Bhanu is walking uphill towards his room through the narrow streets of his slum colony. A handkerchief is tied around his mouth, and he holds polythene bags of half-kilos of rice and pulses, which he has received as help. Seeing some people coming from the other side, Bhanu squeezes himself against one of the houses on the side of the alley. The people walking down the hill are carrying sacks and bundles. Bhanu’s eyes follow the familiar faces for a while before he starts climbing the hill again.
He jumps over a narrow open gutter. Many of the 10x10 square feet rooms in the alley are locked. An unpleasant silence lurks behind their makeshift doors. No one is talking, fighting, laughing, shouting loudly on mobile phones, watching TV at full volume. No pungent aromas of cooking either. The stoves have gone cold.
Bhanu's room is at the very top of the hill. At home, his wife Sarita is sitting near a gas stove, staring blankly at the door. Her hands are resting on her belly, six months pregnant. Nine-year-old Rahul is driving his small toy car round and round on the cement floor, incessantly asking his mother for something to eat.
“Amma, I am hungry! I have had nothing since morning. You didn’t even give milk and crème biscuits, Ammaaa ...”
Sarita sighs, almost unknowingly. “Yes, my child,” she says, pulling herself together, “I know. I will give you something. Your father will be here anytime now. He will bring lots of things. Why don’t you go out and play?”
“I have no one to play with,” Rahul retorts. “Amma, where did Vicky and Bunty go?”
“To their village, like last year, I guess. They will come back. ”
“No, Amma, not in the middle of the school year. I don’t think they are coming back. We were to be engineers. The three of us were going to open a garage to fix cars after we finished school. But they are not even going to come to school now!”
“You and your cars! You will open your garage, a big one. You be a big man!” Sarita, on her feet by now, rummages through the three shelves behind the stove. A few empty pots, one kadhai, a ladle, spoons, four plates, and some bowls and small plates on a single shelf is all she has for her kitchen. A small row of plastic jars for salt, pulses, rice, wheat flour, dry cereals, spices, cooking oil sit on the other two shelves – the jars are all empty. She pretends to look for something to give to Rahul, opening all containers one by one. One of them has an empty wrapper of cream biscuits. Crushing the wrapper in her fist, she turns to Rahul and finds Bhanu at the door, untying the handkerchief around his mouth and collapsing on the threshold with a sigh. Rahul runs in excitement to collect the bags from his father.
“You are home?! Rahul, give Papa water, please.”
Bhanu is replaying his meeting with the contractor for the thousandth time now in his head.
“Papa, water.… Papa… have water. You did not get any biscuits, did you?” Rahul shakes him by his shoulder.
Bhanu takes the glass from Rahul's hand and drinks the water in silence.
“The contractor did not give any money and said the work will not start for one more month.” He looks at Sarita as he speaks.
She moves her palm over the bulge of her stomach again. Whether she is trying to comfort or draw comfort from that little one inside is difficult to say.
“The government has shut everything down,” Bhanu continues, “It is the disease. Only the sarkar can tell when work will start again.”
“It’s more than a month and a half without money. Pulses and rice, nothing left… How long will we live on charity?”
“I should not have brought you here,” Bhanu cannot hide the guilt in his voice. “In your condition… not being able to arrange enough food. What if this goes on for another few months?”
He wrings his hands in anguish. Bhanu’s family has been eating only one meal a day for a month and a half now – of only dal and rice, that too if it’s distributed by a local organisation. Before all this started, his family used to eat green vegetables, milk and, whenever they could afford it, a few fruits, some apples, oranges grapes.
