is cured in six months.

  What if she is not?

  What if she has the kind of TB, which, Doctor says, takes two, even two-and-a-half years? Then there is also a kind of TB that doesn’t get cured. He knows three people in his village who died of TB but, no, he will not think of that. They were all old, older than him, much older than Kalyani.

  His daughter cannot die.

  ~

  Baba’s off on his rickshaw, Ma goes to take a bath, Kalyani sneaks out of the house to go to the local phone booth and calls up the hospital she is supposed to join in a few days.

  The operator keeps her on hold for more than ten minutes and then, after two wrong connections, puts her through to the human resources woman who interviewed her and offered her the job.

  Kalyani tells her she is ill, she needs to take medical leave. She knows what the answer will be.

  ‘How long?’ asks the HR woman.