The Lady and the Beggar

The situation outside was horrifying. Humanity stumbled and faltered, ran, and hid in tiny little holes, waiting, hopelessly, for a tinier virus to show some mercy. The virus, however, kept dancing on its whim, picking up countries at random, and unleashing havoc on them. First, the world stood witness to its onslaughts in China, its epicenter. They watched on, as it ripped and shredded the lives of Wuhan's inhabitants. Before one knew it, the little devil had invaded the wild west- the Elites, the cream of human civilization, Europe, and America. Countries that dominate every international affair, manoeuvre and dictate international relations and trades, thrive on capitalism, fear, and conflicts of third world nations, and have even got the United Nations wrapped around their fingers, came rather unhinged. What a farce. 

Just a month ago, Anita was reading in the papers how Italy had succumbed to the descent of the virus. Italy's economy had crumbled. The city of Rome, that once sparkled with lights and boomed with the uproar of the swelling crowd walking the streets, turned dull and quiet. Deaths were incalculable. 

Anita remembers the conversations at the dinner table from that time. She could sense baba's concern, the hint of empathy in Ma's voice. Masks were bought in a hurry. Stores had run out of sanitizers and handwashes. 

A fortnight over, it had raided India. Kerala and Maharashtra were its first victims. An indefinite lockdown was enforced across the country. Now, the voices at the table were strained. Wrinkled foreheads, fear lurking in the eyes. Hush, hush! 

Two weeks later, Anita would find her city wriggling and writhing, the virus biting down her neck- a predicament similar to Italy's. A dire shortage of hospital beds would prevail. An eerie, dead silence would quilt the city, interrupted intermittently, by the wails and howlings that followed the loss of a father, a son, a wife or, a brother. Bodies would mount on top of each other. Long queues at the cemeteries and burial grounds would be the practice. 

Bengal's day of reckoning had arrived. 

***

The beggar looks out for the figures popping out of the end of the lane from time to time. Some are waiting for the bus, some for an uber or a shuttle. Offices have resumed work, much to the grievances of the generic crowd. They form a small group. From here, the beggar can never decipher what exactly they are talking about. Mostly, they have grave talks about the pandemic at hand, or banters on how the people in those ivory houses in Delhi have failed to keep the body count in check, or, they would be exchanging officious advises among each other; how to get through these trying times, what to do, and what not to. However, the beggar could not grasp any of these. He has not had a bite to eat since yesterday. He is on the lookout for a single individual in that horde of gray suits and chequered ties. The lady with the brown handbag. Typically, it is around this time she comes out from the narrow alley and crosses the road. She waits near the tea stall, for the blue bus to arrive. On its arrival, she somehow squeezes into the cluster of rough, sweaty men and fat women. She hunts for some space to stand, a foothold maybe. She almost resembles a figurine with dislocated limbs, with her foothold in one place, and hands stretching to get hold of the metal planks, almost a foot away. Like that, off she goes. 

The beggar remembers the lady's handbag, minutely. It is how he discerns her from the rest of the crowd in suits. It is a reddish-brown, with a silvery-white button in the middle. The edges are intricately embroidered with coloured lines of the fabric moving in curves. It has got three pockets inside, each embellished with garish colours, and has a velvety texture. Quite often, while waiting for the bus, the lady opens up the middle pocket, brings out two fifty rupee notes, and hands it inconspicuously to the beggar, to which the beggar clutches his white skullcap and bows a little. The young men in the nearby tea stall watch them with slit eyes.  

"I'm telling you Anita.. take the car! The situation's a nightmare.. the cases are rising every day…" 

Baba's voice fades off into the rear. Anita slams shut the gates behind her, a fit of angst claiming her. She lumbers along the serpentine street, an array of concretes on both sides, dusty, clumsy posters and advertisement pasted onto the walls, some peeling off, some still stuck to the shaggy walls of the old, dead, gigantic buildings, above which one could have a glimpse of a pale blue sky on brighter days. The edges of the street mostly remain littered with domestic waste, cigarette butts, pages of crumpled newspapers from some bygone ages, and heaps of ashes. Often there would be stacks of old newspapers dumped adjacent to the gates of the houses, to be picked up by the garbage trucks. From the yellow pages, the face of the erstwhile opposition leader would peek at you; a headline stating how he had claimed to resolve the growing unemployment, once he came to power. The windows belt out an orchestra of sounds, from people arguing in television soaps, of couples bickering in the kitchen, babies crying their hearts out, to cheap Bollywood chartbusters; a cacophonic ride indeed, for anyone passing by the street. A particular odour lingers in the air, a peculiar blend of the smell of foods being cooked in the kitchens, of the waste from the street sides, the sweet fragrance of incense sticks the residents light up in the evening, and often of the cologne of a man who just walked by. A typical North Kolkata street, which, from the top floors of the adjacent skyscrapers, appears to be a meandering grey thread curving its way from inside a dense locality into the main road. 

