The Third Hand

Eleven years ago, the day after the Third World War had ended finally, Mr. Badami came to my room in the camp and drew a chair out. ‘What do you think is going to happen now, Private?’ His voice was between gurgly and grumpy, more gurgly than grumpy, I thought at the moment. Maybe because it was only seven in the morning.

‘Nothing unusual, sir, I suppose,’ I tried to sound cautious but there was no need. The War had ended, hadn’t it? After twenty-seven years and half the world population gone, most of the fossil fuel exhausted, who would give a fuck about what Mr. Badami thought about me thinking about what was going to happen now? He was not my boss anymore – at least not in my mind. There were some formalities that needed to be taken care of but that shouldn’t take more than a few hours. 

No computers were left though. We had gone back to the days of scribing and pencil-pushing (literally). There was no paper as well, since the War had killed almost all the trees. We wrote on slates now. Wrote and erased. Wrote and tried to remember what was written, wiped the slate and wrote again. The War had done one good thing. It had made us intelligent. Many of us now could recite the table for nineteen and add and subtract fractions.   

Mr. Badami was one of those who were at odds with this new wave of intelligence. He lacked the deftness with which one could survive in a world devoid of smartphones and shopping carts. His concern was genuine. ‘How are we going to order pizza?’ He asked me. Obviously, he couldn’t cook, that imbecile.

I stared at the sundial outside my window and moved in my chair – a universal signal that someone was in a hurry and someone didn’t want to continue this conversation – that someone being me in this context. Mr. Badami was unmoved. ‘During the War,’ he continued nonetheless, ‘I thought we were fighting for a better world. But what kind of a world is this? I had to stand in a queue for water the other day. A queue, Private, a fucking queue! Which better world has a queue? Did we wipe out half of the world population for this? For standing in a queue? That too for water!’

Was he crying? There was definitely a hint of moisture in his eye area but I had no time to enquire further. He had a point though. Even a bad clock gives right time twice a day. Why did we still have to stand in a queue? Who were all these people around us, still squirming like worms and fighting for their spaces in long queues? Did the war end too soon?

Mr. Badami was observing me keenly. ‘I knew you would be interested. You always seemed so smart, Private. Let me tell you this – and I don’t say this frequently – you are the best handyman I have ever seen. The way you fixed the radio so that I didn’t have to miss the classical jazz hour on FM 105.7 was pure magic. I told my secretary…’

I cut him in the middle, ‘Sir! I need to be somewhere. Thank you for the recommendation letters. You were also one of best bosses I have ever had.’ I got up and moved towards the door. Mr. Badami had a secretary! No wonder the world hadn’t improved even after a twenty-fucking-seven-year-long World War. ‘Can I get a glass of water?’ I looked at his face. He had a pained expression, like that of a man who never knew when to smile fake and when real. I gave him a half-filled bottle of water and closed the door on his face. I didn’t have to be rude but the bastard had a secretary when most of us had to share our toothbrushes.

Eleven years later, today, when I am writing this story, I feel bad for Mr. Badami. I had never seen him since. I heard he had killed himself few months later – quite predictable – and his relatives auctioned his belongings. I wish I could be there at the auction. He had a lighter which I was very fond of. With every click, there was a light flickering at the bottom. Of course, towards the end, when even the last battery had worn out, we had to imagine the light. But the strength of that imagination kept us – the boys of the 39th Infantry Division – alive and smoking till the War ended. Had I been at that auction, I would have bought that lighter whatever be the price.

I needed that lighter like everybody else in my division, I guess. I had a series of interviews after the war and none of them clicked. I realised how stupid it was wishing the War end. At least we had a belly full of food and a roof over head when we were fighting. After the War, all supplies went dry. All hopes were derailed. All doors were closed on my face like I closed it on Mr. Badami’s face. By the way, his recommendations were all bullshit. Nobody even bothered to look at them. ‘Badami, that old fool who refused to wash his own handkerchief?’ One of my prospective employers laughed, ‘Why on earth did you think that would be useful?’ By the time, Mr. Badami was dead. Otherwise, I would have strangled him myself.

