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.