Chapter 2, excerpt
from ‘Metro’ by Susan Visvanathan, a novella
The waterlilies spun out in incandescent pink. In the middle
of the water, was a tree, grown by the gift of winds and winged seeds.
Somewhere, bees buzzed, tiny, brown, ephemeral. The honey from Neem trees was
mildly tinged with bitterness, too subtle for the ordinary palate, which
preferred the adulteration by cane sugar, the honey clotting at the dregs.
People came from all over the state to buy sarees, gold, and to eat in restaurants. No one knew the
price of things, they just paid whatever was asked.
When it got too hot in that seaside town they pushed off to
the hills, faster than the traffic could carry them, taking lesser known
routes, past exquisite churches all dressed up like white icing cakes. There
was only the semblance of normalcy, for hunger ruled the land. The world was
diminished by war, and more so by fear, for even where there was no disaster,
people feared for their lives. Every morning was spent reading newspapers where
obituaries ruled the moment. The stories of past lives were more interesting
than the stories of every day rapes and death. Obituaries told the story of
people who lived normal lives, where there was no terrible occurrence of
violence. These were people one probably knew, who lived in the next village,
or a nearby town. Marriages and deaths had a statistical regularity to them,
for people lived in anticipation of one, and fear of the other. Young people
found one another through the investigations of their elders. Beauty was not a
criterion, it was whether one could cook or take care of old people that
decided the day for the shy bride. It
was the old world, caught between the eyelids.
Stella turned around in the wheel chair. It was another red
hued day, with lightening flashes coming through the cardboard sky. The cracks which
had formed were simply frightening, the thunder seemed ever louder. She knew
that she would be here when the sky rent open, and they were vaulted into an
open realm of stars, sun and nowhere to go. She shut her eyes and returned to
the safe world of the past, which was indecipherable to those who had not lived
in that familiar world. The past, so irredeemable, so ever present, so filled
with latent desires before aluminium took over the world, and iron was
constantly distilled for newer varieties of steel. No plants could grow in such
an environment, and the desert approached ever closer, as did the captive
hills, pushed by the energy of it’s galactic past to crush the present in its imminent lava flows and gravitational pull to
the surface. The sky always red and dusty, was shut out by the blue painted
canvas, which mimicked the skies in digital reconstructions of how the sky
should be, with its fleeting clouds which when counted, could tell that time
was passing, for the wind blew them here and there. The artist knew how to
manoevre the clouds, create shapes, filter light. It was like being eternally
in a planetarium, where the cloth sky absorbed the infinite beauty of the
night, and when the lights came on, why, we were back in the auditorium of our very
own earth.
The waters spilled around the outskirts of our city. They
had become dank and very dreary. Every year, men and women in masks went out,
and cleared the sewage with machines that droned for atleast a week. The water
was distilled in larger tanks, and piped out. We never knew if there would be
enough retrieved to last us for a year. But magically, the machines pumped out
that clear fluid so essential for us even though we were now in the last phase
of survival before leaving planet earth. How many of us would leave, no one
knew.
Stella thought of the time when she had first come to the
city, full of hope. The earth had crashed around them, and each of them
believed that death was better than living in the ruins of what was once their
great city. Yet, day by day, they found that the will to live was greater than
their sorrow. They had picked themselves up from the rubble, and moved toward
what the politicians said were their new homes, prefabricated aluminium sheds
which had been put up overnight. Here, there was no sound other than that of
people weeping, reciting litanies of their lost loves, and then the sudden
sterotorus sound of someone breathing heavily in their sodden sleep.
Where was Anjali? The girl had become lazy, and was never to
be found. The wheel chair had a back, hard and resolute, which jabbed her
spine. So, she sat a little away from it, leaning forward. The loneliness of
being old was not the problem, that she had managed several decades ago. The
music that played in her ears constantly from the little box in her pocket was
the best invention of the previous century. Time was ephemeral, it fleeted past. But the seconds pounded in
her ears, as she thought about space travel, which the morning circulars had
stated to be the next step in their sojourn on planet earth. They would have to
leave soon. The question was who would be chosen, and who left out?
Stella asked this question of Anjali very often, who would
desultorily turn her head away, not getting involved in the very real fear that
Stella always communicated. How did it matter to her, whether the old woman
went to Mars or not? Such a stupid question! She noticed as she looked out of
the sparkling glass windows that the Administrators had simulated rain again.
Clearly the sparkling bejeweled window glass was a gift from the lewd microbe
replete troughs running outside the metro.
The used condoms, the disgusting trophies of late night copulation and
the indestructible plastic that was thrown by young mothers who had not found a
way to potty train their children had been digested by the incinerators. The water returned to them, clean, flawless,
with a lucidity that was no longer grey and worn out, but fresh, smelling of
lavender. Everything was ofcourse chemically produced, but the effect was the
same as if it was natural. As for drinking water, they had stopped accessing it
from taps, or asking for it. It came to them piped every day, just as the food
did.
Stella thought again of the days in Paris, when she had lost
her memory, and was frightened that the State would notice. She had become
frail, wind wafted, perfumed, bejeweled, not knowing where she was going, or
how she would return. The days had been listless, watching the skies turn their
incredible colours, as if congealed in the palette of the sky. She would lower
the blinds, sleep till late in the morning, and then start again to wander the
streets that her feet knew so well, she did not need memory, names, landscape,
maps. Twenty years later, in another continent, with the tarpaulin sheds
painted over the crumbling surface they knew to be ruined buildings of another
century, long gone, she realized that life was only breath, breathing.
