The Spectator

Chapter 7

It was silent. The silence foreboding another summer squall. Far away a low rumble of thunder expanded and spilled into the sidereal vastness of the sky.

Summer storms here were unlike any other rainstorm. There was that much more dust as the storm broke over the city. The wind tore at the earth, treetops bending with the squall and billboards severed from building tops. When a tree could not take the strain it snapped and broke, strewing shattered branches. Broken branches that tumbled before the storming wind.

The air, parched by heat was desiccated with dust. Sometimes it hailed when it stormed. Always, it rained. Debris gathered by the rushing wind whipped through empty streets. A splendid layer of silt cloaked old rat-infested buildings.

These storms formed rapidly and moved fast, covering vast distances. The storm’s path was marked by devastation along the squall line.        

There was a frantic rush as the storm progressed and the power grid usually failed. Without city lights a peaceable calm settled over silhouetted buildings that I always found somehow biased against the unfinished storm.

Afterwards, after the storm, the sun was out again pouring brilliance like molten honey over the still moldering city.

For seventy-five days of the year there was a moist wind that blew through these streets. During those few months the pavements of our port city were no different from those other windswept cities with their unswept byways.

My shoulders touched the crumbling masonry. Hands pocketed, left leg bent at the knee. One foot hinged to the turret’s exterior wall. I pressed my back against the bricks.  

I waited for the storm to break. It did not. I waited for the sound of thunder to pass. It did. I waited for silence to reclaim the night. Silence accosted by steady rhythmic knocking of a hammer against some time-weathered stone wall.

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Water ran down my face, my chest, and splashed the sink. I toweled dry, pulled a fresh shirt over my still glistening torso. Patches of sweat already dampened the cloth. Minutes later the back of the shirt was affixed to the hollow space between the shoulder blades.

The window unbolted, I pushed it open. Fresh night air washed over me. I leaned over the window sill and looked down. The wind rippled curtains in windows of buildings across the street. It carried excited voices of some boys bickering near the playground. After the boys left, the wind reclaimed the playground and the night.  

I closed the door behind me. Locked it. Six flights of stairs brought me to street level. I paused, stopped right there in the middle of the sidewalk, and waited, cocooned and simultaneously jostled by pedestrians.

The street was crowded now that it was night. ‘Step to the side, moron,’ some passersby muttered as they shouldered by me.

I had eaten nothing since the morning. Symptoms of hunger were manifest by my slowed response to external stimuli. General sluggishness of limbs I attributed to my rumbling stomach. I resolved to stop at the next food stall. Before I did that however, I had to have a cigarette first. 

A few blocks down I found a man smoking.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said.

‘You already did,’ he replied.

I persisted.

‘Brother,’ said I, ‘might you spare a cigarette.’

He answered, ‘No.’

An older and kinder individual acquiesced. I thanked him for his generosity. In a contented frame of mind, a cigarette dangling from the lips, I continued towards my destination.

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When I got to the magazine’s office, I had to wait a few minutes for the elevator. A liftman I hadn’t encountered before was on duty.

‘What floor?’ the liftman asked.

‘Tenth,’ I said.

‘Tenth,’ the liftman repeated.

‘Tenth,’ I confirmed and smiling, enquired, ‘Where is the man who usually works this shift?’

‘At home for his wedding.’

‘Lucky man.’

‘Not if they are getting the woman married off,’ the liftman answered and pressed the correct button.

After I had unlocked the main door with my passkey, I lingered by the reception, leafing through the July edition of the magazine.

‘The Rev. wants you in his office,’ Fanish, a sub-editor and recent hire, informed me.

The cubicle door to The Rev.’s lair was shut. I knocked. Features Editor, G. Hala, The Rev. to the staff, beckoned I enter. He told me the photo essay I had submitted on Agency Houses and heritage buildings in which their offices had been located was chopped by the editorial committee at the 3 pm meeting.

‘This is a time of generics and consumables,’ The Rev. said.

‘That it is,’ I agreed.

‘Of Hi Fi music systems, Corwood turntables, Vespa scooters, and Enfield 350s. Our readers demand the contemporary. The glitz of shopping malls. The allure of high-fashion consumables. Look around you. The youth wear Wranglers smuggled through Bagdogra. They listen to the Dub on their Discman and to no-name radio jockeys after 10.00 pm. They want to be The Turk from that Camel advertisement from the 1970s with the slogan, “One of a Kind.” Yet all of them dress like some Eighties throwback in charity clothes siphoned out of Bangladesh.’

‘No arguing with that,’ I said, my head bobbed in agreement.

‘There is one thing these people have in common.’

‘What is that?’

How could I not have asked, cued the way I was by The Rev.

‘Each and every one of them wants to slaughter the Great Goat in Babylon. They had once knocked at the gates of Babylon, now they knock Babylon. The move eastwards has begun. The East is the new Babylon. Here is where it began and is beginning once again. Sacred and serene.’

‘Amen,’ I intoned, confirmed I was along for the ride and was ‘with it’ and ‘hip’ to his brand of sloganeering.

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