Almost a year later I got a job with a puppeteer. With diminishing supply of electricity, entertainment options were quite limited. People spent their evenings at home mostly, talking to their partners and kids. Those who were single like me went to puppet shows. Previously thought of as a poor substitute of cinema, some of these puppet performances were graduating into a distinct art form where the jumpy, uneven movement of stringed figurines filled us with a longing that we never thought was possible again. A longing for belonging. We wanted to get into the scene; we wanted to be a part of the happenings; we wanted to make love and sing ballads of despair; we wanted to live in the shadows of life.

My employer was a woman. She was the best puppeteer in the neighbourhood. Her puppets were not lifelike. They represented certain ideas in the cubist style. Their faces were half-turned to eternity and their bodies were mixed up in an orgy of protrusion. Something or the other, a limb or a lump, was always jutting out from different sides of their tattered built, creating an illusion of movement amidst the mediocrity of perpetual stillness. ‘I added time to their space,’ she told me once, the puppeteer. Her name was Oolka.

The first time I saw Oolka was at a bus-stop. There was no bus though. People usually walked now. Not enough diesel or petrol. It was funny how we still referred to these places by their old names. It was like remembering an old love or a lost organ. The number of amputees had increased a lot since the War. They must have felt at home at these places.

I was not an amputee. I was staying at the bust-stop because I was evicted from my apartment. The rent was due for six months. I could barely have two meals a day. The bus-stops gave shelter to many more like me. Once a waiting place for the buses, now a waiting place for something more formidable and certain.

Oolka visited the bus-stop one morning with her collection of puppets. She was told the people there would appreciate her performance more than anybody else. She was misled. People at the bus-stop needed food, clothes, sex, and shower, not puppet shows featuring a talking fish and a one-legged ballerina. ‘What’s the point of the ballerina?’ I thought. ‘Most of the time they are on one leg anyway.’ The problem was I was thinking aloud. Not really loud, whispering, but Oolka’s hearing was exceptional. She could hear a baby cry before it flared its nostrils. ‘Of course, someone as basic as you would think that way,’ she glanced at me from the corner of her eye. ‘The ballerina knows she has only one leg. That’s what matters.’ Yes, Oolka had one eye. Later, that night, we made love next to a deserted engine. ‘I can still smell the dry petrol,’ she said inside my mouth.  

I left the bus-stop with her. ‘I can’t just keep you,’ she told me before we entered her apartment. ‘You need to work. What do you know?’ ‘I can cook and clean,’ I said. ‘That’s not enough. If we co-live, you will do that anyway. Why should I pay you for that? Think of something else.’ ‘OK, OK,’ I said, ‘I can stitch the clothes of your puppets. I am good at stitching. I can also make the small furniture on which your characters will sit.’ ‘Umm,’ she said, contemplative, ‘why don’t you help me with puppeteering?’ ‘Puppeteering?’ I said, still standing at the threshold, ‘But I know nothing of puppeteering.’ ‘Oh, I will teach you. It will be so much fun!’ She got hold of my right hand and placed it on her face. I followed the curvature of her single eyebrow with my index finger. I knew my life was going to change very soon.

And it did. Within a couple of months of me moving in, Oolka wrote a play with five characters – a mute parrot, an orphaned butterfly, a depressed Ping-Pong player, a workaholic elephant trainer and a blind preacher. It was supposed to be a merry musical but the problem lay elsewhere. In the final scene, all the characters had to appear together. ‘How is this possible? We have only four hands.’ I asked. She looked at me curiously. ‘What about your third hand?’

A chill ran through my spine. I couldn’t speak for a few seconds. When I opened my mouth, somebody else spoke, ‘What are you talking about?’ She smiled like a black cat in the dark, ‘You don’t have to hide it from me. I knew it all along. That’s why I wrote this play. I knew I could count on you.’

I wanted to run out of the room but my legs were plastered to the floor. This was the most well-kept secret of my life – perhaps my only secret. Nobody in the army had any idea, not even Mr. Badami who loved me like a son. So many times, when I was holding the gun with two hands and there was an itching on my nose, I had the temptation to scratch it till my comrades looked at me with horror and I was given a dishonourable discharge for having something I shouldn’t – a third fucking hand.

‘How did you know?’ My voice was still someone else’s. Oolka smiled again, ‘All my life, I was looking for you, my love. Can’t you see, all my models are based on you? I dreamed about you since I was a child. I knew this world must compensate for my missing eye. You make me complete.’ She stood next to me and motioned to the mirror on which we practiced our moves. I looked at it and saw three eyes and five hands, all juxtaposed against each other, like a drawing by Picasso at his cubist prime. ‘Which characters do you want to play?’ Oolka asked. ‘Why don’t I play the humans?’ Said I and, at that very moment, a thought occurred to me. My third hand was the only hand in the world whose fingerprints were not available to the government. If I strangled someone with this hand, nobody would ever know.

