It is the middle of the night and all the children are sleeping. Chamdi is hungry and he regrets that he refused to eat dinner. But he did not feel like eating earlier.
He now knows he has to leave the orphanage before it leaves him. He rises from his bed and looks around. In the dimness of the small light bulb that hangs in a corner of the sleeping room, he tiptoes to the foyer, stepping on the children’s rubber chappals, until he reaches the main door of the orphanage. He carefully slides the latch open so that no one else wakes up. The latch creaks a little, but he tells himself that on a night such as this a creak makes no difference at all.
He opens the door, steps into the night, and walks straight towards the row of bougainvilleas. In the dark, he cannot see colours. But he uses his mind to light the petals up, and after a moment he begins to see shades of pink and red. He likes this, how the colours stand apart from the darkness.
Then a horrible thought strikes. What if they tear apart the bougainvilleas when they break down the orphanage? He has loved them his whole life. No, he thinks, somehow they will survive. Buildings might come, but branches will break through the cement and continue to grow upwards, such is the power of bougainvillea.
Now he understands why he is watching the bougainvilleas in the darkness. He is saying goodbye. If he had to leave during the day, it would be too much for him. He thanks them for the colours they have given him, then rushes towards them and puts his mouth to the red papery petals, not caring if thorns prick him. They love me too, he thinks, as they rustle against his skin. They do not mind being woken from their sleep. He tells them he has one favour to ask. He will pluck a few petals to take with him, and he hopes that it will not hurt them too much. He stuffs his pockets.
There is one last thing he must do too.
Chamdi goes back into the orphanage. He does not need to pack, for he owns nothing at all. He has been given a white cloth with three drops of blood on it, and whether it bodes well or not, he will carry that cloth and nothing else. He ties it around his neck like a scarf. Then he takes a few red petals in his fist and walks down the short corridor into Mrs. Sadiq’s office. She is asleep on the ground and he can hear her breathe lightly. He will not wake her up because there is nothing to be said. “Thank you” would be a stupid thing to say. In her heart, she must know that Chamdi is grateful for everything she has done.
He places a few petals on Mrs. Sadiq’s desk and then changes his mind—he places them by her feet. Chamdi stands above her and thanks her with his mind and heart. He has never hugged her in his life and wishes he could do it now, but he does not want to wake her.
He runs into the corridor, out the main door and into the courtyard.
He does not stop to look back. He is not sure if he is crying and he does not care. He runs faster and faster. Soon he is only a few feet away from the walls of the orphanage, and he knows that he is entering another world.
If my father ran from me, then I will run after him. This is the thought in Chamdi’s head as he runs. He is running because he knows that his father has had a head start. His father is miles and years ahead of him.
But there is another reason Chamdi is running. He is scared that if he walks, if he does not shoot through the narrow streets right now, Mrs. Sadiq might wake up and call him a traitor for deserting her and the children. So even though bits of glass from the street stick in his feet, he does not care. He runs faster and faster in order to catch the truck ahead of him.
The truck’s heavy iron chain bangs against its dark green back. Chamdi has never chased a truck before, but he has seen other children do it. A white lotus is painted on the back of the truck underneath the words INDIA IS GREAT. He knows that if he jumps and falls, the concrete road will scrape his skin and break his bones, and it will not be the best way to start his new life, so he hangs on to the chain with all his might and uses the road to push off.
He has jumped into a garbage truck, and is surrounded by rotting food. As the truck takes a corner, a rat is jolted out of its meal, and it runs over Chamdi’s chest. He tries to get up but then thinks that if the driver sees him, he might get angry and stop the truck. So Chamdi stays in the pile of garbage. The rat has gone back to its piece of mouldy bread. There is a crack in the side of the truck, more like a large hole, and Chamdi crawls towards it. The truck has gathered speed now, and the breeze blows bits of garbage out onto the street.