Coming out of the lane, Anita notices the old beggar with the white skullcap, sitting by the shed of the bus stop, on the other end of the road. He sits there every day, on his musty, shredded rug, and with a shaggy, dirty sack. On the very sight of Anita, his weary, old eyes catch a glint. They lit up. On most days, Anita conforms to his apprehension. They share a mute, wordless interaction. He used to be a rickshaw-puller before. He would be standing with his rikshaw by the grocery store every morning, seeking out passengers. He was extremely punctual and took precise consideration of his passengers' time. Before, he had given Anita many a hasty ride to the old bus stop. In a way, he had saved her from the axe in the office quite a few times. He was well acquainted with the bus or metro timings of the regular office crowd of the neighborhood, and provided a rather swift service. 

One summer night, the local club boys had marauded his little home and demolished his rikshaw to smithereens, burning it to ashes. He had walked in a rally for the opposition party that afternoon. It was the election season. Thus, the stakes were high. 

"There she comes with the fat purse.." 

Someone in the tea stall whispers to some another. 

Anita crosses the road and stands there, waiting for the bus. The beggar follows the trail of her movements. Hope is a dangerous thing. This is particularly why, on some days, if Anita has time to herself, she takes the long route to the other bus stop nearby, and boards the bus from there. 

Anita could sense the old beggar looking up at her from a distance. She fixates her gaze in a different direction, with an imposed indifference. The beggar reads the gesture and turns away from her. However, she could now feel the eyes from the tea stall licking her back, up and down, measuring every pound of flesh in her. These eyes don't move anywhere. They cling on to her until the bus arrives, and she throws herself into the pile of bodies in it. 

There is a cry from the rear. Apparently, there is a commotion at the gate. Anita senses a push here, a nudge there. She stiffens involuntarily, shivers rippling down her spine. She quickly brings her bag on her front, to guard her bosom. This mostly works; skills that she has picked up to survive a ride in public transport. The gropes and rubs cease. The bus jerks and starts moving again. Everything goes back to as they were.

Anita looks around. Life of varying shades and diverse trades. A swarm of dull faces, jostling and gasping for breath, perennially in pursuit, of what, they are ignorant of. They are all the same, and thus, insignificant. They trudge in through the gates, trying to squeeze through, looking for space and security. The bald heads and the wavy hairs, all trying to blend in. They have the round wired toys plugged into their ears. They pull wry faces and stare around, placidly. The thin films of sweat on their brows glisten occasionally. What a pity. Each of them put up momentary charades to fit in, to live through the day. Although, to live through, you have to live in it first. But there is promise, a promise to live for. The promise of another day, another shot at turning the tables. 

The beggar watches the bus ride away, coils of black smoke curling out of those silly pipes at its back. The purring of the engine fades. 

He had seen buses leave like this before, with him standing behind at the bus stop, watching the last inch of the vehicle move out of sight at the next turn, the cloud of smoke occluding his view of it. Three months before, his son had boarded a bus like this. He had travelled to a distant city. He claimed that the city is way bigger, with brighter lights and broader roads, and that even the cripples have jobs there. Soon after he left, this whole situation happened. Not that the beggar understood much, but the small world around him shifted its paradigm a little. The people walking the streets started wearing strange masks and kept a distance from each other while they were out. The cars vanished off the roads. Shops kept their shutters down, and fewer people were stepping out of their homes. They pulled the blinds and dropped the curtains. The flock in the tea stall kept thinning. From the few young men at the stall, the beggar had gathered that the buses are not in service anymore; the buses that take you to the big cities and back from it. Supposedly, there is a new plague in town. It spares no one; neither the greasy, smeary bodies that wriggle on the footpaths at night, nor the ones in the tall, fancy, air-conditioned towers. However, Big shots and High-heels were dying. Thus, the ones in the ivory houses of Delhi had to come up with containment strategies. They cut off all communication between cities within a time window of ten hours. They put a halt to international flights. The bus services too were suspended indefinitely. After, they had sent giant aeroplanes to far-off countries to bring their people home who might have got stuck abroad. They have returned safely to their comfy apartments. 

