The Unfinished Bridge: A Short Story by Madhukant Kalpit

I stopped.

I was startled by the report of an explosion. Gathering myself together, I looked in front of  me. 

Something had collapsed at the far end of the unfinished bridge. The frightened workers were scurrying in all directions, uttering terrified cries. A clamour of voices rose up from all around me. 

My reaction was to walk swiftly away. 

Suddenly I stopped again.

Somebody was calling me from behind. Nobody had called me by name after Mother died. The sun was fiercely hot. The exposed patches of my feet which the sandals did not cover were smarting. My eyelids hung heavy with the sun
.

But the flow of traffic continued uninterrupted. Somebody was still calling me.  But I was not interested . It sounded dull granting hoarse, .. A voice  darted at me  with the speed of lightning and tried to enter my consciousness but ended up like a squirrel  in the grip of a powerful fist and was squeezed to a helpless whisper then it ascended the stairs of my consciousness and disappeared into the darkness of the attic.

It happened every time invariably, appearing at the edge of my vision, disappearing without a trace.

I did not turn to look back something was still struggling to penetrate me. The clouds in the sky dispersed the weight of the sun melted away from my eyes. I felt relieved.

Across the road, the housing colony appeared like a painting on a wall. A breeze carried with it the smoke issuing from the chimneys of the houses. I must go back. A woman making rotis bending down to blow the flame to life asked me something merely out of curiosity. I merely nodded but she appeared to be satisfied by my gesture.  An old man sitting on a rope cot on the yard stared at the us as he drew a deep  puff of smoke from his hookah.

The work on the bridge was going on briskly. Hands moved rhythmically girls with heaving bosoms and shifty eyes moved back and for  girls...unfinished like the bridge, I said to myself. The clouds had disappeared the road shimmered in the sun I felt my head swelling the said will be late the old man had said.

The sait entered my mind breaking the thin walls of my blood vessels. I  felt giddy for an instant. It took me a moment to regain my balance. When mother died it was the sait who met  all the expenses for the funeral.  The sait is a kind man,  they all said.

The huts built of  thatch and dried grass looked like a motley of rags . There was a light breeze and the curls of smoke from the chimneys were carried up in to the sky.

 “ It is good you came.”

Something rattled inside me as I heard the voice. The roti was flicked on to the pan with a slap.

The old man  leaned the hookah against the fence and got up in a hurry swinging hoth his hands in the air , he drove away a goat which was grazing  in the yard. He then picked up a vine, which was drooping uneasily to the ground and lifted it up to the roof. He said something but I could not pick it out from the multitude  of voices around me. I just looked on for some time.

 “ The sait is really a kind man,”  I muttered. But my nerves tensed.  My voice was drowning in my depths taking with  it all that had happened but something floated on the surface.

Mother‘s corpse?

Once again I saw the flames devouring  my mother ‘s body. I did not cry I only left the excruciating pain of something being wrenched from me.

I tried to screw up my eyes to look in front of me but the sun was a shield of iron. Laden eyes, stifling air….

I wanted to go back. The voices were coming back at me with renewed vigor. But I could not distinguish any of them as they all rushed at me together. Besides, there was no need to decipher anything. Everything came from  the work on the bridge. That much was  I knew.

I walked up to the bridge and stopped.

A small boy in his birthday suit hovered around, twirling his forefinger in his nostrils, I asked him something. But instead of replying he shook his head and ran away.

In the distance a puff of smoke was trying to run up high into the sky. I was drenched by sweat the sultriness griped me as   in a vice. The voices   pounded me. I was beginning to feel disgusted with them.   My eyes felL on a huge water tank to my left. I advanced a couple of steps towards it. 
Suddenly as the heat wave of the sun continued to shimmer before my eyes like a flow of electric current being short circuited, all disquiet left me. I opened my eyes. The sait sat up with a yawn. I turned my back on him. Mother would still have been alive if he had married her.

The bastard! I knew everything about the life mother lived. I took a round of the sait’s world.  He had told me like a school teacher about the helplessness of human being before a the dictate of a traditional society. He had once described to me exhaustively the glories of the caste system.   

Listening to him I too had felt that it was a wonderful way of life.

But now I could not help feeling that mother would have been better off in a higher echelon of the system. There seemed to be no other reason for her death.

Bitter memories swelled up like bubbles. I did not try to prick them to death. Of course, all the dirty swindles I had inherited swam  in the streams of my blood.  I wiped the back of my neck with my hand.

Involuntarily my feet were moving quickly again.

The girls working on the wooden platform near the bridge swung their bodies left and right as they passed on the containers of concrete to the plastering workers above. The concrete mixer roared monotonously.   

I saw a boy walking towards  me he told me the suit wanted me I felt I was being possessed by a demoniac spirit it was crushing me in its grip. I tried unsuccessfully to pull it out of my system.

