“You give so much time to Zafar’s work,” I said once when we were alone. “Is it a good idea?”
“Because it’s important.”
“And your studies?” To me, being a student, getting educated was not just an impossible dream, it was an impossible dream inside a dream.
“Worry about a roof over your head,” said Nisha, with a casual flip of the subject. “How many places has Zafar found you? Why do you keep refusing?”
“I have a good place to sleep, fully private.”
“Where?”
“That’s my secret.” She would be horrified if she knew.
“Where?” she demanded. “Come on, tell.”
“Difficult to describe,” I said, which was nothing but the truth.
Ever since that night the Kampani’s factory has been locked up and abandoned. No one goes there, people say it’s haunted by those who died. It’s a shunned place, where better for an animal to make its lair?
When jarnaliss and foreigners come to Khaufpur they always think the factory is a big building. It isn’t. Its wall seems never-ending, and inside is an area equal to the whole of the Nutcracker. It takes more than an hour for me to circle the whole thing, enough steps to fill two miles. Here and there are holes in the wall as if a giant has banged his fist through, it’s where people have dug out bricks for their houses, our end of the Nutcracker is made mostly of death factory. Look inside, you see something strange, a forest is growing, tall grasses, bushes, trees, creepers that shoot sprays of flowers like fireworks.
Eyes, I wish you could come with me into the factory. Step through one of these holes, you’re into another world. Gone are city noises, horns of trucks and autos, voices of women in the Nutcracker, kids shouting, all erased by the high wall. Listen, how quiet it’s. No bird song. No hoppers in the grass. No bee hum. Insects can’t survive here. Wonderful poisons the Kampani made, so good it’s impossible to get rid of them, after all these years they’re still doing their work. Once inside, in the grass, it’s careful hands, careful feet. Fucking place is full of cobras. Dogs too you’ve to watch for. See a dog, keep away. If it comes close drive it off with stones. These dogs have foaming mouths, I’m afraid for Jara but not for myself. This is my kingdom, in here I am the boss. I’ve been in and out of here since I was small, I’d come in to hide where no one could find me. Sometimes I’d bring other kids in to play marbles and spin tops when we didn’t want the grown-ups to know where we were. To make sure they didn’t come back on their own I’d tell them stories of children who had wandered into the factory and were never seen again.
the ghosts will get you, you’ll never escape
I’d tell how I found their bones in the jungle, gnawed by animals with fangs of fire. How come you’re still alive then, they’d ask.
the ghosts run away from my twisted shape
Eyes, imagine you’re in the factory with me. See that thing rising above the trees, those rusty pipes and metal stairs going nowhere? That’s the place where they made the poisons. It used to be bigger, but bits keep falling off. Each big wind pulls more iron sheets loose. We hear them banging like angry ghosts. All that’s left now is its skeleton. Platforms, ladders and railings are corroding. Its belly is a tangle of pipes like rotting guts. Huge tanks have split, stuff’s fallen out that looks like brown rocks. How often did Zafar warn that if the dry grasses inside the factory ever caught light, if fire reached these brown lumps, poison gases would gush out, it’d be that night all over again.
In these dry grasses that Zafar said were a danger to the city I used to make my sleeping nest. On warm nights I could dream in comfort under the stars with no insects to trouble me. During the rains and in cold weather there were rooms that the Kampani, when it fled from Khaufpur, left knee-deep in papers. The Kampani papers made a thick quilt, plus I had the dog to keep me warm. In the offices the chemical stench was less. Inside the warehouses I never went, they were full of rotting sacks that poured out white and pink powders. Too long near them, you’d soon be breathless, with pains in the chest. Sometimes moving through the jungle I’d get dizzy and feel a sharp metallic taste on my tongue, those were regions to avoid.
Eyes, are you with me still? Look throughout this place a silent war is being waged. Mother Nature’s trying to take back the land. Wild sandalwood trees have arrived, who knows how, must be their seeds were shat by overflying birds. That herb scent, it’s ajwain, you catch it drifting in gusts, at such moments the forest is beautiful, you forget it’s poisoned and haunted. Under the poison-house trees are growing up through the pipework. Creepers, brown and thick as my wrist, have climbed all the way to the top, tightly they’ve wrapped wooden knuckles round pipes and ladders, like they want to rip down everything the Kampani made.
Here we can climb, up the ladders and up, to where the death wind blew. At the top of the highest stair, a single black pipe continues into the sky. You can rest your hand on it, it’s wider than the rest. Up this pipe the poisons flew on that night. Still black and blistered it’s after twenty years. Its paint was burnt off, so hot were those gases, yet that night was a freezing night of stars.
“Wah! what a view!”
It’s the first thing they say when they get up here, from here you can see clear across Khaufpur, every street, every lane, gully, shabby alley. That huddle of roofs, it’s Jyotinagar. Lanes in there are narrow, I don’t like to think about what happened in them. My friend Faqri, he lost his mum and dad and five brothers and sisters in those lanes. See the flashes where the naala flows? It’s Mira Colony, then Khabbarkhana and Salimganj. East’s Phuta Maqbara, to the west Qazi Camp, killing grounds all. Those minarets far off are the big masjid in Chowk. There, see the Delhi road? On that night it was a river of people, some in their underwear, others in nothing at all, they were staggering like it was the end of some big race, falling down not getting up again, at Rani Hira Pati ka Mahal, the road was covered with dead bodies.
Eyes, there’s such a thing as bhayaanak rasa, the kind of terror that makes your little hairs stand up and tremble, which is called romanchik. I feel it when I come back to this high place, I see mother Kali stalking in the forest below, her skin black as a roasted corpse. She’s got these massive fangs and a red tongue hanging to her waist and a belt of chopped-off heads, each one wears a face of agony which is how they looked when they died. Eyes, you see a black pipe climbing into the sky, I see Siva dark and naked, smeared with ashes from funeral pyres. His eyes are red from hash and smoke of burning flesh, dancing he’s, from all sides I can hear the screams and cries of dying people, because when Siva dances the world comes to an end. Do you suppose anyone can explain, why did the Kampani choose this city to make its factory? Why this land? Is it by chance that the old name for this place is Kali’s ground? Is it by chance that Siva her husband wears cobras round his neck?
Up here with just the wind how quiet it’s. Isn’t always. You should hear the ghosts, the factory is full of them, when a big wind blows, their souls fly shrieking up and down the empty pipes. Some nights, there’d be nothing here, just the ghosts and me, a four-foot creature climbing in the trees and pipes. Perched like a monkey on top of this poison-khana I’d watch the moon making shadows, and the stars cutting their circles, and I would look at the lights of the city and wonder if this pipe had been mended, that wheel tightened, I might have had a mother and father, I might still be a human being.
Each morning I would creep out of the factory to do my work in the bastis. At noon I’d head to Nisha’s. Her cooking was good, her company fun. I’d eat my lunch and do my best to avoid her frightening father.