Since then, every night, I go to sleep with this thought.

The House Next Door: A Story by Leela Majumdar

If you want, you can suspect the whole thing from start to finish. You can easily call me a liar, a cheat, a fraud. It won’t affect me. I will keep telling what happened a hundred times over. Actually, I also don’t believe in ghosts. 

See, my mother’s second aunt happens to be really rich; palatial house in Bullygunge surrounded by trees, lush lawn with green grasses, rows of Patabahar plants. All the rooms have marble flooring; their décor will make you lose your own marbles. That apart, how majestic is their lifestyle; they never walk out of the house on foot; they never get a glass of water on their own. Then again, how wonderful tennis they seem to play; how brilliantly they play the piano as well. And the food in their house is amazing. That was the real reason why I went there today. Otherwise, me in my khaki half-trousers in that palace! Oh, god!

Anyway, the house next door is quite infamous. Nobody lived there in the last twenty-five to thirty years. The garden is filled with weeds and wild plants; the walls are infiltrated by peepal trees; and the garage has become a colony of bats. It’s chokingly dark even in the daytime with a damp smell. On top of that, in the evenings, a bald huge man has been spotted standing next to the broken window at the first floor. He looks exactly like the grandfather of the present owners. But the old man has been dead for fifty years! And the owners live in Delhi. 

I’m sure you have got it already, everybody is scared to visit the place. My case is different though. I don’t believe in ghosts and their grandfathers. I go up to the roofs alone for midnight strolls. To tell you the truth, I am scared of nothing except cats. Cats give me a little shiver.

Anyway, in the afternoon, we all sat together and finished countless helpings of mutton samosas, chicken sandwiches, sweets of kheer, pink pastries and so much more. But then, trouble started to brew. By the time it would have been wonderful to take the small steps to home, people started singing, dancing, playing instruments and reciting poetry. I was so restless! Then they tried to drag me into that. I was unmoved by all means! My mother’s uncle said mockingly, “Oh, you think singing and playing instruments is all very girly and you are a big man. All right, let me see how big a man you are; I will admit your courage if you can go to that haunted house!” Hearing that, everybody rolled on the floor in laughter.
Just listen to the insult! My body started to burn in anger. I stood up and said, “Why, are you challenging me? I don’t believe in ghosts. See, here I go.” Immediately, I sprinted through the garden and, within a minute, jumped over the walls to land in the house next door!

When I got up and shook the dust off my knees, I felt I might have made a mistake. How sleepy and quiet was the place! It wouldn’t surprise me if some bad people had taken shelter here.

Anyway, I can’t tolerate mocking, so I had no option but to come. I took small steps. It was not all dark yet. There was some flickering light here and there. I saw broken doors and windows hanging from their frames; banyan trees sprouting through the cracks in the black-and-white marble floors; dense spiders’ webs filling up every corner. A strange wind had started to blow all of a sudden; the broken windows and doors were rattling; the webs were dangling; an odd sound was coming from the first floor – the sound of people walking and moving boxes and suitcases. But the big wooden staircase seemed broken and deserted in the ground floor; no one could climb it from this side. The circular staircase for the servants also seemed damaged.

I won’t lie, my heart was pounding. I left the room and came outside again. At that moment, I saw an Oriya gardener with a pair of garden scissors standing next to the servants’ staircase. Oh, what a relief! The house must not be completely empty then; maybe it was him who was usually seen at the window; he must climb up somehow to the first floor, clinging to this and that. 

The gardener came close and asked me with a smile, “Why khokababu, are you afraid? My name is Adhikari. I work here.” I said, “Why should I be afraid? Afraid of what?” He said, “No, nobody comes on this side out of fear these days; that’s why I asked.” I smiled and said, “Huh, I don’t believe in ghosts.” The Adhikari guy was very nice; he showed me the entire house. He was lamenting that the owners had stopped coming and everything was in ruins – the chandeliers were coming down; termites were attacking the mahogany furniture; the giant paintings were losing their colours in the sun and rains. Practically nothing was left, I discovered. How much could one lonely gardener do? 

