He couldn’t say no to a woman customer. It could cost him his job. He carried the heavy sack of things he had packed that morning, following the list on the WhatsApp message she had sent – things to eat and drink, things to use on her baby and on her own body – up her stairs and across her doorway.
In the mirror, he glimpsed his own reflection for the first time in eleven long hours. He was thirty, but he looked tired and so, older. His shoulders ached from the packing and lifting he had done all day. The sweet, stale smell of his deodorant filled the confined space of the passage that opened into a living room.
She motioned towards a room further in, which he took to be the kitchen. She had her head turned, her gaze fixed on the inner room. She seemed to be trying to divert his attention from the room in which they stood. But then, as if almost against her own volition she said, ‘Be careful where you place your feet. The floor caves.’ Then he saw it. It made him stop and stare and because he couldn’t take the weight of the delivery, he placed it down with a grunt. The floor tiles had been broken through and a pit had been dug. It was by the arm of the sofa, which along with some low chairs, were set about a small round table. Framed photos and a bowl of plastic fruit were arranged on the table. Everything was neatly in place, but for the pit, about two feet wide. How deep it was, he couldn’t tell.
His phone began to ring. Maqsood was tired of waiting downstairs.
‘Nearly done. Coming. No, no problem. She’s just looking for change. No, she isn’t using a card…’
Kneeling, he opened the sack and placed the items, one at a time, on the living room floor. She didn’t stop him, realising that it was late already. She couldn’t press him to take her supplies further in.
‘Sorry for bringing these so late,’ he said.
‘It’s okay. I had said I want them delivered after 7:30…’
When he stood up, he was aware that she was standing too close. The virus was highly contagious. At any other time too, it would be wise to keep his distance from a customer. He should leave. He handed her the bill, took the card and pushed it into the small device he’d removed from his overalls.
She said nothing about the two items on her list in lieu of which he had delivered other things: frozen corn instead of peas and white rice instead of brown. She seemed, simply, in need of seeing and speaking to someone. He had met customers like her … they tended to begin conversations that weren’t necessary.
‘I lost my child.’
He blinked, uncomprehending.
‘She went into the pit.’
‘That pit?’ He asked, his eyebrows shooting up.
She didn’t answer. He looked at her closely for the first time. She was pale. Her expression reminded him of his wife’s when one of their sons got very sick.
‘Should I look?’
The pit was not deep. Of course, a woman of her slight frame couldn’t have dug further than a few feet. No, there was no child inside. But now she was standing next to him, an expectant expression in her eyes.
‘Will you?’
‘There’s no one down there,’ he said, peering down.
‘She is no more in her body,’ she said, her lips trembling.
Was she mad? There was a story he remembered from his grandmother’s village in north Karnataka, of a young mother who lost a baby and became like a wraith herself, spending all her days looking for it. He felt pity for this woman.
‘Are you alone? Where is your family?’ he asked.
‘I went to the market last evening. But there were people in masks carrying sticks, stopping people. And then the ground opened by my feet. I thought I would fall. I cried all the way back.’
‘It’s just the policemen guarding the market, otherwise there will be a rush. Don’t worry, we will bring your orders to you. Just today, deliveries are delayed. It’s almost a hundred … a hundred deliveries in one day. It’s hard for everyone.’
‘I am sorry,’ she said slowly. ‘I have made it hard for you.’
She took a fifty-rupee note from a small box that was labelled For Milk, and held it out, her air as serious as that of a schoolteacher. With a slight nod, he tucked it into his pocket. Maqsood, downstairs, would need to be placated for the length of time he had spent here.
He walked quickly down the passage and passed the mirror without a glance. He was halfway down the stairs, taking them two at a time, when the lights went out.
The stairwell was pitch dark. He fumbled for his phone to switch on the torch when he heard a footstep. ‘Are you alright?’ She called.
‘Don’t come down, ma’am. I’ll let myself out.’
Still, by the light of his torch, she made her way down, patting the wall with one palm, the banister with the other. He let her keep her torch on, needing to save his phone battery. She edged past him and led the way down, holding the torch in the same hand that she was using to pull the end of her pyjamas up so she wouldn’t trip. The light, aimed steeply down, cast large shadows. These should have been straight lines, he noticed, of the hard edges of the stairs, but they were uneven and rounded, like those in a cave. Something flew past his head, brushing against his ear. He grabbed at her shoulder, knowing she would be startled by whatever it was and that she would lose her footing … but her shoulder slipped past his fingers and all she was, then, was a shadow leaping forth with a shriek. The torch went down with a sharp crack.
