She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

  He loves her capillaries, blood flowing, red blood cells, layers of tissue, blue, red, white, dermis, bones, heart, which is very obvious, ribs, the pineal gland that regulates her waking and her sleeping, her uterus where he hopes one day there will be someone, his or her little heart beating because of their love, even her large intestine holding her waste, honey brown, her kidneys that keep her clean. Every Anatomy class, he thinks of her, sees something entirely new inside her, learns its name, falls in love with it. Looks it up on YouTube or Google Images and finds someone somewhere in the world has taken a close-up picture with a sophisticated microscope-­equipped camera that has enlarged the surface of the organ to make it appear like flowers, candy loops, sometimes a sea, roiling, blue-black, sometimes like the dust of stars blown across space.

  ~

  Sitting behind her in class this morning, he falls in love with the lines she has drawn in her yellow exercise book, the cord of her phone charger that peeps out of a corner of her soft leather bag, a pen drive which she carries around her neck, the power button of her MacBook, its silver matching the collar of her white shirt, one end turned more sharply than the other.

  He loves the way she raises her hand in class to speak because he can then see the skin around her elbow, hear her voice. He knows that each word she speaks is born inside her skull, in the folds of her brain, it touches her tongue, scrapes the roof of her mouth, her teeth, then travels, through her lips, parted, a hint of red, to reach his ears and his brain and tracing this journey inside his head makes him hard and this is a class, what if he is called on to stand up, to answer a question, and to distract his brain, to make the blood rush back, he looks out of the window and sees there is a crowd on campus, near the main entrance.

  About fifty to hundred people, he counts six OB vans, one blue police van, several policemen with riot shields.

  This is a protest against the government’s move to bring a law to reserve seats for other backward castes, he reads placards, ‘No to Quota, Yes to Merit’, he softens, his eyes return to the blackboard, to her back, the crease in her shirt below the shoulder moving as she writes.

  ~

  That afternoon, on his way to his hostel room, he discovers that she has joined the protesters and because she is the youngest and, by far, the most beautiful and because of the way her upturned collar moves as she raises her beautiful hand and because it leaves exposed her beautiful neck and the beautiful hair that falls over it, because of her shirt and how it clings to her, all the TV cameras are recording her, ensuring that her breasts, small and firm, are in the centre of the frame, being broadcast across the country.

  He doesn’t wish to share her with so many people but he can do little, so he stops to look. To listen to her, but the crowd by now is much bigger and he is on its outer periphery, so far away that all he can see is her face, her lips moving, four TV microphones inches away from her chin.

  She is like his sun, he thinks, and he the distant planet, no, not a planet, he doesn’t have that high an opinion of himself, he is mere dust orbiting far away, he tells himself, he is debris from dead spaceships, unnoticed, unfelt.

  She looks up once, their eyes meet and he thinks she smiles at him but he isn’t so sure. He moves closer, makes his way through the crowd that’s getting more loud, more aggressive, ‘No Quota Boys, No Quota Girls,’ the chant is growing, ‘No Quota Boys, No Quota Girls,’ it’s like a noise wave crashing into his ears, even she has joined the chant, ‘No Quota Boys, No Quota Girls,’ and he knows that this complicates matters a bit because he has decided to tell her how much he loves her but this is neither the time nor the place to say that because how can he tell her that he is Quota Boy, he is the son of a backward-caste father, who works as a lower-division clerk in the Health Ministry, and a backward-caste mother, and so he walks away. He takes the longer, quieter route to his hostel via the mortuary, where people wait to claim bodies of their kin, where he sees a man run inside, his wrist so slim his watch slides halfway to his elbow when he raises his arm to press a handkerchief to his mouth.

  WOMAN

  Running Away

  Like warmth that escapes in winter when you leave the door open leaving no trace except a chill, you run away from home one January morning many years ago.

  ~

  The door to your room is ajar, that’s unusual because you sleep late, because every morning I am the one who knocks on this door to wake you up, get you started. When I walk in, the windows in your room are closed, the air is stale. Your bed is made, the quilt folded, both cold to the touch. Outside, there is fog. Your room looks as if you were not here last night, or even the night before, as if it’s been abandoned long ago.

  I call out to you but all I hear is my voice.

  I look in the closet, your clothes are there, in neat rows, your table is cleared, your chair pushed under it.

  The lamp is disconnected, its cord neatly looped down the leg of the table, the plug on the floor like an open mouth.

  Nothing seems to be missing – except you.

  ~

  I run from room to room, I ask questions of the emptiness hoping you will answer:

  Have you fallen down, have you tripped somewhere? Are you hurt? Unable to respond, call for help? Are you in the bathroom, have you slipped on the wet floor, twisted your ankle? Are you in the kitchen searching for something? On the balcony, looking out, once again, waving at the ghost you think is your father? But all I see is the remains of the night. Cold and dark, only shadows.

  Still calling out to you, I walk down the stairs. Everyone else in the building is asleep. I touch the banister that runs down the staircase, I feel no warmth of fingers recently brushed. Or dust, just disturbed.