In the garden, the Dhutura plants brought from the Himalayas didn’t bloom anymore; the Kurchi plants had died; the mango trees now had wood flies. Adhikari was almost in tears – “Nobody comes here to have a look.”

Finally, he brought me to his room at the end of the yard. He sat me on the clean floor and gave me coconut water to drink. I was thinking how stupidly scared people usually were! I was laughing to myself also, how many things they mistook for ghosts. Everything was shining in bright starlight. Sitting next to me, Adhikari said, “Please tell me, why don’t people come here anymore? It was so magnificent in the olden days. So many carriages used to gather here; the drivers and the coachmen used to sit in my room, drink coconut water and smoke hookah; the whole place used to be so thriving.” I told him, “They say there are ghosts here. That’s why people are afraid to visit.” Hearing this, Adhikari was irritated. He stood up and said, “Ghosts? Where are the ghosts in this house? If the grand old owner of the house stands at his own window, should people still be afraid of him? What nonsense, ghosts! I am telling you, khokababu, I am working in this house for the last hundred years, I never went home even for once, I have never seen these ghosts in my own eyes.” He looked around and added, “Now I have to go. I can’t stay once the Moon is out.” He finished the sentence and, believe it or not, vanished right in front of my eyes. Just like the way the fire on a matchstick goes out when you blow on it. The strange wind started to blow again from all the sides; the doors and the windows started to rattle; the Moon started to rise in the East, and I sprinted through the broken main door at my topmost speed. Here, look, I am still panting.

There Is No Tomorrow

‘What happened to you? You look like bad sex!’ 

I turned to my friend of twelve years, his face brazen and pink like that of a toddler without toilet manners, and squinted. I wasn’t trying to insinuate anything; my eyes were tired after staring at an empty beer mug for the last fifteen minutes. The bottom of the mug had a few remaining drops of the worst beer I had had in sometime. It did taste like bad sex. That too on a Monday.

‘I told you we should go to The Bunker. It’s much cheaper there and the bartender is cute,’ my friend continued.

‘Bartender is a man,’ I said, returning my gaze to the bottom of the mug.

‘Don’t be a moron. She is not.’

‘It should be “bartendress.” The bartendress is cute. Like actor and actress.’

‘Are you fucking with me? Who says “actress” anymore?’

‘Yeah?’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘Why don’t they?’

‘Because it’s discriminatory. Women performers are no less than men. Everybody should be called the same. What is the matter with you?’

‘Why isn’t everybody called actress then?’

My friend fumbled for a couple of seconds but he recovered quickly. He had to. He used to teach literature at a university with a fake fountain and fake grass. Now he had grown interest in gardening.

‘The moment we start calling everybody actors, its maleness is gone. It becomes genderless.’

I didn’t want to argue with him. Let him win this battle. I was letting him win all the battles recently. I was really tired. And depressed. The world had suddenly become dreadfully boring.

It all started with an announcement on TV. The serious looking newsreader (another genderless word) looked genuinely terrified when she uttered the words: ‘The world is coming to an end. The world as we know it is coming to an end.’ I noticed she had a mole on her left cheek. For the next fifteen minutes or so, she blabbered a lot about an asteroid that was going to hit our planet in a few months. I kept on looking at the mole. It looked lonely.

I had this habit of staring at things without any reason or purpose. I was first diagnosed with this condition when I was eight. My mother caught me looking at a pair of scissors for longer than an hour. ‘What are you doing?’ I still remembered the horror in her voice. ‘Nothing, Ma. I am just looking at it.’ She said a prayer and took me to see his brother who always introduced himself as a musician. Medicine was his side business. In our neighbourhood, he started the fashion of music therapy. ‘Music is the best medicine. Antibiotics is the second best,’ read a signboard in his chamber.

‘This is very serious,’ my uncle told my mother and wrote me a prescription – playing violin for the next six months. One practice session each after every meal. We had to buy the violin from his music store. I was also admitted to his music school for lessons.

I met my friend for the first time in that school. ‘What’s your affliction?’ He asked me. He was seven.

‘You mean my problem?’ I asked.

‘Do you think it’s a problem?’

‘I don’t know. What’s yours?’

‘I talk a lot.’ He smiled.

It was true. He did talk a lot. He learned to speak when he was only four months old. Since then, he never stopped. At eleven, he memorised the entire dictionary so that he was never at a loss for words. The only time his tongue got tied when he tried to ask a fellow violin player out. She was thirteen. At least a foot taller than both of us.

