She Will Build Him a City Read Online Free

Kaplan guide Shelley Madam gave her as a gift.
    ~
    The only one at Little House who has a sense of Kalyani’s ambition, who has noticed her reading, writing at night is Dr Neel Chatterjee, the night resident doctor. The son of a VVIP, he has recently returned from some kind of a medical course in Paris. Who this VVIP is no one knows but whispers in Little House say Dr Chatterjee’s father is only a couple of places below the Chief Minister herself and can, therefore, order the Little House director around.
    Maybe his father’s clout has set off a rebellion in his heart, who knows, but Dr Chatterjee fancies himself a free-thinking liberal, even a Marxist, and sincerely admires how Kalyani Das, twenty-four, poor, working class, is using The Wretched System to her benefit. Many a night, Dr Chatterjee drops by to say hello to her and, less than 5 feet from a sleeping Orphan, they talk, he in a chair, she leaning against the wall or sitting on the floor. He tells her about Paris, open-air cafés, people sitting down to dinner at tables laid out on cobbled pavements. How on winter evenings, cold and clear, his favourite restaurant drapes a blood-red blanket, warm and soft, on the backrest of each chair. He tells her about bread, freshly baked, that he can smell from fifteen houses away, his walk along the Seine, a river so small, so clean it looks as if it were hand-drawn in a picture. On his phone, he shows her a clip of tourist boats gliding down this river. The crowd at the Eiffel Tower, a man go by riding a horse.
    Kalyani watches, she listens, she rarely speaks.
    One day Dr Chatterjee asks her why and she says,‘You have so much to show me, sir, what can I say.’
    ~
    So Dr Chatterjee is surprised one night when she suddenly seems to step out of her shell and tell him about her plan to go to America. She mentions the names of cities, New York, Pittsburgh, Boston.
    ‘What if you don’t get through?’ Dr Chatterjee asks.
    ‘What do you mean, I won’t get through? Maybe not America right away but one day I will go.’
    ‘How do you know that?’ Dr Chatterjee leads her on.
    ‘Shelley Madam told me that nurses will always be in demand because no one, other than your parents, can take care of you the way they can. Even your wife or husband will have problems once you are very ill. Who is going to clean you up when you wet your bed?
    ‘I will do it, I will do it very well, because I am learning not to smell the smells. I will clean up, give pills on time, do the laundry, scrub the floor, work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours, and I will smile all those hours. Sir, it doesn’t matter if I do this here or in America because shit, piss, sweat, blood, they all look and smell the same wherever you are, whoever you are. So why not work where I make more money?’
    Kalyani has never spoken so much at one time. She is suddenly aware of this, so is Dr Chatterjee. An uncomfortable silence follows which Dr Chatterjee rushes to fill: ‘What about your family, can you leave them here?’
    ‘Forget family, sir, my family only needs to see me happy and earn so much that my father doesn’t have to cycle the whole day, Pinki can go to school, Ma doesn’t need to work in so many homes.’
    ‘Where do you live?’
    ‘From here, I change two buses and then take the Metro.’
    ‘Tell me your address.’
    ‘What will you do with my address, sir? You can’t come and visit me there.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘People like you don’t come there. There is no house, it’s just a row of rooms.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter, I may get you a few books that will help you in your CL exam.’
    ‘Bring them to the hospital, Doctor, but if you really wish to get your shoes and trousers dirty, let me write this down: take the bus from here to AIIMS, take the Metro to New City, get off at Sikanderpur. Once you are there, call me on my phone, I will guide you through the lanes.’
    ~
    Kalyani tears a slip of paper from her notebook. Dr Chatterjee wants to