"Everything's under control now. Everybody's home.", they said. 

***

It is a regular day at the office. Anita is cranked up under heaps of files scattered around her desk. The cursor keeps blinking on the screen, beside the penultimate line of the code. Her chair creaks. Most of the cubicles surrounding her are now vacant. Some of them, however, are still occupied. The occupants either have their eyes glued to the respective computer screen, or they are throwing a spicy gossip with their neighbouring cubicles. Anita can hear them, in bits and pieces. One of them is nagging about his relationship, a rather complicated one, as Anita gathers. Another one of them is bragging about how he donated a lump-sum amount to a charitable trust, for the cause of sustaining a mass of the recent Amphan victims. Anita knows the guy. He is probably associated with the Rotaract or some other NGO in the city. During the cyclone that wrecked Bengal recently, he used to proactively share links and portals in the office group, to donate and aid the survivors. The photos and videos from the scenes had shaken Anita a little. Houses and huts in shambles. Roofs shattered, asbestos tiles and wooden logs blowing in the wind like wafts of grass in an afternoon breeze. Thousands of people from the Sunderbans and surrounding areas cramped up in piles, in the rescue camps, homeless, starving, grieving the loss of their dear ones. Swathes of cold, barren, windswept land covered in sheets of plastic, and makeshift poles to support the polyester fabric above, forming a shed. A child, half-naked in the stinging wind, staring into the abyss, searching for someone. 

The chatters reach Anita in jitters. 

"..sent in a fat cheque this time. They're probably gonna hand me a certificate or something.. you'll see. I'm gonna have a rock-solid resume now."

"Good for you. Here, we still don't have our electricity back... it's been two days. What the hell is wrong with the Electric Corporation!"

"Yea.. it's as if the Government doesn't even care about us!"

Anita reaches for her handbag by the edge of the desk. Baba gifted her this, recently. It is a fine leather. Its insides are lined with velvety paddings. A stark burgundy. Saheli from the adjacent cubicle was quick with the compliments. 

"It's gorgeous! Where's it from?"

The pandemic has shuffled baba's routine upside down. Before, he used to be rather stout for his age. He would do the groceries. He would go for a walk in the morning, and for adda sessions with his retired colleagues in the evening. However, with the virus rampaging across the country, baba grew a fear that consumed his entire being. He shrank. He stopped going out and developed apathy towards any outdoor activity. If they were having a guest over, baba would make Anita sanitize every inch of the house after the person had left. Often, Anita and her mother would find it difficult to keep up with this paranoia of his. However, to talk of this little beauty right here, Baba himself had gone out, paid a visit to the market, and picked out the perfect gift for Anita, scampering around the busy Gariahat area. Baba has been the sole companion to her shopping errands, for as long as she could remember. He used to put up patiently with her tantrums in the shops, her insatiable, fastidious whims in the supermarkets. By now, he's well versed with her choices and interests. Anita had only ever mentioned it in passing, at the dinner table, that the old handbag she used now had its inner linings perforated at places. It took this much out of her for baba to shrug off his crippling fear and step foot outside, after two long months. Anita chuckles under her lips. A slow, affectionate smile, pinched with a deep-seated sense of admiration. 

It's half cross five. She should wrap up soon if she is to catch the bus within fifteen minutes.

The sun has taken a slight tilt towards the west, gradually edging towards the horizon. The glaring heat is now melting into a gentle warmth. It's a lazy Friday afternoon. The beggar has just finished with his prayers. He is now fondling the bunch of five-hundred rupee notes in his sack, when he hears the hollering, at a distance. He listens to the chants for an instant and looks up. At the turn of the road, some fifty metres away, he catches a glimpse of the saffron flags, and the first row of figures spearheading the procession. The beggar looks baffled for a moment. There's a buzz brewing in the tea stall. The men are peeking out from under the shed with inquisitive eyes at the long string of saffron. They are holding flags, placards, and posters in their hands, from which the Prime Minister flashes a smile at the beggar. The beggar backpedals a bit from the edge of the road. He hurriedly plucks off the white skullcap from his head and hides it in his sack. The orange bandannas and black masks march past him, their sandals and shoes flapping in a particular rhythm. 