  I am on the street now, looking left and right, in front, but there is nothing there except the fog through which I see the lights, oncoming, receding, of a passing truck, a morning bus. I call out to you again, this time louder, running into the fog for a minute or two, I brush against something, someone I cannot see but it’s not you.

  ~

  I return to the house to look under the bed, under the table, under the chair, between the shoes, inside the cupboard, between the books on shelves, just in case you have transformed into a little girl playing hide and seek, the little girl who asks me about the woman, 12 feet tall.

  Or the one who sleeps, with her head in my lap, glue drying on her fingers, photos in the album.

  Maybe you have gone out for a walk in the fog, to see how cold it is, maybe you have gone out to speak to the birds, get them to wake up, make the morning show the day.

  I keep the door open and I wait.

  The sun is out, the fog begins to clear.

  ~

  ‘She is not here,’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

  ‘She is not here, she is not in the house, she left. She has gone.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. Seems like sometime in the night. Her room is cold, everything is in place, which means she has planned it.’

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I am coming over.’

  ~

  We track you down, using an address you scribbled in a notebook you leave behind. It’s of a shelter in the city.

  When we ask about you, the woman in charge says, ‘Sorry, ma’am, we cannot let you meet your daughter. She’s run away from her house on her own and she is here seeking shelter. She says she is not safe in the house, she says she wants to be alone.’

  ‘But she is alone,’ I say, ‘I need to see her.’

  ‘No, she isn’t, there is a man she is in love with, he will come and take her from here. Your daughter does not wish to speak with you.’

  He holds my elbow. Just like he does on the day they bring your father dead.

  ‘I know how this sounds to you, ma’am,’ she says. ‘I see it every day with parents who come here looking for their daughters and it’s a very, very diffi
cult thing for them to understand. She is an adult, she is fully within her rights to leave the house, she has the right to live where she wants to, with whom she wants to. My duty is to protect her interests.’

  ‘Can I see her for a minute?’ I ask. ‘Her father is dead, I am the only one she has.’

  The woman at the shelter looks at me and says, ‘Yes, she told us that, ma’am, she told us about her father.’

  ‘Please let me speak to her once, just once? I am her mother.’

  ~

  When they bring you, I see that you are crying, you have been crying, I see that in your eyes.

  I don’t want to speak with you, Ma, please leave me alone, you say. I have found someone I love, I want to live with him, Ma. I know you love someone, I know that, why can’t I do the same?

  You are right, I should say. Of course, you are right, but I don’t.

  All I remember is that winter afternoon when you are eight years nine years old when 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 you say, Ma, when I am tired, when my legs hurt, when my eyes begin to close, I only need to call out to you, I only need to say, Ma, and you appear instantly, like magic, from wherever you are, from whatever you’re doing, you come to me, you lift me up, you carry me.

  But this time, I don’t, I can’t, so I walk away.

  ‘She will be all right,’ says the woman at the shelter, her hand on my back as she walks with me to the door – and out of your life.

  MAN

  New Baby

  They love each other, he and Kahini, so they tell each other stories.

  She tells him about her father, how the only thing she remembers about his death is ice and sawdust on the floor. He tells her about his father, an old man in glasses, like the man in the Gieve Patel painting, with bread and bananas in the rain.

  She tells him about the home she has fled. A little house that can fit in your living room, she says. She tells him about the smoke from the coal oven on the balcony waking her up in the morning. The first night she sees her mother with a man in bed, a man who was her father’s student. That frightens her, the sight of this person next to her mother, like a giant bird from some alien planet has entered the house, perched on the headboard of the bed.

  ~

  They love each other.

  So he watches her sleep.

  It is as if she has closed her eyes but is, in fact, wide awake. Or is fighting sleep, so restless is she. He counts her move fifteen times in less than half an hour, more than twice every minute, her mind trapped in constant indecision. He watches her fingers twitch and tremble, her lips part and close, as if she is gasping for air. She changes sides, turns this way and then that, her legs cross and uncross. Eyes closed, she adjusts the pillow, sometimes folds it in half, sometimes pulls one end over her eyes only to remove it the next moment. She covers, uncovers her eyes with her arm; pulls a sheet over her, pushes it away, curls up, like a child in the cold, then lies on her stomach. Softly, he speaks her name, once, twice, thrice, he touches her shoulder, lets his hand rest there, but she doesn’t move, she begins to settle, he can hear the rush and the intake of each breath, and just when he thinks she is now finally asleep, the movements begin again. He walks out of the room on tiptoe.

  She watches him all the time.

  She watches him when she stands on his doorstep, when she comes in from the cold and the fog and he waits for her with his house and his heart open. When she steps inside the house, she watches how he has made it their home, she feels the warmth he says he has bought for her, neatly folded, and then arranged it in a house like the one she has only seen in photographs. She watches him speak to her, each word measured, not one out of place. She watches his resolve to protect her from everything, including herself. She watches him with pride when he says each one of them has a past they are running away from and he will fill her days only with the present – and the promise of a future.

