She Will Build Him a City Read Online Free Page A

tell her that it would be easier if she calls him from her phone and he can save her number but he decides against it because he wants to watch her write. She is unsure about holding a pen, he thinks, for all her fingers are pulled into a fist, clenching, straining hard, as if she’s bracing for a fight when she is writing, the pen her weapon. He looks at the way her hair falls over her face – neatly cut, as if by a professional, she must have saved money for this – he notices her lips move as she writes, maybe she is reading her number to herself, slowly, like a child.
    ‘Here’s my number,’ Kalyani says. ‘I am here each night Monday to Saturday but on Sundays when I am at home, I put the phone on silent by 9 p.m. because everyone sleeps early, we all have to wake up when it’s still dark. That’s the only time when there is no crowd at the community tap where we live, when we can bathe and fill our buckets before anyone comes.’
    ‘I won’t call you so late,’ he says.
    Dr Chatterjee hears Orphan cry, their talking must have woken him up.
    ‘See you,’ he says as he turns to leave. Kalyani doesn’t say anything in reply, her back turned to him as she stands next to Orphan’s cot, reaches down to lift him up, to tell him a story to lull him back to sleep, fragments of a dream which she has once seen.
    About The Mall in New City, across the street and the Metro tracks from her slum, about babies who walk through doors made of glass.

MEANWHILE
    Babies Walk Through Doors Made of Glass
     
    Far, far away from Little House, in Apartment Complex in New City next to The Mall, the largest mall in the country, there are scores of apartments, minimum four-bedroom, hall, kitchen, where, unlike in Little House, there are no orphans, where babies live with their parents, each one safe and happy.
    ~
    Once upon a time, there is a power-cut in Apartment Complex right in the middle of the night.
    Fans drone to a stop, air conditioners click, go silent.
    There is full power back-up with a row of generators in the basement but something’s wrong, maybe diesel has run out, maybe the night-shift technician is drunk, he cannot be woken up.
    It is July.
    Very, very hot.
    ~
    In one apartment on the top floor, in a room where each wall is painted a different colour, the ceiling like the sky, Baby gets up, drenched with sweat.
    He climbs down from his bed, walks out of his bedroom.
    Baby is confident. The way he walks down the steps, one by one, you would not guess that he has just learned how to walk.
    Baby reaches the door.
    He drags a stool, gets up on it, stands on his toes, slides the bolt open.
    Through the open door, a light night wind enters the house, fans his face.
    Baby walks out.
    ~
    In the house, in the room upstairs next to Baby’s, his parents are fast asleep. So deeply that the power-cut and the heat do not wake them up.
    Baby’s father spends fourteen hours at work, in the office, the mother the same time at home.
    ~
    The lift’s working, it has emergency power.
    Baby calls the lift.
    Baby is now tall enough to reach 0 on the panel.
    He presses 0, Ground Floor.
    Down and down goes the lift.
    Ground Floor, lift doors open.
    Baby steps into the lobby.
    It’s dark.
    ~
    Baby walks out.
    Security Guard cannot see Baby because he is out in the garden, looking up, catching cool waterdrops from the long line of air conditioners along the wall.
    Into his mouth, into his dry lips. He is thirsty.
    Drip, drip, drip.
    ~
    Step by measured step, slipping into the shadows when he’s afraid he may be noticed, Baby walks out of his building, out of Apartment Complex – and is now on the street outside.
    Fifty steps later, Baby reaches The Mall.
    To his left, the first shop is Weekender for Kids.
    Baby sees clothes coloured red, green and white.
    Jeans, shirts, plastic pails, plastic spades. For the seashore that’s more than 1,300 kilometres away.
    Next shop: McDonald’s.
    On an iron bench, sits Ronald McDonald, his