This is the first in a series of ten microstories. These stories — vignettes, to be accurate — are set from dawn to midnight in an Indian metro. They follow different people in different settings over the course of a single ordinary day. Two of these stories have been published / accepted for publication in literary magazines. I’ll be publishing one piece per day over the next ten days.
***
The sky was midnight blue. The leaves rustled, mourning night’s passing. Savouring dawn’s cool I strolled in running gear towards the gate.
When I heard the noise beyond the wall, the sun hadn’t surfaced.
I hastened to the gate and looked up the road. Already, another car had stopped, and they’d carried the boy gingerly into the back-seat. The manual-rickshaw still stood strewn across the road. The rickshaw-driver sat on his seat. Headcloth pushed up askew, still gripping his rickshaw-handles.
By a big yellow suitcase standing upright, the boy’s father lay across the road. Head turned away blood-soaked.
I dialled Emergency on my mobile-phone. Across the road, a man also on his phone waved at me: No. I crossed the road.
“What happened?” I asked them.
“A mini-truck, delivering bread to the groceries, ran into the rickshaw. The rickshaw-driver was gripping his handles: so he was fine. The boy was holding on to the rickshaw’s sides. For they were going fast: they were late. The boy fell, too, but softly. The father was sitting clutching the suitcase with both hands. When they were hit, he fell hard. The bread-truck kept going. The police are on their way. We’re taking the boy to the hospital.”
“Why were they going fast?” I asked them.
“They were going home. They were late for their train.” He pointed to the train-station round the corner.
I waited with them for the police. I helped them decide which hospital to take the boy to: the nearest. They looked unsure: the nearest hospital was a private hospital. “Here,” I said. I gave them money.
They, the people of dawn, had been going about their business. The old man washing, for his hole-in the-wall cigarettes-and-paan-and-bhang shop, marijuana leaves and flowers at the public hand-pumped well. The vegetable-vendors setting up. The beggars setting off towards the wedding-halls to scavenge last night’s cornucopia of leftovers.
The people of dawn had witnessed many road-accidents. Before your day or mine has begun, other people are up and rushing. Speeding, down empty roads, to deliver bread. Almost empty.
It was Sunday: I had nothing to do but walk on to the park, weak-kneed, afraid. The people of dawn chatted for a bit about the road-accident. Briskly, together, unafraid. Then the day’s business claimed their minds.
END
Amita Basu 