Haroon Bijli

The day started bright and sunny. The MET department said no rain was expected as did my intuition. So I left the umbrella at home – managing a backpack and a handbag in the Mumbai trains was bad enough, I thought,

As it turned out, by mid-morning, it was so bad that the principal opted for an early dispersal. By lunch, the rain was pouring incessantly, but we had successfully managed the departure chaos. My teaching colleagues loitered for a while, postponing their journey home for a bit longer to prepare themselves mentally. They offered to share their umbrella to the railway station, but I said no; one umbrella wasn’t enough even for one person in this rain, and it’s better that at least they reach home dry. They said it was foolish of me, and they left one by one. Soon it was just me, the cleaning staff and the night security who had turned up early so that his daytime mate could leave before it got worse.

The cleaning staff too, offered one-third of an umbrella to the station. I politely declined, and eventually it was just Patil and I, in that old mansion-turned-school. The building was scary even on the brightest of days. It was still early evening, but the downpour made it dark and noisy. Patil got himself a chair which he set up next to me in the portico with its adobe roof just about protecting us from getting drenched. He said he’d rather risk getting wet than be inside the door. I told him I’d leave in a few minutes. I felt it was getting lighter and thought I might as well run for it.

As I bent down to roll up my shalwar, I felt a hand tapping me on the back. I knew it couldn’t be Patil – he was still seated. I froze in my still bent position, but the hand tapped again, and a voice said “Didi, don’t leave now.”

It was Shahida, the moushi, whose primary duty was to take the kids to the toilet and clean up after their meals or when they made a mess.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

“No, it’s alright. I didn’t realize you hadn’t left,” I said.

“My son is coming to pick me up,” she said. “He might take at least half an hour if he manages to get a rickshaw, maybe more.”

She must have noticed my quizzical expression.

“Oh, the normal one, my eldest. Wait with me, we will drop you someplace.”

It seemed a good idea. Patil didn’t shift from his chair, so we sat down on the steps. Some splatters fell occasionally on our feet.

“I’ve never seen such rain before,” I said. “Have you?”

“Hmm, yes. That big flood a few years ago.”

“Oh yes.”

I was in college during the big deluge of 2005, but luckily didn’t attend class that day. The stories I heard, though, were traumatizing enough.

“I was home, so I didn’t experience it. In fact, I got to know how bad it was only the next day,” I said.

“You were lucky. Me too. I was a housemaid then, so I stayed with my employer till it was safe,” said Shahida.

“Good. Were you married then?”

“I got married a few years after that,” she said.

“When did your husband pass away?” I asked, the words coming out of my mouth before I understood the sensitivity of the topic.

“Hmm? No, he didn’t.”

“He found freedom instead,” she said with a laugh. A short, snorty laugh.

She must have sensed my curiosity.

“Well, it’s a long story. It must be, what, five years ago? It was raining that day too. Not heavy like this, but light summer rains with thunder and lightning. But enough for us to be wet and worried. After all, the roof leaked constantly, the walls got damp easily, and we lived in fear of them collapsing on us any minute.

“I don’t know why they chose to come that evening, but they did. Who knows how they think.”

She shifted a little to rest her lower back against a step.

“They said notices announcing the demolition had been put all over the area. They said they sent us the notices by post. They said they put it on our doors. They said they put it in the newspapers. All lies. We knew only when we saw the giant bulldozers queuing up in the road outside the camp.

“Anyway, what was I to do with these notices? Neither he nor I could read properly. None of our neighbors said anything. They were as shocked and helpless as we were. But it was real. As soon as it was dark, they started pulling down our houses, starting from the edge and coming in towards us.

“It took only minutes. The house was wiped off right in front of our eyes. With two swings of the bulldozer, my home was rubble with all the bedding, the utensils, the almirah and our clothes beneath. If we had stayed put, we could have also ended up underneath the stones. It was Allah’s mercy that the bulldozer drivers were one of us and they told us to get out beforehand. Even they couldn’t stop their own homes from getting demolished.

“We grabbed whatever we could. My daughter took two buckets. So innocent that she didn’t even fill them with her own toys. My eldest gathered some clothes. He couldn’t find a bag, so he held them in a bundle with his chest. My middle one, well, he was terrified and held on to my hand. I took a few utensils.

“We lost everything else. Losing the children’s schoolbooks was the worst. Their uniforms too. Their toys.”

She paused and made that “pch” sound of resignation and shrugged her shoulders.

“The police asked us to wait on the side of the road. There was no place even to sit but we stayed there all night. It was difficult; the roadside was full of stinking garbage and God knows what.”

“And your husband?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me again.

“We heard some shouting and mara-mari. Some men had created trouble. Then they brought in those policemen with helmets and sticks. But all we women did was to wail and wait. My husband? I thought he was among them. Ha.”

“The kids somehow managed to lie down on the roadside and sleep. I also sat down on a piece of newspaper someone gave me. I dozed till I heard the dawn call for prayers. Then a police jeep came with a loudspeaker and said we could collect our stuff.”

“From where? We asked. They said, well, wherever your houses were.

“We could see the damage as the day broke. My house was in the third row from the roadside. I normally wouldn’t see it, but now we could even see the road on the other side of the camp. Everything was flat, and we couldn’t tell where our homes once stood. It was just rubble.

“Some men and women started walking towards what they thought were their old homes. I was not sure where ours was, so I thought I should wait for my husband. It was his house, after all.

“I sent my eldest to look around for him. He hadn’t been with us all night, though some neighbors said they had seen him.”

Her phone buzzed. Her son had found a rickshaw. It was still raining heavily.

“Shahrukh came back and pointed at something in the distance. The morning was not bright yet and the lights in the area were off, but I could see my husband walking around in the rubble, picking up things and putting them into a sack.

“I should have been overjoyed, no, Didi? I called out to him. Maybe my voice was feeble, so I asked the children to call out. Calling Abbu was better than calling Fouzia ke Abbu.”

She laughed at her own joke but continued.

“But he didn’t turn around or even look in our direction. Some people around us also called out his name and they were very loud. By now I was sure he could hear us well enough and was ignoring us.

“The worst was when the kids realized it. Even my three-year-old daughter and the deaf one. Still they ran towards him. Their voices still ring in my ears. ‘Abbu, Abbu, Abbu!’ they called. But the man didn’t once acknowledge them. He kept filling his sack.

“By the time they reached him, he started walking away. Away from us, towards the bigger road on the other side of the camp. My eldest was the first to realize what he was doing. He stopped running after him and held back the other two kids. I had also caught up with them by then.

“For the first time I heard my deaf and dumb son cry. That’s the only noise he has ever made in his life. A throaty cry that came from deep within… I can hear it even today.”

She paused.

I must have wept aloud, for Patil asked if I was okay. Shahida was staring into the rain. I couldn’t make out if she was crying.

“At least I got this job thanks to his teachers,” she said.

Her phone buzzed again. Shahrukh said the rickshaw couldn’t come to the building and was waiting on the main road.

We didn’t bother to roll up our shalwars. I lent my hand to Shahida for her to get up. We said goodbye to Patil and went out into the lane.

It was difficult to walk through the shin-deep water. I stumbled, and instinctively held on to her outstretched arm.

She didn’t waver one bit, and carried herself and me.

I have tagged this as fiction, but only the setting and the names have been changed. It wasn’t raining when she told the story to the narrator.