‘It’s because I had to look up to her,’ he told me during a bathroom break. ‘The words that were at the top of my tongue slipped back into my stomach.’

‘You better not talk looking up then,’ I said with some concern.

‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I must not fall in love with any girl taller than me.’

We didn’t learn violin but we became friends. None of our conditions improved. I still stared at things. He still talked.

He handled the news of our imminent extinction with his usual pragmatism. ‘It’s not as bad as you think. The dinosaurs were also wiped out because of an asteroid hit. After we are gone, in another million years, there will be a species which will be better than us. They will rule the world.’

‘Do you think they will come up with computers and stuff as well?’

‘Better. They will cure cancer.’

‘Too bad for my uncle then.’ He was diagnosed with lung cancer a little while ago. Strangely, he chose chemotherapy over harmoniums for his treatment.

A week after the first announcement, there came the second one which changed our lives forever. We were told – this time by a surprisingly young-looking scientist – that they had found a way to avoid the catastrophe. The press conference was telecast live.

‘Are you going to destroy it in the space?’ A journalist asked.

The scientist smiled, ‘Not at all. This is not Hollywood.’

‘What then?’

‘We are going to stop time.’

There were a few whispers in the room.

‘What do you mean you will stop time? How is that possible?’

‘It’s a complex process,’ the scientist was unfazed, ‘but we have devised a technology by which we will put ourselves, that is, the entire humanity, in a time loop. We will live one day over and over again so that the day on which the asteroid hits the Earth never comes.’

The whispers became louder. ‘What nonsense!’ Someone shouted, ‘Do you want us to be stuck in a single day? This is a prison!’

‘Do you want to die?’ The scientist leaned forward.

Everybody fell silent.

I was desperately trying to find something to stare at. The room in which the press conference was being held did not have anything remarkable except a cupboard at one corner. Was there somebody hiding in the cupboard? Was it a skeleton?

The conference ended abruptly amid a lot of hullabaloo. The Prime Minister’s smiling face appeared on the screen. He congratulated the scientists for their brilliant innovation. ‘This is a great day for us. We have conquered death.’

It took us some time to understand the actual implication of the time loop. Indeed, we had conquered death. Nobody was going to age or die anymore. Except those who would die on the very day the loop was scheduled. They would be alive again in the next morning though, perhaps to die again later or survive owing to a timely dose of the right medicine.

‘This is fantastic!’ My friend almost jumped in joy, ‘We would never have to work. We would never have to get up early in the morning. We can spend all our savings in one day and we will get it back the next day.’

‘There is no next day,’ I reminded him.

‘Exactly! Every day is today! We will live without any care for tomorrow!’ He was laughing like a maniac.

My friend was not alone. Since the day of the first announcement, everybody was acting crazy. News of violence – murder, robbery, rape, vandalising – was coming from every corner of the world. Nobody seemed to have any sense of morality anymore. The societal norms that dictated our individual behaviour were forgotten. The need for civility was gone. The purpose of good manners was lost. The neighbourly smile was replaced by a cruel smirk of personal vindictiveness. Even the police became inactive. Some of them participated in the mayhem. The proverbial state of nature was no longer a mere academic proposition.

The governments, of course, had to intervene. All the countries came together and declared that unless the violence stopped, they won’t initiate the time loop. This worked like magic. Voluntary organisations sprouted like mushrooms which kept watch on the potential lawbreakers. We became normal once again. Civilised, disciplined, pretending to be friendly. But for how long?

‘Now that the mask of civility is lifted,’ I asked my friend, ‘what do you think will happen after they initiate the loop?’

‘There is very little chance we will go back to the initial days of frenzy,’ he replied. ‘Violence, like all other forms of entertainment, loses its appeal on repeat viewing.’

The governments didn’t announce the date of initiating the loop. It happened unceremoniously as most of the big events of life happen.

‘You mean to say marriage is not a big event?’ My friend asked when I pointed it out.

‘Marriage is not a big event, I told him. ‘Its failure is, though. So poignantly unceremonious. Love fades without us realising it. For the first few weeks, or even months, we still feel the itch in the amputated leg.’

‘What made you this dark? Are you drinking a lot of domestic whiskey these days?’

