She Will Build Him a City (37 page)

They get out, walk up the stairs into the hotel lobby, pass a man standing there waiting for his car, a man who smells as if he’s freshly bathed, his wrist so slim his watch keeps sliding to his elbow every time he raises his arm.

They shout out to Driver and his attendant to wait for them until they finish dinner in the new Chinese restaurant at The Leela.

WOMAN

Gabriela Mistral

H
ow distracted I have been, I am near the end and I forget to tell you about the third author I am reading: Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. She got the Nobel Prize in 1945, the year I am born; you read her acceptance speech and you will never know that, as one critic says, ‘pain and anguish suffused her entire being.’

I will read you some lines from one of her poems and tell you a little about her.

~

When I walk all the things

of the earth awaken,

and they rise up and whisper

and it’s their stories that they tell.

Gabriela is barely three years old when her father, a teacher in an elementary school, leaves the house to chase his dreams. Of writing poetry. His absence deeply affects both mother and daughter although Gabriela never blames him for her suffering. In a way, critics say, the legacy the father leaves behind for his daughter – a ‘vagabond’ soul – is what helps her succeed as a poet and as a teacher.

~

And the peoples who wander

leave them for me on the road

and I gather them where they’ve fallen

in cocoons made of footprints.

When she is nine years old, her teacher, who is blind, falsely accuses her of stealing sheets of paper belonging to the school. She orders Gabriela to leave the classroom, gets the children to even throw stones at her. When the teacher dies forty years later, Mistral happens to be in the same town, and she attends her funeral, places violets on her coffin. Asked if she remembered her teacher, she says, ‘I can never forget memory.’

~

Stories run through my body

or purr in my lap.

They buzz, boil, and bee-drone.

They come to me uncalled

and don’t leave me once told.

In 1906, when she is seventeen, Gabriela meets a man called Romelio Ureta who works as a railroad conductor and baggage clerk. Later that year, they meet again in a small town where she is teaching. The only detail available about their relationship is that Gabriela usually saved a seat for Ureta at the table. Three years later, Ureta shoots himself in the head. And, on his body, is found a postcard bearing her name. There are many versions of his death. According to one, a friend to whom he had loaned money from the railroad company refused to repay and he chose suicide to uphold his honour. One version says he is supposed to marry somebody else and to prevent that, he kills himself. His suicide is a defining moment in Mistral’s life and a powerful influence on her poetry.

~

Those that come down from the trees

braid and unbraid themselves,

and weave me and wrap me

until the sea drives them away.

but the sea speaks endlessly

and the more I tire, the more it tells me…

In 1929, when she is forty, Gabriela loses her mother. Some of her finest poetry commemorates her mother’s death. According to one critic, ‘Mother and daughter commune in these poems, in a spiritual bond of penance and perseverance.’

~

People who are chewing the forest

and those who break stone

want stories at bedtime.

The least documented tragedy in her life is the death of her nephew, Juan Miguel Godoy Mendoza, nicknamed Yin-Yin. Gabriela cares for him like a mother from his infancy to his death at eighteen. He is her father’s grandson by an extramarital liaison. The baby’s father surrenders the baby to Gabriela because the mother dies of tuberculosis. She takes him in and she transforms into a mother for him, only to watch him kill himself.

~

A father who leaves his daughter when she is a child; a lover who commits suicide; a child who, too, leaves her before he is an adult – so much of this seems real that perhaps that’s why I, an old woman, sitting in a little house in a little town, three continents and two oceans away, read the poems of Gabriela Mistral and wish to share them with you.

Women looking for lost children who don’t return

and women who think they’re alive

and don’t know that they’re dead,

ask for stories every night

and I spend myself telling and telling.

MAN

Ballerina Girl

It’s Balloon Girl’s voice, calling out his name, that wakes him up.

In The Room, the oak wardrobe’s doors are open, Kahini’s letter lies next to him. For a moment, he isn’t sure where he is or where he was, and then his left foot begins to wake up from its sleep, stabbing his sole and his heel – he still has his shoes on – with countless needles, tying invisible weights to his ankle so heavy he cannot move. The throbbing pain in his arm, which he recollects from earlier in the evening, from his encounter with Taxi Driver at The Leela, begins to clear his head. She calls out his name again, her voice so near it seems she is inside the house and will walk into the room any time. That will be a big help, he thinks, given that he cannot move, because then he won’t have to get up. She can do whatever she wishes in this room, it’s hers now. Indeed, this entire house, which has been abandoned by Kahini, will now be Balloon Girl’s.

And, justifiably so.

Because isn’t she always there, whenever, wherever he summons her, for whatever?

Doesn’t she always stand vigil, keep looking out for him, like she does at the mortuary?

Or, warn him of impending danger as she does in The Leela, when he has almost forgotten the fact that Taxi Driver is still around? Doesn’t she always help him clear hurdles along his way? And then, most significantly, she is also helping him fight himself, make himself a better person.

At the Bird Park in Singapore, watching the lories perch on her, he wishes to hurt her, drink her blood, but now lying down in his house, listening to her call out to him, all that she fills him up with is love. All he wants to do now is to take her off this city’s streets, grow her up, like a plant with flowers, nurture her soil and her water, share with her his own good fortune, his house, his home, his everything. Work hard and work long to give her all she deserves, all that she will never get otherwise. Free her from the swarm of flies, take her away from her mother, so selfish, who has reduced her to a withered body in a bundle of rags that smells, darts in and across the dark, runs to strangers in the hospital yard, offering red balloons in the night.

