The Girl in the Road Read Free

bhelpuri from a newspaper cone. I sat under the bodhi tree, right over there, the one with the perfect shape. Enlightenment de Dostoevsky.
    An explosion goes off.
    I fall to the ground and cover my head.
    Onam, I tell myself, it’s just Onam firecrackers again, even here in Mumbai, they’re celebrating a Keralite festival, that’s nice.
    But then I see a circle of motionless bodies at the end of the green where the protest was and and so, it’s not firecrackers.
    I turn around and see the barefoot girl, staring at me from across the green.
    Now things are starting to make sense. I take off in the opposite direction. I’m running perpendicular to everyone else who’s either running away from the explosion or toward it. It’s like a game. I’m dodging missiles. I collide with someone and I fall so hard my skull bounces. I get up and keep running.
    I run till I hit Fashion Street and then turn south. I just assume the barefoot girl’s following me. If she’s still barefoot, that’s fucking dangerous for her, and I can outrun her in boots, especially on stone roads. The faces of people I pass begin to change. First, people who are running toward the explosion. Then, people who only heard the explosion and are worried. Then, people who are still oblivious to any explosion that might have happened and are going about their lives, hefting mangoes at street-side stands.
    I’m beginning to get tired. I can’t keep running. This is like a movie. What does an action hero do? She takes a turn onto a side street and then ducks into a shop and lets her pursuer run past. So that’s what I do. I thank The Film Industry in my head and then take a sharp turn into an alley and count one, two, three shops, then duck into the fourth one, which turns out to be a pharmacy, which solves the problem I began with, of needing first aid.
    I get out of sight of the doorway and bend over, wheezing. I hear a cry from the woman behind the counter. She’s asking me if I’m all right. I hold up my hand. I can’t talk yet.
    â€œYou’re bleeding,” she says.
    I look down at my kurta. So I am. The snakebites have opened up again, probably while I was running.
    â€œDid you come from Azad Maidan? Is it from the terrorists?”
    So the news hit the cloud already. “Yes,” I say.
    â€œLie down,” she says.
    I do, out of sight of the doorway. I watch the ceiling and listen to the sound of drawers being opened, product wrapping rustling. I count to forty.
    The attendant’s face reappears over me. “Fucking Habshee,” she says. “They want to live like Indians now.”
    Here I would usually say what Mohini would want me to say: first, that I’d like to know which Indians she’s talking about. And second, that Habshee is a derogatory word for black people and she shouldn’t use it. And third, that Habshee doesn’t equal Ethiopian.
    But right now I don’t care.
    The attendant begins peeling up my kurta. And then I remember the nature of the wounds and force it back down. She’s startled.
    â€œSorry,” I say, “they’re not shrapnel wounds, they’re something else. I’ll take care of it.”
    She looks hurt but she hands me all of the supplies she’d gathered. I start peeling a square of clearskin but my hands are shaking. She watches me. Then she snaps her fingers.
    â€œYou! You went to IIT-Bombay, yes?”
    I look at her face again. I realize it’s the exact same attendant who worked here when I was at university nine years ago, and had my little episode over Ajantha, not unlike my current episode. Now it occurs to me that every word I say to this woman, and every minute more I spend here, is a liability.
    â€œI have to go,” I say. “I can pay for these.”
    She waves it off. “But how are you?” she says. “You were so sad. I never forgot about you.”
    â€œI’m