For the last five-six years, we met almost every evening for drinking in some of the pubs of our liking. I was a light drinker, never had more than a couple of beers or whiskey, occasionally rum, never anything else. My friend loved to mix his drinks. Like his theories about everything that piqued his interest, his alcohol consumption was over-the-top and, equally regularly, cause for visits to the doctors.

It was during one of those evening sessions, we both felt something was amiss.

‘Didn’t we have the same conversation last night?’ My friend asked.

‘You mean this conversation about bartender/bartendress?’

‘Yes,’ he looked at me, bewildered and, perhaps, a little scared. ‘Is it happening?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The loop. Are we in the loop already?’

‘There hasn’t been any announcement yet, has it?’

We asked the barkeep who was serving us. He was equally baffled, ‘Didn’t you ask me the same question last night?’

‘Oh, shit!’ All three of us said in unison.

It was not as absurd as you might think. People seldom pay attention to the little incidents, the slightest of movements and gestures, the tiniest of pains and disruptions, the smallest bits of everyday action and reaction that separate today from yesterday or from tomorrow. We think all the time about pasts and futures which are undifferentiated masses of yesterdays and tomorrows, but very rarely do we care about their singular trajectories. No history is bothered about yesterday in itself. No policy talks about tomorrow.

We were no exception. We woke up, had breakfast, went to work, had lunch, came to the pub, talked about shit, took piss, came home, went to bed. This continued for weeks, perhaps months, before we realised that the itch in the amputated leg was not real. We were scratching in vain.

‘This just proves how predictable our lives are,’ my friend did not hide his irritation.

‘Or that we are not as unique as we think we are,’ I added.

Now that we knew that we were stuck in this loop for eternity, we started talking about our next plan of action.

‘Do you think we should go to work tomorrow, I mean the next day, I mean the day after today…?’ My friend was looking for the right word. I felt sorry for him. This was not something which happened to him usually.

‘I understand,’ I patted him on the back, ‘what do you want to do?’

‘Why not come here in the morning and keep on drinking till the end? We can also do bar hopping.’

‘OK, why not!’ I said. ‘But what about your students?’

‘Oh, come on, we have the eternity,’ he smiled like a child with a new toy and a fake medical certificate. ‘Wait, we can go to The Bunker and check that ‘bartendress’ out.’

It was the biggest mistake of my life – agreeing to come with him to that wretched bar. We reached the place at around six in the evening. It was still peaceful. Not many people around. No music. No smell of junk food. The woman at the counter smiled like we owed money to her. Did we?

‘We are going to stay here till the night ends,’ my friend was extra cheerful. ‘Give us two large pegs of your best whiskey.’ The woman nodded and reached for a strange looking bottle.

‘Are you sure we can afford that?’ I whispered.

‘How does it matter? We will keep on drinking till the end and then it’s the next day. Or not. The same day but a new morning.’

‘You have to pay upfront for each serving,’ the woman put two glasses in front of us. ‘It’s the house policy now.’

‘Motherfuckers,’ my friend muttered and brought out his purse. ‘Let’s go to another place after we finish this drink.’

I would have agreed but by then I had already discovered her. She was sitting at one of the shadowy corners of the bar, her face was slightly away from my vision like a dream without sound. She was not alone. Two men, probably work friends, were seated on her sides and arguing about something. I thought people would stop arguing since there was no tomorrow. I was wrong. All arguments were about the present. And the present was the only thing that we had.

‘Go and talk to her,’ my friend said. ‘God, this whiskey tastes like shit.’

I pretended that I hadn’t heard him. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘You want to stay, don’t you? Do you know her?’

Did I know her? I couldn’t remember. Her face did seem familiar. I knew we were all having recurrent déjà vu since we got into the loop. I might have met her before but was it here at this bar? She stood up now as if she was leaving. She wasn’t too tall, my height maybe, and she looked directly at me with her lips parted and eyes slightly widened. I thought she was going to call out my name.

My phone was ringing. I had to take the call. It was my boss.

‘Where are you?’ Her voice wasn’t friendly.

‘Um,’ I looked around, ‘I am still in my bed. Why?’

‘Still in bed? It’s nine already. We need the report on polio vaccination today. Have you forgotten?’

‘No,’ I yawned, ‘I think it can wait. Let’s do it tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? There is no tomorrow,’ she barked. ‘Come to office immediately.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I cut the call and went back to sleep.

I wanted to know if she knew my name. That would make a wonderful story. Not like this one.