He wants to tell his friends Sukrit, Arsh and Aatish that no, he is now no longer alone, that Kahini may have left him but she wasn’t his missing piece to begin with, the only person who loves him for who he is is Balloon Girl and now it will be her and him living happily ever after.

Even his father, his honest father with a conscience, would be proud if he took in a child from the street, cleaned her up, gave her his love, made her his own.

And that child is right now calling out to him.

~

‘I am here,’ says Balloon Girl.

Looking through the French windows of his living room, he falls in love again.

For, there she is, standing on the narrow ledge of his verandah, Red Balloon floating above her head, gleaming, taut, as if, in the night, it had gone back to Kailash Sahu and got itself filled with fresh helium.

Its string, this time fixed to a hook at the back of her white dress, is invisible in the dark – except when it catches one of the night lights in Apartment Complex – making it seem as if girl and balloon, unconnected, are floating in tandem.

And then, just before he can step out and respond to her call, she begins to dance. With an abandon that’s both measured and unrestrained, child and adult. Like a ballerina he has only seen on TV or trapped in snow globes, she pirouettes on her bare feet, balancing herself on one toe and then the next, her jumps in between so daring and so graceful that he can feel his heart stop with awe and fear. One moment she soars into the sky, her arms outstretched, her head thrown back, a glittering brooch in her hair glinting in the dark, and the next she is still, as in marble, upright on the ledge, the entire weight of her tantalisingly balanced between beauty and death. The very next moment, she is all movement, a blur, the red of the balloon and the white of her dress against the black of the sky in patterns, delicate and tender, flirtatious and flamboyant. Child on the ledge, she transforms into a woman in mid-flight, making the night so fragile and fraught with danger that he remains rooted inside, unmoving, not knowing what to do next.

She calls out to him again.

‘Come, join me,’ she says.

CHILD

Orphan’s Home

If those who know Orphan, the staff at Little House, including Kalyani, Dr Chatterjee, Mrs Chopra, Uncle and Aunty, the men and women who live under the highway at the traffic lights, Bhow and his dog family, if they ask Ms Violets Rose, where can we find Orphan, she will sit them down in the seats in the cinema theatre, wait for them to get comfortable, for the lights to dim, and before there’s any music, any movie, once she is sure that she has their undivided attention, she will tell them.

~

Look for Orphan right here.

He will be the shadow beneath your seat. Certain evenings, when you are watching a movie, you may feel his head move underneath you, his small hands scrape your armrest. There will be days when I won’t be able to provide for him so please leave something on the tray or drop something on the floor – shreds of popcorn at the bottom of the box, flakes of chips, a beverage undrunk. Not exactly food a child should have but, at least, it will satiate his hunger, quench his thirst.

Once in a while, if you look carefully, you may see a shape quickly dart across the stage, turn the corner around the screen. You will see the red curtains move, that’s Orphan stepping into the wings, maybe into the little storage room to lie down or wait. On-screen, you will see him, too, if you are lucky, in the scene into which I choose to place him.

Mainly those where a mother stands at a window looking out, the thought of a child in her eyes.

Or a scene where children play, in a park on a clear winter morning, the grass dappled by sunlight. A schoolyard, where there are slides, see-saws, monkeybars.

When the movie is over and you walk down the stairs, when the credits roll, turn around one last time to look underneath your chair and you may see Orphan peering out, his beautiful face lit by the floor lights, his baby eyes sparkling at you in the dark.

~

And if he’s not there?

~

Step out of the theatre, walk down the corridors of The Mall, into any of the 208 stores and you may find Orphan.

In kids’-wear stores, he will be dressed in all you want him to wear, sitting between the mannequins in the display window. In toy stores, you are likely to find him in a quiet corner, playing with a train, if he is three years four years old, or just walking, crawling down an aisle looking at the boxes, if he is younger.

A few years later, if his language classes with me are any success, you may find him reading a book at Landmark Store, concealed by the large plastic bin that keeps discounted footballs and soft toys.

In the large anchor stores where they have many sections, he will surely be harder to trace, given the sheer number of places he has to hide. In the home furnishing section, look under beds, between quilts and behind mattresses. Between the boxes of silverware, behind the thicket of wires where they display lamps and lights, you may see him in a mirror, appear and disappear.

In the men’s apparel or women’s-wear section, you are likely to find him in the trial room, underneath the sofa or chair, covered by clothes left behind by a shopper.

Let him be there as you change, he won’t look, don’t frighten him away.

~

When you leave The Mall, when you are out in the parking lot, you may find Orphan under, or in between, the cars.

In the shadows that curve around the pillars. In the little cubicle in which the parking attendant sits to give you your ticket. That’s why when you start your car, wait for a minute, look in all your mirrors, let him slip away just in case he is hiding underneath.

Drive down the highway and you will see him, maybe, holding on to another car in front or hiding in its trunk.

Sometimes, when he’s daring, he will be perched on the highway signs, looking at the planes coming in to land. At other times, you may find him at the toll gates playing with mynah birds, or climbing the rafters in the roof, his face lit by the rising sun.

In the Metro, during rush-hour, he will be in the first coach meant for women and children, squeezed into a corner so that he doesn’t get in anyone’s way. At night, though, he will spread out, flit from one coach to the other, slip underneath the seats. Or stand in a corner and watch the passengers, a thin man whose watch keeps sliding to his elbow, a young woman and an older man, holding hands, listening to the voices inside each other’s heads.