A Burning(31)

And just like that, with his tea breath on my face, he is asking me to be the heroine. The question is coming as such a shock I am taking one minute to understand fully what he is asking.

“Do you accept?” he is saying.

I am just looking at him like a fool. I am meaning Yes! Yes! Yes!

Mr. Debnath is telling me, “You must be wondering who is playing the lead opposite you? The hero, well, I am really writing that role for someone like Shah Rukh Khan.”

“Shah Rukh Khan!” I am finally saying. My voice is catching in my throat. “Was I ever telling you that I am sleeping every night under a poster of Shah Rukh Khan?”

It is really too much emotion. I am feeling like I am on top of a high Himalayan peak of happiness. If I am having to be putting words to this feeling, that is truly how I am feeling.

“Someone like Shah Rukh Khan,” Mr. Debnath is saying, “more or less.”

But I am not even hearing.

“Accept?” I am saying. “Mr. Debnath, this is the greatest day of my life!”





JIVAN


IN THE BEGINNING, THE hot air of the kitchen made my head swoon. Once I paused my work of flipping ruti and, recalling what I learned in PT class, lowered my head between my knees. Soon after, a guard, a man, noticed the slowed production line and said, in my ear, “Want to rest? I can take you to the clinic if you want.”

Everybody knew what happened in the on-site clinic to women who were sedated and weak, unable to do more than lift a hand or briefly open their eyes.

No longer am I that light-headed woman. Every morning and every evening, I make more than a hundred pieces of ruti. My movements have become economical—slap and turn, pinch and lift. My head is down, my bony fingers swift. Looking at me, you might think I have become a servant, but that is true only of my hands. In my mind, I have resisted being imprisoned. In my mind, every morning I dress smartly, clip on my badge, and take the bus to my job at Pantaloons. That morning will come again. The clock, though reluctant, moves forward.



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I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED in work. Only once, I promise Purnendu, only once did I think about committing a crime.

In the big city, one of the first things I noticed was how everybody had big cell phones like handheld televisions. One of those cell phones could pay for a few months of my father’s medicines.

“So you stole a phone?” Purnendu says. He sits cross-legged on top of the bench, wearing office pants which smell like ironing. “From who?”

“No, wait,” I say. “Listen first.”

One day, on the main street, I saw a woman whose purse was unzipped. A wallet peeked out. The woman was holding a receipt and looking hopefully at the roll shop. My heart pounded in my ears as I reached forward and touched that wallet. I touched it gently at first, then nearly lifted it from the purse. Even while I was holding the wallet, indecision screamed at me: Should I really do this? Was I a thief? In any case, the wallet had caught on something deep in the purse. I tugged once, then let it go.

No, I wasn’t a thief.

No, I was never a thief, but the woman turned around, surprised, and gripped my wrist. With my bony wrist in her strong hand, she shouted, “What are you doing?”

Everybody at the roll shop looked at me. The man who was cracking eggs on the black pan paused. The boy who was chopping onions held his rag-wrapped knife still in the air.

    I looked at the ground, my wrist still in the hand of the woman. How soft her hand was. I readied for a beating.

But the woman with the soft hands bent toward me and asked me a question, her voice suddenly different.

“How old are you, child?” she said. “Are you hungry?”

The kindness of her voice made me harden with suspicion. Why was she being nice? I refused to speak, turning my eyes to the road, where yellow Ambassador taxis rumbled along, honking their horns.

“Why didn’t you ask me for something to eat?” she said.

She took her roll from the shop, bought me one, and took me back to her office, me agreeing to her soft hand on my back, her warm fingers touching my skin through the zipper fallen open, in my mouth delicious chicken, nothing more. Her office was up an elevator. The box moved, and I kept a hand on the wall.

“Never been in a lift?” said the lady. She smiled. “Don’t be afraid.”

In the office, other ladies came forward and asked me many questions. After I devoured the chicken roll, one gave me two biscuits which I crammed in my mouth, buttery crumbs sticking to my chin.

    They were an education NGO, and they provided scholarships for underprivileged children to attend one of the best schools in the area, S. D. Ghosh Girls’ School.



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ON THE PATH FROM our slum to my new school, there was a butcher shop. Every day I walked past skinned goats hanging from hooks, their bodies all muscle and fat except for the tails, which twitched. The goat must have had a life, much like me. At the end of its life, maybe it had been led by a rope to the slaughterhouse, and maybe, from the smell of blood which emerged from that room, the goat knew where it was being taken.

Before I began going to the good school, I used to feel that way. In this prison, sometimes, I feel it again.

But at that time, with my clean school uniform, a bag full of photocopied books strapped to my shoulders, even a new pencil in my pocket, I did not feel like that goat anymore.