A Burning(45)

He is staying quiet.

“Don’t be silly,” he is saying after a while. “Politics is not entering my mind. I am just feeling that, maybe, after the court case, you are already feeling like a big star. Two minutes on TV and, boom, you are thinking you are a legend. You are having so little patience.” His thick brows are coming together like worms in the soil. “And the things you said, well, in the papers they are saying you are an unpatriotic…I don’t want to repeat those things.”

    “What things?” I am demanding.

I am always thinking that Mr. Debnath is believing in me, but this time, with my eyes on his hairy toes, I am feeling that he is a man I am not truly knowing, and I am a person he is not truly knowing. How long can I keep trusting his words and waiting for his film? My chance to be a young star is reducing. Nobody is wanting to see a star with gray hair and saggy arms.

On the road outside, a blade sharpener is walking by with his tools. He is calling, “Sharpen your knife! Sharpen your knife!”



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JUST WHEN WE ARE THINKING that the electricity supply is really improved, no load shedding in our locality anymore, it is happening. Suddenly one night the tubelight is going dark. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Sometimes Happiness Sometimes Sorrow, on the TV is shutting off, leaving some colors playing on the TV screen. It is feeling like something is going wrong with your eyes. But no. It is only load shedding. A few mosquitoes are immediately finding my arms and ears to nibble. Without the noise of fridges and TVs, voices are traveling far in the air.

    For once, I am leaving my phone alone, because the battery is finished.

In the dark, with not even a candle in my house, I am sitting in the doorway and looking outside. One hour is passing, then two.

A few people are walking by. I am calling one neighbor lady by name, but it is not her. She is looking at me, a dark face like a silhouette.

Now the sky is holding more light than the ground. There is a half-moon, with gray spots on it that I was never noticing before. Like the moon is having pimples also. Clouds like cotton pulled from a roll are moving under the moon, sometimes hiding it, sometimes revealing it. I am feeling that the world is so big, so full of our dreams and our love stories, and our grief too.

I am blowing my nose and getting up to go inside.

Alone inside, my tears are coming like a fountain. Poor Jivan. My testimony was proving as useful as a shoe is to a snake.

And Azad has not come to see me even once. I am wiping my tears on my dupatta. I was forced to, my heart, is he not knowing that? It was not me who was throwing him out. It was this society. This same society which is now screaming for the blood of innocent Jivan, only because she is a poor Muslim woman.

Like a heartbeat, the light is turning on and the fan is starting to whir and I am hearing a cheer spreading throughout the neighborhood. Electric current is back.

    I am wiping my tears. I am flinging my snot outside the window.

When I am thinking about it, I am truly feeling that Jivan and I are both no more than insects. We are no more than grasshoppers whose wings are being plucked. We are no more than lizards whose tails are being pulled. Is anybody believing that she was innocent? Is anybody believing that I can be having some talent?

If I am wanting to be a film star, no casting man or acting coach will be making it happen for me. So I, myself, Lovely with my belly and no-English and dramatic success only in Mr. Debnath’s living room—I am having to do it myself. Even if I am only a smashed insect under your shoes, I am struggling to live. I am still living.

When my phone is a little bit charged, I am taking some of my practice videos from acting class, including my super-hit session with Brijesh, and sending them to my sisters on WhatsApp. Please, I am writing, please to be sharing my videos with your friends and their friends. I am looking for acting roles. Tell me if you are hearing about opportunities!



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THE NEXT DAY, BACK to my normal life, where I am having to earn money. I am going to the number one tourist spot in the whole city, the white marble British palace Victoria Memorial. It is a place where donkey villagers are coming, especially on cool, cloudy days like these. Their mouths are always open when they are touring the city. They are looking at everything like it was made personally by god. Malls, zebra crossings, women who are wearing pants.

    They are also wanting as many blessings as possible, so they are always wearing five holy threads on their wrist and seven holy threads on their upper arm and who knows what else. These poor people are afraid of many things, and top of the list is bad luck from god. This I can understand, however, because me, I am the most cursed person.

Anyhow, I am entering the Victoria gardens and seeing the crowd. There is a straight white path going to the big palace, and on both sides green lawns and trees. In the cool weather, the lawns are full of children who are playing badminton with their parents, and some lovers who are sitting too close together under trees and eating ice-cream cones. They are all taking off their shoes, and I am seeing a parade of cracked soles when I am walking down the center. I am clapping my hands, saying, “Mother goddess sent me to bless you all today.”

I am blessing one young girl. Then I am blessing a baby. Then a guard is tapping me with a stick.

“What?” I am saying to the guard. “I am having a ticket, look!”