Anita is walking along the thin muddy strip that runs parallel to the pitch road, drenched in the casting shadows of the proximal buildings. The bus just dropped her off and purred away towards the main road. She'll take the right turn at the next alley, by the end of which flanks their six-storey apartment. A long twilight is fading into the night. The sky is a crimson red. The sun is being shoved down the horizon, getting replaced by twinkling little stars, popping up from behind the grey clouds. Giant hoardings are being lit up, in perfect sequence, along this busy old street, like the glittery pearls woven on a necklace. Shops flash their names in neon lights. Buildings lie tinged in orange. 

Amidst this bewildering crisscross of light, Anita spots a figure at a distance, on the other end of the lane. It's the beggar in the white skullcap. He is walking in her direction, his dirty sack dangling behind his back. 

Anita is reminded of this morning. 

"But.. didi..it's... it's a lot..", the beggar fumbled, the bunch of five hundred rupee notes dangling from his cupped palms. 

"Just take it dada. Hide it, quick!"

"At least tell me something I can do for you.. anything"

Anita had sensed an undertone of despair in his voice, an overwhelming gratitude, an obligation. She understood that it stems from a position of self-dignity. For years, the man has traded his sweat and toil for his bread and money. Now, this sudden, unprecedented favour of fortune probably threw him off-guard.

"You've already done enough over the years dada.. please."

A grimace spread across his face. Some appreciation of his life-long labour, finally. 

"Didi, if not for you, I don't think I could've survived the lockdown."

This was the very first time the beggar and Anita had a proper conversation. 

"It's okay.. put them in your bag now."

There's a whisper in the tea stall. 

"Would you look at that.. what's he hiding in that dirty sack of his?

"Something evil.. hah.. you know his people.."

A peal of hysteric laughter had ensued in the tea stall. 

The faint, tired rays of a tired evening sun settle on the beggar's tired shoulders. From the opposite end of the road, he seems to raise a hand at Anita. But he drops it midway and looks away. Anita is confounded for a moment. Then, she raises a hand, hesitantly, and waves back at him.  

***

The condition has worsened. Bengal has been pushed down a macabre tale of death and madness. Community transmission has begun. The cases are now everywhere, strewn all over the state, in every alley, every street, neighborhood, or apartment. 

"You still won't take the car, will you?", Baba snaps at Anita during breakfast. 

"It's a lot of hassle baba.. also the petrol prices.."

"Don't give me that. It's not about the money, Anita. You know that." 

Baba snubs her off. He rises from his chair, clutching the newspaper in one hand, and the breakfast plate in another. He stumbles towards his room, coughing vigorously. Baba has been coughing a lot these days.

***

The sunshine smells of autumn already. The warmth in the air has mellowed down a bit. There have been light drizzles over the past few days.  The ground is moist, soaked with petrichor. The beggar is laying out his belongings on his shaggy rug, spread over the soft ground. There's a buzz in the tea stall today. They are talking rather animatedly, almost to the point of being misread as an argument from a distance. Hands are being flung in mid-air, gestures of disapproval, curses being spelled out, intermittently. Their masks hang loosely from their ears. Some of them do not even care anymore.

"..no one comes by anymore. Everybody washes and irons their clothes on their own now."

"I shut down my saloon last week. Why pay for the lights if there are no customers?!"

"Can't return home either. Buses are still off."

"I ride around neighborhoods every day with my wares, without any sale. These assholes are scared of even coming down.."

"Soon we'll end up like him" 

Someone points at the beggar. 

The beggar thinks of his son for a moment. He has not heard from him since the day he lost his house and other belongings. His son is not aware of the incident. The beggar wonders if it's better this way. Fewer mouths to feed for him. Son is fine, he has to be. He had grown into a fine young man, capable enough to take care of himself. The beggar knows of a place high up in the sky, beyond the clouds. It's inhabited by divine beings. Gods and Angels. Supposedly, the angels watch over us. Us, the mortals. They twirl the strings and sustain life on earth. They say, God works in mysterious ways.

The beggar has spent every penny judiciously over the past few weeks. But his surplus is running out. The lady doesn't come out much these days. Offices have shut down once again, it seems. He hasn't seen much of the grey suits either, recently. 