He tried to switch his torch on, but his phone was dead. He cursed and tried to get down to her in the well of darkness, but the heel of his sandal slipped, and he slid, as if on mud, into mud. He sat up carefully, feeling around in the soil, his fingers grazing against pebbles and sliding over grass, trying to make sense of where he was, wondering where she was. In the dark, his hand found her shoulder, now still.
‘Ma’am,’ he called, again and again, trying to stir her. The glass window by her front door was a couple of feet from where he sat. In the orange glow of the streetlight, his partner’s silhouette leaned against the door of the van in which they had driven here. His face and thumb were lit by the blue screen of the phone he pored over.
‘Maqsood! Here!’ he shouted, pounding a fist against the window. But his cries dropped into the yawning silence. His own gasping breath was the only thing audible. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers and his temples with the base of his palms. Where were they? It seemed as if the floor had opened under their feet, not just her feet this time. His heart pounded at the thought.
A sliver of light permeated the darkness ahead. He began walking downhill, sideways, slipping sometimes, his palms feeling a way along a damp wall of mud. A shape moved in the darkness – he could not tell how far ahead – a small head bobbing on a little body, a child running. He could hear it panting. He followed it. It turned a corner and stopped running. He caught up.
They were on a narrow street, that would have been as dark as midnight, but for a single streetlamp many metres ahead. The smell of exhaust fumes and rotting garbage, of biscuits and bread from a nearby bakery, made him feel sick and hungry all at once. Being in this place filled him with an inexplicable dread. He walked by the child, along the broken pavement. A row of shanties, concrete ten-by-tens with tin roofs, slumbered to their left. What is this child doing out so late, he pondered, looking down at the tousled head, the clothes – a crumpled grey t-shirt on loose black shorts. Familiar. He placed a hand gently on the stiff curls of the child’s scalp. It looked up startled, indeed terrified, its tear-streaked face beautiful, almost exactly like his own sons’, Sajid and Sonu’s, faces. And then, he saw that it was he, himself, he was walking beside.
He lifted the child into his arms and held it close. After an attempt to kick and punch him off, the child looked, with huge eyes, into his. It flopped its head on his shoulder and eased a thumb into its mouth. He sat on the edge of the pavement, in the semi-darkness, holding it in his lap, rocking it, weeping steadily.
The lights came on. He was in the living room, by the boxes, pouches and bottles, the woman sitting a few feet ahead, by the pit. His arms were empty but had been filled just a moment ago. The warmth and smell of the child was still with him. She turned, at his whispered call, and looked dazedly at him.
‘Did you deliver my things?’ She asked.
‘Where is your baby, ma’am?’ He asked, urgently. ‘Please let me help you find him.’
‘A girl. She passed away,’ the woman said, dully. ‘She had a weak heart and didn’t grow very big. They say I shouldn’t speak of her. They say that I should go back to my husband and have another baby…’
She showed him a picture on her phone.
There was no child to be seen, only an artist’s sketch of a flower. The flowing, delicate petals were white with bluish veins. They overlapped the stem, like the trusting grasp of a baby. When fully formed and fleshy, they would be like the limbs of a newborn.
‘No. Don’t forget about her,’ he said.
It came to him, what he had to do. He crawled forward to sit by her. He raised a hand as if to stroke the top of her head, and let it hover there. ‘Naad-e-Ali, Nade Ali. Naad-e-Aliyyan. Mazharal Ajayeb. Tajdahu Aunun Laka Finnwaeb. Kullu Hamin wa Gamin Sayanjali…’ a prayer for safe passage that Amina said every night for their children.
Like a child, her elbows on her lap and her hands cupping her cheeks, she closed her eyes and rocked back and forth until he finished delivering the prayer.
He left the house, not turning to look at the child who followed him out and climbed into his lap when he took the passenger seat of the delivery vehicle. He tucked its head under his chin as he shrugged meekly in response to Maqsood’s chiding.
*
Chatura Rao is a children's and adult fiction author, and a journalist. The Hindu Good Books award for Best Picture Book 2017, was awarded to her book, Gone Grandmother.
The Laadli National Award for Gender Sensitive Reporting 2017 - Best Web Feature was awarded to her article titled, ‘Women and the Trouble Within/Without Homes’. The Southern Region Laadli 2020 - Best Magazine Feature was awarded to her article, ‘School of Hard Knocks’.
She teaches creative writing at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru.