Dipu sits in front of the gate as the super-shop shuts down. Much like the plastic plant kept inside a plastic pot nearby. He gets up once, to leave. But where can he go? He sits back again.

The city has stitched one house after another, crossed one town after another, leapt past fields and rivers to reach Dipu’s childhood. His memories of the place have been unhanded by a multiplex project. Where shall he go? Home? Whose home? Which home?

Dipu keeps sitting. The super-shop will reopen at nine in the morning and close at eight thirty at night. It needs to be shut at that time according to the new laws of the government. Earlier it was better because it used to be almost eleven by the time the shop closed its business. Now he has a lot of free time for himself after work. Dipu doesn’t need such a lot of time. He will feel lighter if he can somehow sell all his free time. He is thinking of getting another job for the night. He can be a night guard. He doesn’t need money. Rather, he wants to get a job even if he needs to shell out money. He fishes out his phone from his pocket. He taps the buttons for a long time. He puts it on his ear and then doesn’t take it down.

Ma? Should I send it tomorrow? I will allow it to grow. Please have your medicines properly. Don’t be like Abba. No one grows rich saving money meant for medicines; people die this way. Abba has. Abba’s not alive, Ma. At least you stay. What? Fine, I’ll send over a sum. Ma, is my goat still there? You haven’t given away my ball, have you? Ma, I’ll come soon. You’ll wake up one day and see me standing right next to your forehead. I want to come back Ma, but I can’t for the life of me remember the way to our home. Wasn’t there a tender coconut tree right next to the tap? Now I spot a tender coconut tree in every house, but the area around the tap doesn’t match! Ma, have you hidden the tap somewhere? Or has Abba taken it with him? Ma…

He gets no answer from the other side.

Dipu puts the phone away from his ear. It has been two days since he charged it. He did put it to charge once today but forgot to switch it back on. He keeps clicking the buttons of the phone in his hand. Right now, even this seems like some sort of occupation to him. And while he clicks away, Dipu feels as though he is running on a board like that of the phone’s keypad. From zero to nine—no scope of going outside this limit. And within this space, life seems vast to him. But what he really needs to do is to reduce time to a dot and fling himself inside that dot. That dot that will have no time before or after it.

Dipu keeps sitting.

He gets up eventually. He gathers all his strength, but his legs suddenly feel numb. These days his memory freezes anytime, without a warning. He cannot recall a thing from just the day before. And when the people of this city think about their future, Dipu tries to build his past from a vacuum. He doesn’t remember if he ever had a house. His mother must have been there. There must have been a mother, since he had been birthed. And that is why he must have had a father. But what about a wife or sibling? Perhaps he has one, maybe he doesn’t. And when he thinks of a wife, the image of a child swims to his mind from the black hole that is his memory. And if he has a child, there must be a wife. Or does the black hole release the image of someone else’s child? Or that of his own childhood? Has everyone known to Dipu died? Among the millions and millions of people in this city, why doesn’t he know anyone? Is he himself alive? Do the dead have any memory? Dipu thinks that either he or others are dead. But this thought is not based on sound logic. Dipu now tries to hear some faraway sound. Some young bride is sobbing quietly. Her pillow is soaked. Dipu’s senses are suddenly so sharp that he can see everything clearly. His spirit seems to move out of his body and sit on that bed. A picture is kept on the mirror of the bamboo dressing table inside the room. It isn’t difficult for him to recognize it in the darkness. He opens his eyes and realizes that a house like this must exist somewhere in this world, a place where his photograph is kept. But where will he find that house? Why should he search for that house?

A dog climbs a few stairs and sits near his feet. One empty truck after another roars past him on the road in front. All the trucks carry materials for the construction of the new building. A night bird flies from the darkness nearby to the denser blackness yonder. A dream shifts from one side to the other in search of a sleeping person. Perhaps the people of this city do not sleep like Dipu, or maybe each of them has a pet dream, and a few commonplace dreams lie waiting for Dipu.

I had a pet dream once; I used to see it every day. Dipu says.

I am a pleasant dream. But no one wants good dreams now. This city has turned even dreams into entertainment. The dream says.

I can’t remember my dream anymore. Do dreams die like people? Dipu asks.

We can’t differentiate between alive and dead. We can only tell apart sleep from wakefulness.

And if one slips into eternal sleep? Or lies awake in perennial wakefulness?

The dream gets up without another word. It leaves in search of someone asleep. A person that has no dream of his own. This city has lakhs and lakhs of people who love dreaming. Dipu envies them.

The night doesn’t seem to move ahead. The buildings slowly dim one by one. Dipu feels like walking through the entire city today. And while walking, he wants to enter an unfamiliar house. Perhaps a woman will say—wash your hands and face and come for dinner. And after washing his hands, with great intimacy, Dipu will wipe his hands on the edge of her saree. And as if she were his own, she will not stop any of his advances. Dipu wants to embrace her once. He hasn’t hugged a woman in so long. And sitting for his dinner at the neat and organized table, he will taste the food made by someone very familiar. He will be a little absent-minded in trying to recall whose hands cooked such food. The woman will place her hands on his shoulders then. And he will break down trying to wonder if anyone had ever placed her hands on his shoulders that affectionately.

Dipu recalls someone. While walking the lanes of his neighborhood, he tries to remember the name. A person’s existence is incomplete without a name. While searching for that name, Dipu walks quite a distance. He decides to enter a house. He spots an old, two-floor house on the street that hasn’t crumbled yet because it is waiting to be demolished any day soon. Before he can press the calling bell, someone opens the door from inside. Dipu puts one of his feet inside.

Keep your shoes outside, I just swept the floor. The woman says.

She probably opened the door. Dipu keeps his shoes and looks at the wall, wondering what to do next. A lizard looks at him. He stares back at the lizard squarely in its eyes. He slowly builds the courage to look at the woman’s eyes.

What happened? Wash your hands and come for dinner.

Dipu looks around and locates the washbasin. He washes his hands for a long time. He moves forward to wipe his hands. The woman is not wearing a saree, she is clad in a salwar-kameez. She doesn’t have a dupatta on her. There is space for only one person at that small dining table, the rest of it is cluttered with objects. Dipu pulls the chair and sits. At the table there is a plate of rice along with two vegetable sides. When he looks closely a cockroach moves down from one of the containers, climbs his arm and enters his shirt. He sifts through the rice on the plate. The potato mash is watery; the young banana curry has dried up. While eating, he tries to recall something. No, he cannot remember. He cannot recollect the thought he had when he entered that house. And he cannot eat fast, preoccupied with thoughts about what to do after dinner.

Go to the room after you’re done eating. I’m leaving for the hotel. Napa Suppository is kept there. Give her the medicine if the fever increases. She will have to be admitted in the morning. Did you get money anywhere? Saying this, the woman applies a thick coat of lipstick and drapes a black dupatta on the salwar-kameez she is wearing.

Dipu realizes that he has entered the wrong house. He gets up and brushes his clothes. The cockroach falls to the floor and scurries away inside the room. Dipu cautiously follows suit. A child is lying there, around seven or eight years old. The bed looks really old. Dipu sits gingerly beside the girl. She seems to be shivering with fever. He should get out of here before he is stuck in some major problem. There are many other houses in this city, lakhs and lakhs of skyscrapers have hidden the sky and the trucks hover all through the city carrying materials for another lakh of such buildings. Dipu regrets entering the wrong house, his life suddenly seems unbearable to him, if at all he is alive… He will leave right now. There is no one to stop him now. He gets up. He is startled, looking at the picture on the bamboo dressing table on the wall next to him.

And then one day, I earnestly set out with the resolve to rescue my mother, and hunt and kill the monster.

That was my childhood, an age that would transform the harmless, ruinous mansion at the edge of the huge lake owned by the Ghosh family, where I would spend many an afternoon, fooling about, into a ghostly palace, brimming with cruel secrets at night. My father was the caretaker of that mansion. He earned a monthly wage courtesy of the old Ragendra Narayan Ghosh without having to really clean and maintain the large garden overgrown with weeds, alongside the cold eyes of the dark forest and the primitive, deep, inky waters of the lake. Ragendra Narayan was the only living descendant of that mansion. He had no room for affection in his voice that was housed in his large, formidable six-feet frame. His visage was marked by a thick, curling moustache and an irascible temper. It was rumoured that during his service in Patna, he had shot and killed a servant during one of his spells of violent temper. Although the case went cold with help from the authorities, he couldn’t save his job. He came here after that and his old ancestral mansion swallowed him whole, like he was some weak, ailing animal, in the few cognizant moments before his very last breath. He didn’t venture out of the house much, but his savage temper was infamous in the locality. The boys in the neighbourhood would call the old man ‘Angry Man’. Growing older, it was rather heartrending to realize that he was not even that old.

My father slowly faded away in his job as a caretaker, running small errands, going to the market and the bank as part of his daily job. But even after cooking for Ghosh Babu the entire day, my mother’s smile was like that of a golden moon. I would grab my mother’s long hair and swing, searching for my own pond in her deep eyes. As a matter of fact, my mother’s long, thick hair, that ran past her broad shoulders, down her waist was my playground, and my mother, even after a day’s hard work, didn’t have an ounce of indignation. She used to play with me every evening, looking for surprising finds such as nuts embedded in the frozen soil. She would enthusiastically frolic in the waters of the lake, keeping up with me, collecting neglected, unripe mangoes, scattered here and there in the garden along with fallen bird nests. My father would lie inside the room, in the pale light of the bulb, and looking at us with resentful eyes, he would mutter, “Fallen woman! Wasted womb!”

My father was like a distant island. Even the sweat on his forehead was unfamiliar. Ma had never been able to cut through his mountainous displeasure and indifference, that dwelled atop our little home in a corner of the garden, and fill it with soft tenderness. Baba couldn’t tolerate us. He would return home drunk in the evening at times and push me out of the house and close the door and windows. I used to listen to Ma’s screams, her tears, her silence, used to get a whiff of the black mark below her lips, the blooming remnants of kicks in her waist. But I wasn’t moved to tears because I knew that the time for play with my mother as well as my father’s beatings was limited. A mad darkness lay hidden beyond Baba’s weak outbursts, that would take Ma away some day like a cursed princess in some fairy tale into a dark unknown, just like it did every day. I would feel pity for Baba, even at that age—thin, middle-aged, his head progressively balding, his lack-lustre gaze and dirty teeth. I had heard the people of the village jokingly call him a cuckold, laugh throatily and, in their comic laughter, fall on each other. But I didn’t know what the word meant, and felt pity for Baba even without knowing what it meant. He seemed like a stunned giant who wasn’t competent or selfish enough to protect his own garden.

The Ghosh family, who owned this ruined mansion, were the descendants of a zamindar clan. They used to rule their land in the daytime and at night used to hunt and kill helpless passers-by and loot whatever they had. This addiction had seeped into their blood. All that was left now was the mansion, with its fading glory, whose bricks, stones and beams lay exposed, where poisonous cobras lay on broken stairs counting hours, where disobedient banyan stems reared their heads breaking the walls. Still, a few rooms were whole, with frescoes in the ceiling and broken chandeliers, that reminded one of that glorious lordship, murderous and cruel, and in one of these rooms, stayed Angry Man. He didn’t mix with outsiders. Sometimes, he strolled in the back garden and groaned crossly upon spotting an unwanted visitor. But he had never reprimanded me for anything, merely looked at me steadfastly, enough to turn my blood to water. Angry Man didn’t venture outside even when the house was leased for a shoot. He used to stay cooped in a room on the first floor the entire day. I would observe the boisterousness of the shooting party that would ask my father to get booze for them. When Ma used to knead the flour to prepare luchis, white flour lumps would ooze out from the gaps in her fingers like pus. One of the cinema folks would sit beside Ma and chat, smoking cigarettes, leaning towards her at times, and I could understand Ma’s smile then. And in the barbeque would smoulder the glorious neck, insolent rear and lively breast of the country chicken.

But all of this was till the evening. That was the allotted time. When night descended, she would cook for us, feed me, keep Baba’s food covered, lay me down in bed, and then leave for the mansion. She didn’t return at night. I used to cry a lot initially, grabbing hold of the border of her saree, refusing to let her go. And then, after I was asleep, Ma would steal away, opening my fist gently, and Baba would toss and turn beside me the entire night, like a burnt lump of coal. Many a time, I would wake up from sleep at dawn, when I would understand that Ma had quietly entered the room. She would leave silently like a thief, and come home similarly. I would press my face to Ma’s freshly bathed hair because it smelled of the fresh earth.

I had asked Ma many times why she went to the mansion at night, but never got a reply or an explanation. The answer was revealed unexpectedly one day. That afternoon, I was picking unripe fruits from the Jamrul tree near my home with a long stick. Ma had finished cooking early, so she had joined my game a little before her usual hour. The sunlight slipped off the rain-washed, blue sky into the secluded environment. A snail waddled past on the wet earth near my feet, its snout gently brushing my heel, butterflies flitted around wildflower bushes, and I sometimes looked over to the lake yonder to see if the wings of the birds had coloured some of its black waters. When Ma called me, a dense army of termites fell across my hands in dust — “Raju, look! There is a beehive on the wild Jujube plant. We will break it after a few days.” 

I lifted my head, and suddenly, it seemed as if a drop of blood rose from my throat. I saw a terrifying face looking at me steadfastly from the high terrace of the mansion. ‘Ah!’, I cried out and put my hands on my face. Ma came running and clutched my hand — “What happened dear?”

“There. On the terrace. A monster! It was looking at me.”

Ma looked up. “Where? I don’t see anyone there.”

I saw that the place was deserted, as if freshly washed. Still, I became aware of its presence. Ma’s eyes were like the sky, thick dirt inside her nose, her pitiful, white fingers would have a dent if pressed for too long, she had two deep folds on her neck, hidden within which lay a field full of secrets. When all of these laughed together, the monster seemed like a lie. Ma laughed freely and said, “You are scared. What a silly child!” But what if it came when she was not there?

And it did. Ever since that time, it would stare at me in the desolate afternoons from the roof, quietly, unwaveringly. It wouldn’t say anything, just look at me with that horrible, yellow face, baring sharp, knife-like teeth. Ma wouldn’t have believed me, and Baba would have scolded me, so I couldn’t tell anyone anything. I didn’t have any friends, because the children in the locality would tease me, calling me ‘cuckold’s son’, pulling my pants down. And in that innocent, loveless childhood, if a monster would follow me around with its eyes, where could I have got a reassuring banyan-like support, within whose trembling breath I could lie muddy and unafraid? Even when I looked in fear at the terrace at night, I wasn’t able to see anything in the dense darkness. Ma would be inside the mansion by then. But I knew that it was there, somewhere nearby. And I realized subsequently, that the mansion was the monster’s palace, that Ma, with her long hair, had to enter, helpless, every day. That was the monster’s condition. Perhaps it would imprison Ma like some captured princess in a secret chamber or inside the Ghosh’s lake, whose entire body was blue with the touch of Death’s silver stick.

Angry Man would walk around at that time, swaying in the blue mist of the darkness, sometimes screaming, annoyed at Baba about why there were snake skins in the garden. Baba would digest his expletives silently, with a bowed head. Angry Man would look at me fixedly and I wouldn’t understand the meaning behind his stare. But it would pale in comparison to the fear of the monster; the poor fellow wasn’t even aware that by some cruel magician’s hand, his mansion would transform into a monster’s house at night. I played in the same manner every afternoon and evening. When I chased butterflies, pollen would fall on my hands. I would scoop dry berry seeds with my hands from rabbit burrows, watch small fries and anchovies, whose bodies would scatter rainbows once touched, move hypnotically in the corners of the lake. And amidst my games, I would lift my head to see the monster staring at me constantly. There was no way I could reach the terrace because the stairs had long since broken down. The roof was damaged in parts as well. Sometimes, in the quiet stillness of the night, when the incessant coughing of Angry Man would reach us, I would feel assured that the roof of that endless mansion was intact. Then, were the movements of the monster restricted to only that part of the house? But I could spot him at different points of the roof, even the ones that were damaged. It slept the entire day and, in the evening, pulled down the hapless princess to hell. What kind of a monster was this? Didn’t it fall on me therefore to slay this monster? To save my mother?

A few days passed as I thought about these things. A tanned fox in the garden informed me that a flight of stairs descended from the ghat that was strewn with broken stones. On reaching the last step, one could see the palace of hell, decorated with diamonds and precious stones. A group of poisonous snakes guarded that hellish palace. Their breath would stun and freeze the wayward fish. And that palace apparently met the mansion at some point. A rabbit, who was my friend, showed me a long thread that trailed along the dew-sodden grass and went into the lake. The old woman of Time, who dwelled below the water, used that thread to spin quilts. As I observed, I realized even more that the monster’s life lay in the wings of a bee, or in the body of a black cobra, or in the deathly seed of some unknown fruit. That is why I decided to follow Ma and discover where lay the seed of its life.

And then one day, I earnestly set out with the resolve to rescue my mother, and hunt and kill the monster.

That night, Baba had again come back home drunk. He attacked Ma coarsely, pushed her around, groaned crudely. But all of that didn’t affect me. When Ma was stealing away at night, I followed her quietly with a small knife in my pocket that I used to skin fruits. Baba pretended that he didn’t notice anything because he didn’t actually care about anything.