The old watchman sat smoking in front of the cabin.

It seemed his smile was directed at me when he came to tell me about the sait offering me a job he had told me everything about his master.  Now he was glancing at me out of the corner of   his eyes. I was surprised by his look as he did not take his eyes off me.  I said I have come to see the sait. Then it struck me there was no need to tell him anything. This had been happening for the last couple of months.  I won ‘t go there. I don’t want to set my eyes on the sait.  I would go on resolving. You can take some money, the sait had said. Don’t worry about anything.  The sait’s magnanimity! I felt a wave of nausea rising in me. We could be used, first mother, now I…  hated this filling up of slots. Do not ask me to  delve into what would have happened if mother were alive, I said to myself.

The car was parked near the bridge. The sait was waiting for me. Everything turned round and round at a crazy speed in my brain. Smash everything to pieces… for an instant the impules ran through me like lightning. 

I walked on in a daze.

The slums now became clearly visible. The lone cloud of smoke had risen high up into the sky and become a tiny black spot. I had walked   quite far now. Still the voices were turning cartwheels and trying to thread me in their flow.

Everything was floating on the surface .My body grew heavier and heavier and I went down, deeper and deeper….

I rose to the surface for a moment. I saw myself in front of me. I was preoccupied with building a bridge for me to cross.

I stared at myself in amazement.

When I rose up again I heard a loud explosion.

Nothing had happened. What was it that I had just heard?

I looked in front of me. Then right into the depths of my soul.

Thank you, Bhalchandrabhai!

Thank you, Bhalchandrabhai! You have volunteered to type some of the material posted  on this blog. Bhalchandrabhai Maganlal Parmar is retired Mamlatdar. He lives in Gandhinagar with his wife Gitaben, son Prateek, Daughter Avani, daughter-in -law Himani and grandson Henil.

The Midwife: Short Story by Harish Mangalm

On the embankments of the inlets of the Sabarmati , the lush green of the foliage filled the eyes. A mere glance at the village from the embankments was rewarding. A serene tranquility prevailed as peasants from ambedkar colony in the village left for the fields in small groups for the day’s work. Only school going children and old men and women remained at home. The colony was virtually the abode of peace.

Benima spent the whole of the day in the dark, stifling attic where mangoes were stored. She sorted the mangoes and kept them in separate piles; the good ones on one side and the bird-bitten ones on the other. The bird bitten mangoes were, of course cheap and were mostly bought by the dalits of the village. Those which had gone to bad to   sell, Benima gave away to little children. Benima’s skill in sorting mangoes was matched by her prowess as a midwife. The mothers of the village never tired of extolling her virtues in this regard.

More than two decades has passed after the death of Kalabha. Since then, Benima had been wasting away her life in the dark attic where only thin rays of the sun entered through the holes in the roof. During the mango season, the whole of her time would be spent in sorting mangoes, mangoes of all types: raw, ripe, sweet, sour, watery bird bitten … As she turned the small raw mangoes in her hand she would think of her childhood and youth . The bird bitten mangoes would bring her back to her age –withered present with a start. Like the peels of bird bitten mangoes, her skin too had turned dark, rough and wrinkled. Benima was sorting mangoes in the attic when Dali Patlani came running down the street and stopped in front of Benima’s house ‘ Benima o Benima’ , she called .

 “ oh, Dali . You! What happened ? “, Benima was out in a trice.

“ Benima …Pashi , my sister in law is in labour . We called Dr. Paresh Patel. But he just gave her an injection and went away. Told us there was nothing to worry and the baby would come out in two hours. But it is four hours now. There is no sign of the baby yet .And her pain was become worse. Benima,  Please come with me, quick!”

Benima, as usual did not waste a second. Adjusting   the fold of her dress, she ran with Dali. There were about half a dozen women standing with bated breath around the cot on which Pashi lay. Manek , doshi , Pashi ‘s mother in law told Benima what had happened. Benima felt Pashi’s pulse and turned to Manek Doshi with fire in her eyes. “The pestilence upon you harlot!   She is in such a state and you went on waiting like an idiot ! I don’t know how you live till middle- age with your ignorance ! Her hands are so cold and yet you didn’t know what was wrong! Look, you fool aren’t you ashamed to give such a beautiful daughter in law to death?”

Benima was so deft and clever that even learned doctor with high sounding qualifications were no match for her. She was not an MS or an MD. But she was a repository of experience. Not for her the tall prescriptions which made the relatives of the patients sick! Day or night, Benima would be at pregnant woman’s bedside attending to her needs still the delivery was over. Her fees consisted of a single coconut.

 “Move aside , you fools”,  Benima shouted away everyone except Manek Doshi and closed all the windows , Pashi was in severe pain . Benima lifted her from the cot and laid her gently on the floor. Pashi groaned and struggled violently. She could not bear it any longer Each moment weighed down heavily on her. Her husband, Baldev stood outside at the door, his heart in his mouth, straining his ears for any sound from inside.