                                                                  

***

Faces walk past Anita. She is leaning against the corridor walls, looking down. Hair all straggled, clothes unkempt and clumsy. The mosaic tiles on the floor stare back at her. There's a strain in the voices around her, an undercurrent of tension; a hush. Anita is drenched in avatars of noises. But all she grasps is a shrill, high-pitched buzz. The hall is brimming with people, as is the case with most hospitals in the city currently. People rush in, each with their unique treasure of germs and diseases. Once they slide in through the glass door, they will notice scattered flocks of heads, in different postures, some tilted at a particular angle, some popping up discernibly from the crowd, trying to approximate their stay in this doom-hole. They will find wards with unattended corpses in the hallways, patients being asked to sleep on the floor, for there are not enough beds available. If they ask around a bit, they might hear about the woman bleeding to death in the corridor in the adjacent ward, for her family could not provide enough evidence that she's free of the virus somehow. 

Soon, they too turn into mere players, a fleeting note in this grand orchestra of death and debilitation. 

Baba's lying in a bed in the adjacent cabin, encircled by corpses on other beds in the room. A while ago, the doctors have informed Anita that they are in dire shortage of ventilators right now, and could not provide baba with one at the moment. A man in yellow stripes, sitting on the corridor, croaked that they're still lucky their patient is at least getting a bed, to die in peace. 

***

It's a bright morning in September. The beggar is at his usual place, by the bus stop. He had run out of money completely a couple of weeks back. Now he lives on the scraps of food that the lad from the tea stall occasionally helps him with. On some nights, he feeds on the hard-crust bread from the grocery store nearby, in exchange for the few coins he has collected throughout the day. Most nights, he starves. The grey suits and the chequered ties are back in the scenes, with their fancy masks, and haughty gossips. The mundane mornings pervade. However, there have been no sightings of the lady with the handbag. The beggar had expected her to show up, for days, in vain. 

A white Maruti glides its way out of the narrow lane. The grey suits turn around and make way for the car to pass. The puny figures in the tea stall crane their neck out of the shed and watch. The car swerves and crosses the road, slowly. Finally, it screeches and halts, right in front of the beggar. The glass slides down, and the lady's face pops out of the window. 

"Hop into the car dada, fast!" 

The beggar looks perplexed. He fumbles and flusters. 

"Quick!"

The beggar now reacts instinctively. He wraps up his belongings and manages to squeeze into the front seat. The car speeds off. 

The beggar stares at the walls and the corridors in amazement. There are a lot of them like him here. Aged, old. They live in groups and eat in circles. They sit in huddles and chatter or play funny games among themselves. They laugh mischievously, showing their frail, yellow teeth. Some, however, sit alone, on the ledges of the long balcony, or in their rooms, and stare at the ceiling. Gloom hangs over them. Part of the big hall is booming with all kinds of noises. Some parts are draped in heavy, eerie silence. Some of them smile at the beggar. A warm, welcoming smile, a smile of expectant companionship. 

The rooms are spacious and well lit. In the large dining hall, there is an abundance of food, of various kinds, kinds that the beggar has never seen, or heard of. They seem delicious. 

Anita had already taken care of a few minor formalities, over the phone. Now, all she has to do is sign some forms and write a few applications. The beggar sat in one of the benches by the fountain, looking around, bemused. He is mumbling to himself. The lady at the reception, and the middle-aged man at the office desk, both tweak their eyebrows a little while glancing through the forms and the application. The man at the desk keeps flipping between the pages for a minute, going over the names and other specifics on the form, again and again. He scratches his head and clucks his tongue.

"Interesting", he says finally.

"So.. umm.. Ms. Anita.. all his bills would be wired to you, I suppose?"

"Yes." 

"Will there be visits?"

"Umm.. no. Not really. From his son.. maybe." 

"Son.. as in, his own son?" 

"Yes."

"Oh. Okay."

A lady in whites accompanies the beggar to his chamber. Anita walks along with them. The beggar trudges into the newly furnished, well-lit room. For a few moments, he stands there, his gaze mumbling around the room, its colourful walls, the little wall-paintings, the furniture. A familiar glint swings in his eyes. Then, he turns to Anita. 

"Why.. why are you even doing.. God bless…", his voice breaks. 

Anita reads the lines on his furrowed face, the faint glimmer in his eyes. 

"I just wanna do right, for myself." 

Anita walks down to her car, parked outside the Asylum gates. The window shields sparkle in the radiant beams of the September sun. She sees baba there, waiting for her, leaning against the back trunk. 

"So, you finally took the car then?" 

"I did.", Anita smiles.