The city passes by, but Chamdi cannot see it in its entirety. He sees it in pieces, through the hole. He sees small shops, the steel shutters down, beggars sleeping under them. Stray dogs walk towards a tree and some of the dogs limp, but the others seem happy. A fair distance later, the road is dug up. A small fire burns in a brown drum as workers smoke beedis nearby, and a line of slum dwellers walk with buckets in their hands. So far, there is nothing out of the ordinary. There is no sign of the violence that Mrs. Sadiq spoke of and Chamdi is thankful for that.
As the truck takes another corner, Chamdi loses his balance once again and the garbage slides towards him. He lands on his back and is forced to stare at the sky. The sky is the same everywhere, he reassures himself. No matter how strange the city might look, or become, he can always look up at the sky and see something familiar. It is the same open space everywhere and it belongs to him as much as it does to anyone else in this world.
He feels he is quite a distance from the orphanage now. He wants to get off the truck, mainly to avoid the smell, but it would be foolish to attempt a landing at this speed. If it were daytime, the truck would be crawling through traffic. He is surprised at how empty the streets are at night. The truck goes over a bridge, and Chamdi can see tall chimneys around him, so tall that they must be friends with the clouds. Apartment buildings are so close to the bridge that he can see right into people’s rooms—an old man is shaving himself in front of a mirror. Why is he doing that in the middle of the night? As the truck descends the bridge, the roads become narrower, and to his right, two policemen sit on stools outside a police chowki. One policeman has a beedi in his mouth while the other seems to be dozing.
As the truck smokes its way through the streets, the policemen become smaller and smaller, until they are out of sight. A group of four or five black motorcycles overtakes the truck. Young men ride the motorcycles and their shirts balloon as they speed past the truck and swerve dangerously close to each other.
Then Chamdi hears music. It blares from loudspeakers, and he likes how even though it is night, a song is playing. The truck slows down. Maybe the driver wants to listen to the music. Chamdi takes his chance. He hoists himself over the side of the truck and lands on the street. But he is not used to jumping off a running truck, no matter how slow, and he loses his balance and falls backwards. He stays on the ground for a few seconds. Nothing is broken, he tells himself. Nothing is broken.
The building in front of him is lit up. It is an old building, only three floors, but all of them have red and green lights, tiny bulbs that flicker on and off, travel in a line and even change directions. Loudspeakers on the balcony spill the best Hindi music he has ever heard. He feels he has chosen the right place. Where there is music, there is happiness.
He sees a man lying on a cot with one arm covering his eyes. The cot makes Chamdi ask himself where he will sleep tonight. Perhaps some kind person will take him in and offer him a meal. He wipes the sweat off his face with his hand. The smell of the garbage has stayed with him.
The music stops. The lights on the building remain, although they no longer change direction. They look like green and red stars stuck on the building. He wishes the orphanage could have had lights like these. At least there would have been something to look at.
Chamdi is worried about getting food. He has not eaten all day. He missed dinner because he was in the prayer room and not hungry at all. He wonders what time it is, but then tells himself that it makes no difference. Ahead of him, a few people sit in a circle, on chairs and stools, and all of them are smoking. There are loud shouts once in a while, and the old man amongst them keeps coughing. Chamdi prefers not to go near them because he does not like the way they raise their heads each time they blow cigarette smoke, as if they have no respect for the sky at all.
An apartment window opens and a blue plastic bag slowly floats to the ground. It lands on an auto rickshaw. Chamdi notices that the rickshaw has no tires. It seems old and abandoned. Its rusted metal body is rooted into the ground so firmly that it looks as though the rickshaw has grown from the road itself.
A neat pile of cement tiles lay beside the auto rickshaw. The pile is quite high, and Chamdi sees two bodies asleep on the pile. They look like boys his age. It surprises him how comfortable they seem to be even though they are sleeping on a bed of stone.
