By Munize M Khasru

I’M STANDING at the corner of Gulshan Avenue.

   I see you but you don’t see me.

   You with your blue shirt and navy pants. A nametag around your neck, like a noose. Your company’s name, your designation. Your ID number. They have you pegged down. Tight in a corner. You don’t resist because you don’t know it. You think you’re doing this just to tide things over. Make a few bucks until you have enough capital to start your dream project. But the few bucks keep getting lost down your pocket and out of your fingers. Your parents have gotten you married to their family friend’s daughter. ‘Quickly now, while you are stable and have a decent job.’ You chomp a bit at the reins. Your wife senses and therefore conceives. Perhaps this will ground you once and for all. The enormity of the situation floors you actually. Your life orchestrated into a harmonious tune you cannot recognise. Because it was never what you had wanted for yourself. All in the name of ‘stability’. You look both ways before crossing the street. You just don’t look in anymore.

   Coming from the other end, mother and child hand in hand. She used to draw her little girl close the first few times she saw me. But now she doesn’t anymore. Does she recognise a kindred soul in me? I was a mother once. Perhaps still am. But one hot afternoon, I was floating and she was gone. Some police and a well-wisher took her. How can you be wishing me well by tearing my heart into two? I see the mother clutching on tight to her daughter’s hand. If you hold on so tight Amma, how will she ever learn to soar through the sky and feel the thrill of finding herself? Or do you not want that for her?

   Oh there he is. My favourite little guy. I say ‘little’ but he’s twenty something. He’s just tiny in size really. Easy to underestimate. Used to be an assistant at the photocopying shop. Now he’s the money maker. Always first to come, last to go. Some far-flung relative of the owner. Son doesn’t like him. But the owner knows where the buck ends. This guy is always the one the office assistants will seek to get their files photocopied, laminated and bound. Fast, fast. The schoolteacher will wait till he is free and give him, only him, her top secret exam papers. The hopeful visa applicants know he can be trusted with their passports. He laughs easily. Hums along with the machines. Once I heard him tell a colleague that he studied till class eight. But what can a classroom teach him that life can’t? He hopes to take over the shop one day. Don’t know if Son will let him though. Everyone is his apa or chacha or mama or bhai. He even calls me khala as he waits patiently for me to bundle up my bedding and move from the front of the shop. When you’re that quick to make people your family members, I suppose it’s hard to understand that blood is thicker than water.

   Little flower girl skips out from a side lane. She collects leftovers from the corner flower shop and makes bouquets to sell at red lights. She’ll sell them all. Face of an angel. Soul of a shrew. You look so pretty today, apu. Buy my flowers, apu. You’ll have a good day today if you do this good deed, bhaiya. Buy my flowers, bhaiya. She doesn’t know it but I keep an eye on her to make sure she is safe. The local hoodlum came too close to her once. I stomped up and stretched out my arms, barricading her. Don’t know if it was my stench or the wild-eyed look. But he left. Little flower girl never says a word to me. Every mid morning she offers me a bit of her bread. I eat it wordlessly.

   I am waiting for the cigarette-wallah. I take my customary position in front of his tarpaulin covered stall. He’s superstitious, this fellow. I know this because he thinks I have mystical powers and gives me a free bidi first thing every morning. Bless me, he says. I puff away deliciously while he sets up. Not like that secretive lady in her fancy car who comes every day to buy a packet of the white cigarettes. She has big sunglasses on and looks rigidly in front, distancing herself from her driver who gets down to buy the pack. I stare at her every time. Occasionally, she throws a dirty look at me. I catch it and toss it over my shoulder. Hey, you may bathe every day and I bet you smell great, but you’re the one behaving like you have a dirty secret. My cigarette-wallah has me all wrong. He thinks I can see into the future. I think I have insight about everyone’s present.

   I know why. It’s because everyone is rushing around and I’m the only one stationary. Round and round, like those rotisserie chickens displayed in front of Dhanshiri Restaurant. Headlessly spinning, cooking in their own juices, getting burnt on the outside, not knowing what bacteria is multiplying in their cores. They lose their freshness. Become wizened tough leather that no one wants to buy. Because you no longer look like you once did, taste like you should.

   The cars are starting to honk. Beginning of a day. Soon busses will spew out hordes of busy bodies, all wired up to their mobile phones. Why do they fill their ears with endless radio static? Can no one else appreciate the music of their own voices, resounding, bouncing around the corners of their minds? End of day, the same busses will gobble up long queues of weary faces. Only I stand where I am. I’ve already arrived at where I’m supposed to be.