  ~

  They love each other.

  So they decide to get married.

  They go to the Delhi government website and download the forms they need, they read and reread the instructions so many times that each one has it by heart. One, they need to give notice to the marriage officer who is the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, a notice that they intend to solemnise their marriage under the Special Marriage Act 1954. Two, they need separate affidavits from bride and groom giving date of birth, their present marital status; a declaration that they are not related to each other within the degree of prohibited relationships defined in the Special Marriage Act, those related by mother’s blood and father’s blood. Three, they need to get two copies of their passport-size photographs duly attested by a gazetted officer.

  Both are required to be present when they submit these papers. A copy of the ‘notice of intended marriage’ will be pasted on the Magistrate’s Office noticeboard with the announcement that any person may, within thirty days of issue of notice, file an objection to the intended marriage. If no objection is received, the Magistrate will register the marriage in the presence of three witnesses.

  Who will be the three witnesses, he asks her, and she says, I don’t know, you bring them, you are my only witness.

  ~

  They love each other.

  And when she finds out she is pregnant, she is not sure what to tell him.

  CHILD

  Movie Scene

  It is her secret: Ms Violets Rose knows how to slip in and out of a movie.

  ~

  She knows how to climb into the screen from either edge of the stage where the red curtains end and the black emptiness of the wings begins. She knows how to squeeze herself into the holes on the screen through which voice and music flow so that she becomes part of the movie, enters a scene of her choosing.

  Of course, she is very, very careful. For she cannot afford to be noticed by those inside the film. Or those outside. Just in case the director or any member of the crew is watching, what Ms Rose doesn’t want is anyone saying, ‘Look, that old woman wasn’t there when we were filming the scene, where has she come from?’

  What this means is that Ms Rose has to ensure that her entry to and exit from a scene is as inconspicuous as possible. That she only walks by. Or stands in a corner to look. Unseen and unheard by everyone else in the frame.

  That’s why she avoids scenes either dramatic or action-packed because she is worried she will be noticed. For example, if it’s a chase sequence in an action movie, she cannot stand by the side of the road as cars screech by, planes crash or trains collide. She may not find her private corner when a ship on the high seas is caught in a raging gale. Or when a spaceship hurtles across galaxies.

  She avoids scenes that are spare, where there are only one or two actors, these are tricky because it’s harder to step into them and not be noticed. As an added precaution, Ms Rose doesn’t allow her on-screen adventure, as she calls these trips, to last for more than a minute or, at the most, two. Anything longer and there is the risk of being trapped as a trespasser.

  Or being found out – even by an alert member of the audience.

  ~

  The first time Ms Rose takes Orphan with her into the screen, she is very cautious. She has never slipped into a movie with someone else. She is not sure how the little child will be affected, what kind of a disturbance he will set off. There is also the fear of separation. What if something goes wrong? What if she loses Orphan in the film, never to return? The memory of Bhow handing over the child to her floats in front of her eyes. She recalls how she feeds him in the dark, how she stands with him watching the sun rise. So she tells herself, aloud, so that Orphan, too, can hear, ‘We will make it very short, twenty-five to thirty seconds. And let me choose a scene that you will like.’

  The first movie she chooses for Orphan to enter is a Hindi movie in which, halfway through, there is a birthday party for a child in a park and there are so many children there, young and
old, including babies in strollers, that no one notices when Ms Rose, carrying Orphan, steps into the scene. If someone in the theatre audience were looking, they would see the curtain tremble when Ms Rose climbed in but, of course, it’s too dark and no one watching a movie in a theatre ever looks at what’s happening off the screen, in the wings.

  Once in the movie, Ms Rose lets Orphan walk all over a manicured patch of grass where other children his age are playing. She stands in one corner watching Orphan play with a pebble he has picked up from the ground. In the scene, all attention is focused on a seven-year-old girl whose birthday this is. Her parents, the two main stars of the film, are standing behind her, helping her blow the candles out and cut the cake. No one notices either when Ms Rose walks up to the table and, showing not the slightest hesitation, picks up a slice of cake and brings it to Orphan to taste before they climb out of the screen into the little dark room behind the curtains where they wait for the show to end and the credits to roll.

  By then, Orphan is tired, he falls asleep.

  So uneventful is this first time that Ms Rose is emboldened and chooses, for her next trip with Orphan, a movie set in Los Angeles in which a taxi driver, a young woman, barely eighteen or nineteen years old, picks up a casting agent at the airport and is driving her home.

  They start talking and the agent says, I am looking for an actor with attitude and I think you are perfect for the part and the taxi driver says, I am sorry, I have no interest in the movie business, all I want is to be a mechanic just like my two brothers and I like driving the taxi and I want a family and, yes, I want children. I want to have a son, she says, and it’s at this precise moment that Ms Rose enters the scene with Orphan, stands at the next traffic lights where the taxi stops for red. The taxi driver looks at Orphan, Ms Rose’s heart skips a beat, the taxi driver smiles, the lights change. And Ms Rose knows that, for a second, Orphan may have found a mother and a home.