The cough of a car engine makes Chamdi turn. On the main road, a taxi has stalled. The driver is pushing the car with one hand, and has the other hand through the window on the steering wheel. The passenger, a man, is straining to push the taxi from behind, while a woman sits in the back seat. Part of her green sari is trapped in the door.
Two of the men who were smoking notice the struggling taxi. They throw their cigarettes to the ground and walk towards the road. When they reach the taxi, the driver gets into the car and the two men push hard along with the passenger.
Chamdi tells himself that he would surely help too if he were strong enough, if he had eaten. He limps a little as he walks, and lifts the sole of his foot to see that it is bleeding. He remembers that as he ran from the orphanage, he stepped on bits of glass. He hops towards a patch of light that spills from one of the rooms in the building. He sits on the ground in that light and examines his sole. There are a few cuts, and he can see the glass. He carefully removes the first shard, then counts the remaining ones—there are four more to go, and he has all the time in the world, but he is tired and hungry. He tries not to think of food. The glass distracts him from his hunger, but he knows that the moment he finishes extracting every piece, the hunger will speak to him again.
He tells himself that he must be strong. He is ten years old, and he needs to find his father. It is a difficult task, so he will not let something as trivial as hunger discourage him.
The building looks different in the morning, without the blinking green and red lights. Chamdi can see the wires that join the tiny bulbs together and loop from one apartment to another. The gouges in the building are visible, as if it has been repeatedly pierced. A few wild plants have grown over the sewage pipes.
Chamdi has hardly slept all night. The hunger has not gone. To distract himself, he walks to a white wall that displays a movie poster—it shows a photograph of a police officer who wears black sunglasses and holds a gun by his face. The gun shines like it is the hero of the movie. There is also a sticker of a tiger on the wall.
He takes his eyes off the tiger and notices a tap attached to the wall. The tap makes a squeaky sound as he opens it, and the water that comes out of it is cool. He looks around to see if anyone is watching, but it is still early and most of the shops are not open yet. The street is quiet. He cups the water in his hand and drinks from his palm, but this process is too slow, so he bends lower, puts his mouth under the tap itself and swallows as much water as his body can hold. He stops only because he has drunk too much too fast and for a moment he pauses, watching a bullock cart on the main road as it carries a massive block of ice covered by sawdust. Then he drinks once again, and after he has had his fill, he puts his head under the tap and wets his hair, scrubs his face, and finally washes his feet by rubbing the sole of one foot over the instep of the other so that any glass pieces that are left will be washed away.
He decides to walk around his new neighbourhood. Soon he reaches the spot where the men were sitting in a circle the night before and smoking into the sky, and he sees a couple of wooden stools out in the street. A line of motorcycles is parked by the side of the street. He can see the abandoned auto rickshaw too. It looks even older in daylight and it has a huge dent on one side as though it has been in an accident.
On the main road, where the taxi had stalled at night, two tall coconut trees tower above the streetlights. They do not sway, because there is no wind. There is a bus stop as well, and a man leans against the foundations of the bus stop and wipes his brow with a handkerchief. Behind the bus stop, against the shutters of a closed shop, is a magazine vendor. He has hung his magazines on a rope, which is tied like a clothesline between two building pipes. Chamdi loves the manner in which the magazines fan out, as though they are about to fly away.
He faces the building once again. Even though the walls look old and tired, the apartment windows are colourful. Some of their frames are painted pink and the glass is blue. Clotheslines display red towels and green bedsheets. A small red bucket also hangs from a clothesline, and Chamdi thinks it strange that someone hangs a bucket.
On the ground floor of the building is a small mandir. Chamdi can tell it is a temple because even though the building is brown, this section is painted orange. Also, an old woman is selling garlands outside it. She sits on her haunches in a small stall and threads together beautiful marigolds and white lilies. When she finishes one garland, she hangs it from a nail on the roof of her stall. Chamdi wonders how many she will make. Eventually, a curtain of garlands will cover her and she will have to peer through them like a bride in order to talk to her customers. But the old woman does not look at him.