It was as if memory was a shard, sharp and double ended. At
one level, she responded to the impulse to remember, and in remembering, live
again in an opulence of a world which once she had known so well. The earth was
tender and brought to her more gifts than she could have wanted. It gave her
fruit and flowers, and the gentle gaze of animals, almost doe like in their
captivity. Here, too, had been their protected canvas of the familiar, no one
stepping out of their bourgeoisie tableaus. When the earth had rent apart,
first by war, and then by convulsions unbeknown to them, they had realized that
they were human, subject to geological change, galactic time. The newspapers
reported the finding of new universe of stars and planets. With that, hearts calmed down, they returned
to the chores so familiar to them, waiting for the seasons to change, and the
fruits and flowers that beckoned them from the gaily blazoning shops with their
lights and perfumes. They were happy to have more days at hand, and then when
the darkness fell on them, their own sense of belonging was quite gone.
Everything that was theirs, fell to another. In a commonality of loss, the
powers that be became profoundly tyrannical, creating an artifice of light,
sound, life. And things began to move again, simply at first, but with a
growing complexity as the years went by. Fear was camaflouged, and civility
reigned again.
Stella had chosen to leave Paris when the first tarpaulins
came up above the great cities, and the sky had become punctured by air craft
which had to leave from outside the known radius of the world as people knew
it. They had to choose their destination, tunnel to airports which like
filigree jewellery appeared outside the metropolis. And then in a matter of
days, they would have assimilated in another part of the globe, a little
frightened, but somehow sure that they had done the right thing, yes, moved
towards their own survival.
If she had chosen New Delhi as the site of transitioning to outer space it was because she had been
familiar with it in her youth. The intellectual world of writers always served
to protect the narcissus, and she had thought she would walk through familiar
streets in the new world, where the sign boards had changed, and the old became
abused by neglect. She had no fear in the beginning, since her memories of her
work world were somehow quite intact. And people had taken to her immediately,
providing her with facilities and home, papers and Internet. She had served
them well once, and the records of her brilliance were sufficient for the new
municipalities, charged with electronic devices, not to repel her, or exclude
her. Or so she thought, but then her
foreignness was so palpable, her accent so pronounced, that she fell out of the
web of belonging again, retreating into silence. The young girl she had adopted
was the only one she now could turn to, but over the years, the sense of
familiarity had reduced them to non presence, each busy with their thoughts,
living life by the day.
How completely hopeful the girl had been when she had come
to the house, and offered her services, in exchange for learning new languages,
and the scientific aura which surrounded the old woman who expressed her innate
ability to keep up with the alarming technological changes that most people
found difficult to handle. Yet, unfortunately, the problem of memory had
surfaced as the greatest deficit, and both Stella and Anjali started to feel
they were sliding into a place of great danger. Stella managed to keep
composed, putting her blue eyeshadow every morning on her heavy lids with a
trembling hand. She felt that if she could communicate that dressing up was
important, then the girl would make greater effort to dispense with the
casualness of her own attire. Anjali was often dressed in crumpled pyjamas and
her blouses though clean, were never distinguishable. She had none of the
sophistication of the women Stella had been associated with, the pallor of her
face showed that she had never had food which was nutritious. She was born in
the days of piped food, and if she survived at all, it would be due to her will
power and that of her boyfriend, who stayed listlessly with them, always poring
over his work without looking up, or out at the cardboard sky. He had over the
years, grown a little dense, his short frame picking up the carbohydrates in
the food with ease, as he never stirred from his chair. However, the couple
were happy, smiling at each other peacefully over their many chores. The
government was now keen that people should inhabit the houses they stayed in as
if indeed they were in outer space. The simulation of the circumstances of
floating in a vacuum were being increasingly made available. For Stella, who
was from an older generation, the act of looking out of the window was still
replete with images she was comfortable with, familiar with. For Anjali and Ashter
the inner spaces of their minds, without the vinyl of reproduced images was
quite enough.
Stella could hear the drone of their conversations,
sometimes there was muted laughing. They were always aware of her presence, and
sometimes they would appear, looking innocent and yet guarded. Had she called,
did she need something. Then, when she shook her head, a veiled look of relief
crossed their faces, and they disappeared again, into that world of which she
knew nothing.
The warmth of their personas was sufficient for her, they
were alive, they were human, they lived in the adjacent room, making the house
accessible to her wheel chair by their quick inventions, all plastic, but
unimaginably brilliant. It had been a long time since she actually got out of it,
her limbs had atrophied, but in a second, they were able to roll her out
painlessly on to her bed every evening, and slide her into the chair in the
morning. She had stopped thanking them, for they shrugged their shoulders
placatingly, placing an affectionate hand on her shoulder when she did.
The world was not spinning anymore, gravity was congealed in
the last echo of the wall that separated them from the universe. It was not
clear when they had lost their axis, but just as they never enquired, so too,
they never doubted. The radio told them that they were lost people, and that
the will to survive must be their own. They listened, placating one another, as
the days shredded into countless anonymity, each moment going unrecorded except
for the cries of the cicadas, which had survived the catastrophe. It was not
cockroaches that had survived, for they got eaten up during the last days of
the war, when all else had been cooked.
Stella shuddered. She called out again for Angel and her
companion. They seemed to be rising, she could hear the house come awake, with
it’s several sounds. There was the beep of the alarm clock, the radio playing
music, the buzzing of their conversation. She could hear the water being filled
carefully, half a bucket each of lavender fragrant distilled water. Yes, she
knew the sound so well, that she was comforted. She heard these every day. They
would come soon, she knew that. She waited. The old world, the memories drew
her back.