Allahabad

Allahabad is grey.

This was the first impression I had when I got down at the station. The station, quite prosaically named Allahabad City, was located at the vague end of the town. The River was quite close to the station. There was a faint moisture in the air. On my way, I crossed a long bridge. I tried to peek, through the opaque window of the train, down to the river. It was patchy. Few children were looking for something in the mud. The Sun shone on them like a cruel joke.

Two middle-aged men approached me immediately; one of them was the driver of an auto, the other his assistant, probably. They were friendly in the way that the auto drivers are supposed to be at an almost empty station. They suggested few hotels. I asked for the cheapest one. ‘Don’t worry. This is not the season,’ they said, together. When was the season? ‘The Kumbh is going to happen in a couple of months. The hotels will double their rate.’ For the first time in my life, I felt grateful for arriving early.

We came out of the station into a greyer city. I looked around and found a town which was coming apart. It looked like a city which had recently been attacked by the aliens. Beautiful, colonial-looking buildings were mutilated, smashed like bad memories. I breathed their remainders. I smelt their helplessness which smelt like old books. The roads were being renovated for the Kumbh, I was told. But why demolish the buildings? The divers didn’t reply. They skirted the heaps of debris and my repeated inquiries quite deftly. By the time I reached the hotel, my nose was clogged with despair.

The next morning, I went to the Sangam where the Ganga and the Yamuna were playing hide-and-seek with the mythical river Saraswati. ‘Why should I accept its existence when I can’t see it?’ I asked the auto driver – one of the two from the previous day. ‘Can you see the wind?’ He asked back, eyes on the road.

We took a turn around the Allahabad Fort, once built by the great Akbar, now a military camp. The riverside was populated by hundreds of boats and boatmen. They offered a discount rate to a happier reincarnation. ‘Just take one dip,’ a lanky teenager pulled me towards his boat, ‘all your sins will be cleansed.’ His earnestness was as ancient as the Sangam itself, his need for money too. ‘Look how the colours of the waters are different,’ he shouted when we reached the meeting point of the rivers. The colours were indeed different but my sinful eyes couldn’t see the line parting the finite and the infinite, life and afterlife. I stared hard. The rivers didn’t return the stare. ‘Lots of Muslims from the Arab countries come to see this miracle,’ the driver told me on our way back.

I took an e-rickshaw to see the other side of the town – the Civil Lines. ‘Don’t you want to see the Hanuman Mandir?’ The new driver asked. ‘No, the other places.’ I uttered the word ‘secular’ in my mind. We stopped first at the Museum inside a nicely maintained park. ‘I’ll park close by. Keep my number,’ the driver said. ‘By which name should I save it?’ I asked. ‘What’s the need?’ He said after a little hesitation, ‘Just give me a missed call now. I will see your number and come to pick you up.’

The museum was neat. It had a lot of matchboxes from the colonial time. It also had the pistol with which Chandrashekhar Azad killed himself after refusing to surrender to the British. The pistol looked peaceful now, showcased at a corner of a room smelling of naphthalene. We also stopped at Anand Bhawan, the residence of the Nehrus. All of their beds were single. Gandhi’s bed was, of course, the smallest. I was particularly taken by an electric toaster used by Jawaharlal. He also had an electric shaver. Did Gandhi know about these little indulgences? Did they ever have a debate over the utility of automated personal hygiene, Mohandas and Jawaharlal? History textbooks are often inadequate on these important matters.

On our way to the All Saints’ Church, a magnificent building but terribly kept, we stopped at a school to pick up the kids of the rickshaw driver. ‘Don’t worry saab. They won’t take much space.’ The kids – three girls – didn’t pay any attention to me. When the silence became too awkward, I asked them their names. Nazneen, Nusrat and Falaq. It struck me immediately why the driver didn’t want to share his name with me. He assumed I was Hindu and I might have a problem riding his rickshaw had I known his name.

‘Will you go and see the temples tomorrow?’ He asked after dropping me at the hotel. ‘No, I am leaving tomorrow,’ I said and added hesitantly, ‘have fifty rupees more.’ ‘No saab, I have enough. Shukriya.’ He started his cart and left.

I stood outside on the street for a few minutes more and breathed deeply. The city, its dust, its ancient greyness and its dilapidated history, entered my lungs, my blood, my brain.

I had a fever on my way home.