Ahead, there is a beedi shop. Chamdi tries not to stare at the packet of bread that is placed on one of the glass jars, or at the powdery biscuits inside the jars. He turns his head and walks faster, towards a doctor’s dispensary. He can tell it is a dispensary from the red cross on the white board. He knows that the names on the board are names of diseases, which the doctor knows how to cure. He wonders if a doctor would list a disease that he cannot cure. I hope I never need any doctor, he thinks.
Chamdi feels it is important for him to observe his new neighbourhood. He knew each and every inch of the orphanage, after all. He walks back towards the temple and hopes that the person in charge of it is kind enough to give him something to eat.
But the door of the mandir is closed. It has an iron lock on it. He peers through the iron grilles of the window. This time the old woman who makes garlands watches him. She discards a marigold onto the ground. Chamdi is about to lunge for it, but it has fallen into sewage.
He peeps through the window of the mandir again to catch a glimpse of the god within, but there is not enough light. How can that idol be a god if it cannot provide something as simple as light? But he feels warm, so the god must have a warm heart at least.
A man hurries down the stairs of the mandir building holding a black file in his hands. His hair is oiled and parted to one side. The man looks at his wrist and rushes away, but Chamdi notices that he has no watch.
Once more the hunger talks to him. It tells him that he must find food quickly or he will become dizzy and nauseous. He is not used to going without food because he is weak to begin with, and even though he ate the same food every single day at the orphanage, at least that food gave him energy. The hunger tells him that although his ribs stick out of his white vest, at least they remain inside his body, but if he does not eat today then his ribs will stick out even more, and while he is sleeping they will pierce through his flesh and show themselves to everyone, and his new neighbourhood will be horrified by the sight of the boy whose ribs became tusks and left his body.
So Chamdi breathes in deeply and walks towards the beedi shop. When he reaches its wooden counter, he studies the beediwala’s face. It is small and he has white stubble on his chin and cheeks. He is almost as frail as Chamdi. Chamdi wonders what excuse the beediwala has for being this way when he owns a whole shop full of sweets, breads, and cigarettes. But then it occurs to him that maybe this is why the man is so thin. Instead of eating, he must spend all his time smoking.
“What do you want?” asks the beediwala.
“I … can you please give me something to eat?”
“Do you have money?”
“No … I don’t have money, but even a piece of bread will do.”
“You don’t have money?”
“No.”
“But even a piece of bread will do?”
“I’ve not eaten since yesterday.”
“Okay. Take what you want.”
For a moment, Chamdi cannot believe his ears.
“Take what you want,” the beediwala says again. “You want biscuits?”
Before Chamdi can respond, the man tries to open the lid of the glass jar that contains biscuits. He exerts some force, but the lid is stuck, and Chamdi hopes that the lid opens quickly before the man changes his mind. After a few seconds, the lid opens.
“Go ahead,” says the man. “Take.”
“How many can I take?” asks Chamdi.
“Take how many you want.”
“I will take three, please,” says Chamdi.
“Take, take.”
Chamdi puts his hand inside the glass jar. The man slams the lid of the jar down on Chamdi’s wrist.
Chamdi shrieks in pain.
“You little thief!” shouts the man. “First you steal from my shop and then you come to beg?”
Chamdi is confused, so the pain in his hand waits patiently.
“Yesterday one of you dogs stole oil from me! If you ever come near this shop again, I’ll skin you alive!”
Chamdi sees the anger in the man’s face, so he does not even defend himself. He simply runs away from the beediwala, past the temple, without even glancing at the god inside, until he stops near the water tap. His wrist hurts. His first day in the city, and he has been given hurtful words instead of encouragement. Maybe the cigarettes the man has smoked have damaged his heart, which is why he behaves in such a hurtful manner. Suddenly Chamdi feels very tired. He sits under the water tap and lets the water run over his head. The water has the coolness of rain.
The tap sputters and runs dry.