The mansion’s huge door would usually close behind my mother, but this time I entered noiselessly along with her. Ma didn’t understand in the darkness that I was right behind her in the shadows. The last speck of light on my shoulder faded away when the heavy hinges latched with one another in their rightful places.

Although I had entered the place often in daylight, this was my first time here at night because Angry Man had strictly instructed Baba and I not to enter after sunset. It was a little difficult for me to adjust to the darkness, so I walked supporting my hands on the wall. Ma walked at a little distance, unhurried, swaying past the narrow passage. Ma’s body dispersed in the dark waters like salt; I had to walk slowly and cautiously.

Then Ma suddenly turned right, and I couldn’t control myself and went and collided with the hard wall. Hearing my inarticulate cry, Ma looked back surprised. Feeling her way in the darkness, Ma stood before me, her eyes enlarged in shock, she sighed deeply. “You? Why are you here?”

“I — I mean — I’m here to kill the monster,” I stammered.

I saw Ma’s eyes fill with dread. Clutching my hands, she hurriedly whispered, “Leave Raju, go. Things will get bad. Why are you here?”

I was stubborn, and I, who was always easily frightened, firmly held on to the knife in my pocket, “I won’t leave, take me to the monster.”

“Why?”

“I will kill it. I won’t let you go anywhere at night anymore.” I lowered my head.

Ma was quiet. Then she let out a suppressed laughter, “Will you kill the monster?”

“Yes.”

Ma sighed after being silent for some time. She looked up cautiously. So, did the monster stay there? “Come with me. Let’s roam around the house a little.”

I roamed around with Ma through many a secret and forbidden passage and hidden chamber inside the mansion. When I almost lost my way, I stretched my hand and touched Ma’s dense, dark hair. The fragrance emanating from Ma’s skin enveloped me, and I strolled around and saw scary masks, spears, withering swords, tiger skin, buffalo heads. All the secrets of this large house lay bare before me, little by little, when Ma familiarized me with the unknown tunnel inside the dilapidated mound of sand, treacherous passageways, the yawning emptiness of the old rooms. I saw the butterfly, that had been suffused with pollen that morning, lying dead on the cold, pitiless floor. I felt bad, but I couldn’t see Ma when I turned back.

“Ma?” I called out twice. I was scared.

Suddenly, Ma startled me and came from my right. Laughing, she said, “Were you scared?”

“What if I got lost?” I was angry.

“Oh, my brave man!” Ma laughed throatily and then pointed up at the wooden beams, “Look Raju, people were hung here. Now, cobras nest in the ventilators.”

I looked up, afraid. I couldn’t see anything, but if I listened carefully, perhaps, I could hear a hissing sound. When I turned back, Ma was missing again. Laughing, she again stepped forward from the darkness after I called her.

It gradually became a game for the two of us. Ma would hide intermittently, I would try to find her and then give up angrily, she would then step out suddenly from behind the broken pillar, or the raised platform in the distance. My eyes became used to the darkness while I was roaming around in this delusion. I had grown tired. I finally sat, supporting myself against the wall.

There was no sound anywhere. All the four corners were still. A little later, I called out, “Ma!”

No one replied. I called out again, “I want to go home, I’m sleepy.”

A rough wind permeated my bones and circled around a little. My head felt heavy, my throat was dry. The wind had made me uncomfortable. The surroundings turned quieter. The insides of my chest thrummed unevenly. I moved ahead slowly through the passage. I didn’t believe that anyone had ever come to this part of the house. It was not even as ornamented as that palace of hell. My feet brushed against something. Bending down, I noticed after some time that it was a dead rabbit, the friend who had told me about the old woman of Time. My chest felt empty, I called Ma twice. But I could hear neither Ma nor Angry Man’s cough, and neither did the monster step forward. Throwing away the knife in my pocket, I ran across this passage and that tunnel, the dance room, the verandah where people were hung, the secret chambers. I searched everywhere but I didn’t find Ma’s familiar smell anywhere. My eyes became clouded, and there was a lump of pain in my throat. Looking at the buffalo’s head in the darkness, my chest grew heavy and numb because I didn’t know the way back. I didn’t even know if I would ever be able to find Ma again. I also didn’t know if her lost redolence like dewdrops would douse the cruelty of the mysteries that pricked my body, or if I would be left to roam indefinitely in this primitive house for the length of my life.

But I still believe that Ma, my sleeping princess, was trapped in that darkness for life, and the monster, pouring all his hoarded love, had turned blue this elusive, fascinating being.