Where

I dreamed of Uttorshor last night. It was a most wonderful dream. The bazaar was in full swing. The shuddering, angry buzz of housewives haggling with shopkeepers over rice, potatoes, spices. The pathways covered with mud. The drizzling rain outside. It was chaos inside, chaos.

Where did you go?

Coolie boys ran after me and offered to help, enthusiastically trying to snatch my bags away from me. I shooed them away. The older ones ran away, undaunted, not caring. But there was a little one that cared. He walked away, looking hurt. A young boy, already tired of life. I did not know how to comfort him. You would have known what to do, I think. 

Where did you go?

An old man sits on the pavement, selling warm fresh pithas. In real life I would have felt sorry for him in my middle-class, prejudiced kind of way. Haggardly man, bending over his pithas, rarely smiling, with abrupt manners that did not befit a man of his age. In the dream I noticed more. The deep creases in his face that concealed memories rich, delicious, and pungent. The little spark in his eye as he put extra care into the bhapa pitha he made for you – your favorite, of course.

Where did you go?

The dream carried on, in the relentless way that dreams do. I can picture every little detail of that bazaar now. The dark and claustrophobic shop that sells rice and muri and daal and all sorts of other things, and where the shopkeeper knew so well how bored you would get that a cheap mango ice-cream would always be ready whenever we arrived. The bookshop into which I always had to drag you against your protests, a dreary little place that only sold stationary and a few incredibly dull books that your teachers had assigned for your class. The man around the corner who repaired shoes – ten minutes, no questions asked, whatever the state of the shoe. There was always a group of people chatting around there, and you would listen, strangely fascinated. I always wondered why: was it because it was a world beyond yours and mine, one that you could not take part in and which therefore smelled irresistibly of freedom?

And then, as we reach the top floor of the rickety old building, the noise fades away. It is my favorite part of the bazaar, a small oasis. There is a ledge over which you can gaze out into the turbulent city. From here the confusion of the bazaar is a blur, a distant memory. Here you can have a moment of serenity, here you can abstract away from the world. The sky is a pale stuttering grey, still trembling from the aftereffects of the rain. Scores and scores of old, discolored buildings stretch out in every direction. With an effort I even make out the river weaving its way through the crowded city. The sun breaks out and suddenly the river is shimmering. It is the most beautiful thing I have seen all day.

It is then that I notice that your tiny little hand is no longer grasping mine...

I dream of Uttorshor every night. In these dreams I am always searching. I begin outside, at the pavement where the old man sits – he will no longer talk to me, I do not know why. I call after the coolie boys. With their energetic little feet, they can surely help me find what I am looking for. But they stand there hesitant, their impetuousness gone. I scream at them to help, and the youngest follows me, but there is despair in his eyes, and I find I cannot gaze into them.

I must keep searching. I suddenly remember a pair of shoes that you had wanted repaired – a green pair that no longer squeaks the way they used to when your father first got them for you. I reach the man around the corner, and he fixes them, ten minutes, but today he will not accept any money from me. The group around him is talking. “Yes…most tragic…the police have given up by now…can you imagine, a mother losing her only child…they say she has gone quite unhinged…”

I climb onto the top floor. It’s empty there, dead. I look out, and there is the river, dark and foreboding. You had never liked the river, you said to me once, the way it snaked in and out through the city, drawing and tempting you in before getting lost around the bend. 

Where did you go, my little girl, oh where did you go? 

The tree fell and died

There was a storm last night. A tree fell and died.

The weather had been so splendid the week before.

People walked past the tree. People stared at the tree. A dead tree brooks a strange fascination. It strikes at the heart.

Unlike a dead man. A man is lying on the bench. It is ordinary. He might be sleeping. Or at least, it is a convenient fiction. If he is bleeding people notice. But then it is the blood they notice, not the man.

The man who planted the tree is dead. And now the tree is dead. No one knows that the man planted the tree. The man did not put a sign. It is not done. So the tree has roots, but its roots are forgotten all the same.

A dead tree is not a miserable thing. The world has many trees. And trees have no name. It is a little uncomfortable, the path being blocked, having to step off onto the wet grass to get home. An unfamiliar feel, the lush grass against your feet. You complain about it loudly. But there is also some wonder. A mighty tree, fell to the ground. It is not such a bad thing.

But a dead man. A dead man is miserable. Not if you know the dead man. Then you have grief, and you forget all else. Perhaps others know the dead man. Then too it is lucky, for you can feel their grief.

But the dead man on the bench? No one knows him. You don’t know him. You even wonder if you should pretend you didn’t see him.

It is very inconvenient to acknowledge his existence. There are norms to be followed. You are a decent human being. So you will have to care for this human being you did not know five minutes ago. You are not callous. So the happy song that’s still echoing in your head, that must be stopped. Or it will take on a morbid quality of its own, and the song will be ruined for you forever.

So you stand there, thinking. Strange thoughts enter your mind. If you shake the man, will he wake up and be angry? It is an odd dilemma. As long as you stand there, you want the man to be alive. But once you approach him and shake him and pound his shoulders, you want him to be dead. For how absurd would it be if you were shaking and pounding a living man.

It is almost as if you are holding the man’s life in the palm of your hands.

You shake your head. This is ridiculous. It may be night but the laws of reason still hold. So you make a decision. You look at the tree and sigh. But it must be done. So you slowly approach the bench. And then you hear footsteps, and your resolve disappears. You slink away into the darkness, and a new man appears.

This man is different from you. He has energy and he is confident. He sees the man on the bench, and is indignant. He goes over and starts shaking him. And gently admonishing. This is a public bench. It is not for vagabonds such as you. I am not tired. But if I was jogging, I might be tired. I might want to sit on this bench. Rest for a few minutes. Who are you to take that right away from me. I am a kind man. Let me help you get off this bench.

And then he realizes something is wrong. He calls out for help, loudly, no hesitation. Your spell is broken. You find yourself running towards the bench. As if you have not been hiding in the shadows all along. You flag a cab. You help the kind man load the dead man into the cab. The three of you are in the cab and it rushes towards the hospital.

How normal everything is now. You even feel sad for the dead man. You wonder aloud if the dead man has any friends and any relatives, and the thought makes you sadder. The kind man makes many plans for the next half hour. What to tell the doctors. When to contact the police. What to write in the letter to the local newspaper complaining about the sorry miserable lives of the local poor. He is infused with the energy of a man who knows he is doing great things. You stare at him and he knows he is being admired.

The taxi driver turns his head. He looks at the kind man. You have done a heroic thing, sir. Helping this poor man. You did not need to. But you did. The kind man nods complacently. You look out the window. And then your eyes find another fallen tree. Another bench, and another man lying on the bench. You quickly avert your eyes. The kind man is now talking. You pretend to listen, and the taxi moves on.