 “Benima, implored the frightened Manek Doshi. “Only you can save my Pashli. It was a miscarriage last time. If it happens this time too….” Manek Doshi sobbed.

 “ Don’t worry Manek what did that scoundrel of a doctor say?”

The Doctor asked me what was wrong with her.”

“It does not need a doctor to ask that.” Benima made no attempt to hide her dislike for the doctor.

“And he took that long tube like an elephant ‘s trunk, put the forked ends in his  ears and pressed the other end on her chest . “ Manek Doshi rembled on. “ said the baby had stuck to the womb . Told us the injection would have help to deliver the baby quickly. He then pocketed his fifty rupees and left. .’ Manek Doshi let out a sigh. “ Benima , Bhagwan will bless you. Save her, somehow.’

 “Manek don’t worry, everything will be all right.” Benima inspired confidence. But, for those who waited ‘outside life hung in the precarious thread of anxiety. Baldev’s eyes darted across the drooping slopes of the roof. Painful memories were brought back to him. If the first delivery had been proper, the child would have been quite grown up now. Pashli would not have had to go through all the excruciating pain and tension.

Will the long awaited moment end in glorious celebration? Or will it be caught in to dragnet of tomorrow’s uncertainties? Only the thin beams of the sun fell nonchalantly through the holes in the roof. Suddenly the whole atmosphere went in to lilting dance in celebration of the moment in had waited for. Oohan…Oohan…the first cities of the infant beat time for the dance. 

It was a boy. Brought to the world by the tender, loving hands of Benima.

Pashi was still unconscious.

Tears of gratitude flowed from Manek Doshi’s eyes and fell at Benima’s feet.

Opening the windows with a  crack Benima announced the glad news to all. She then asked Baldev to give her a coconut and turned sternly to the excited women who  were now streaming into the room. “You worthless harlots, don’t do anything like this any more if anything happen to any one of you  don’t hesitate to call me at once.”

 One day as Benima was selling mangoes she saw Pashi and her little son coming along the street.”Pashi “ Benima called Pashi affectionately. Pashi acknowledged her greeting.  Benima asked Pashi how her son was doing. The boy was now a year and a half old . “ le, le, le..”  Benima beckoned him   near. The child demonstrating his newly acquired skill of walking stumbled towards Benima.  Suddenly Pashi  stiffened rushing forward him. She stopped him in his stride. “Dear, don’t touch Benima.”

Benima’s hands   extended towards the child suddenly hung lifeless in the air as if struck by a stroke of lightning the picture of Pashi supine on the floor groaning in pain came rushing into her  mind….

“It is alright, my    girl. I have seen him well.” Benima withdrew into the cow shed and poured out some tea from the kettle on the stove.

Dali, Rubi and Manju three young girls, their curiosity aroused, were watching the scene. ”Look, there goes Benima. It is Pashi’s luck that she escaped death. Pashi herself used to say that the offering made to ramkabir did it.”

The poison of luck and offering to rambkabir polluted the innocent minds of the good wives of the village.

Luck and offering to ramkabir went around like ghosts haunting the villagers as the heavy hand of time fell on Benima’s skill and deftness.

Benima was going on her round of the village, carrying the basket of mangoes on her head on the way beneath the shade of a banyan tree. Some little boys were playing as Benima passed, they shouted at her, “Hay you scavenger woman, you will pollute us. Can’t you look where you are going?”

 “Son, I am far enough.” Benima replied meekly.

Benima’s dim eyes gave her only a blurred picture but as she screwed them up and shaded them from the sun she recognized Daylo Dali’s son.  Benima said to herself only to herself death had almost got him… four years ago. I saved him

In an instant all the miseries of the world descended on Benima but as she stumbled on her exhausted feet, the weight of ages rolled away from her she looked up at the sky the sun was no longer a bright ball of light dark terrifying clouds had enveloped it Benima sighed. As she walked away, she heard a nut fall from the banyan tree. To Benima it sounded like the snap of Daylo’s umbilical cord!   

Harish Mangalam
Harish Mangalam, born 15 February, 1952, is a Govt. officer (Gujarat Administrative Service). He is editor of 'Hayati', published by Gujarat Dalit Sahitya Academy, Gandhinagar. He also served as the editor of Pratinidhi dalit varta (1997). He has to his credit one collection of poems, 'Prakamp' (1991), and two novels, 'Tirad' (1992) and 'Choki' ( 2002). His short story 'Talap' was published in Katha stories (2001). He is recipient of St.Kabir Dalit Sahitya Award.

Contact: ‘Prakamp’, 7, Durgakrupa Society, Besides Kirtidham Tirth, Chandkheda, Ahmedabad 382424. His Tel.: 079-23297582