The Skeleton

It looked like an unsettling skeleton, a most disturbing sight.

Wooden planks lay horizontally, diagonally too on top of one another, and hung loosely from the side plinths of what used to be the ceiling once. Iron rods jutted out from every corner. Bamboo poles used as unstable support to the nearly-dismantled structure criss-crossed at every step. Innumerable nails, large, small and medium, protruded most dangerously from the walls and from the side panels of what once used to be doors and windows. Emptied switch-boards remained suspended in mid-air. Uprooted electricity wirings, hammered out water supply lines, scattered remnants of broken glass, piles of bulging sacks of sand, cement, stone chips, metal wires and rods, metal buckets here and there, an axe or two, a large-size metal mixing plate lying upside down most of the times, bricks of all sizes and thicknesses, broken and intact, all combined to give the building being pulled down a most disturbing look.

The only inevitable and surprisingly disciplined human presence amidst this dump of debris and chaotic visual dis-arrangement was the team of labourers entrusted, no doubt by a profit-making contractor or his subordinate sub-contractor who hoped to get a share of the profit by his association with the promoter of several-simultaneously-running-real estate-projects, with the task of de-constructing the building first and soon thereafter of reconstructing it.

The masons entered and left at the same time almost every day. They took almost the same time every day to undress and get into their working clothes. They hung up their ‘formal’ wear the same way every day on a makeshift washing line. They broke for their meals and took bidi-breaks at the same time every day, almost. They whistled, called out to each other coarsely, ordered the under-age ones and the novices in the same way, gazed into their phones for almost equal lengths of time, washed their hands and feet the same way after work, and in the most unassuming way brought the three storey ancient house down, bit by bit, first here, then there, this room and then that room, the inner walls and then the outer walls, the kitchen slab, the bathroom basin, the commode, the balcony, the once-sacred prayer room in which no footwear and eatables were allowed, the grand-parents’ room, the parents’ room, the children’s rooms, the drawing room, the dining room, the guest rooms, all of it. In between their compulsive spitting and scratching of their groin, the flesh and blood of the house came to be dug out over a period of some months.

When I used to go up to the terrace for my customary afternoon walk, when my four-year old daughter was mostly asleep, I used to be met with the sight of the skeleton right next to our building. A most disturbing sight for the last some months.

The pace of my walk had often been disrupted by the sight of a teenage labourer who would cease all work and stare at me, with the hammer in his hand unused for the entire duration of the time that he could see me. After this happened for three consecutive days I changed my walking track and avoided that part of the terrace next to which the construction site was.

Months passed. The sloppy muddy monsoons came and refused to leave well after its schedule was officially over. The days continued to be sultry and annoyingly humid. My daughter’s autumn vacation in school commenced and got over. A slight chill in the air set in. I began covering my throat in the early mornings and evenings. Dark gloomy hazy days became a matter of routine. The big round ball of fire that the sun was seemed too eager to slip behind the skyscraper to the west of our building, a little too early, a little too shy to linger around in the grey sky. A lone eagle flapped its wings from atop the terrace wall of my neighbour’s old house opposite ours. Its screeching call pierced the silent coldness of the surroundings. I pulled the drape over myself closely.

It is then that I noticed one day, again from the terrace, that the building which had been pulled down had started being rebuilt. In fact quite a bit of it had already been done. Yes, indeed, I recalled and looked around. The usual noises of breaking down had been replaced by the deafening noise of drilling into walls, of marble slabs being cut to size, of a churning machine which moved in circles while the mortar, sand, cement were being mixed.

A deity being built, mud and straw being laid out on the skeleton of plywood and the deity gradually attaining completion at the hands of the skilled and dispassionate artist.

A building being built, flesh and blood, nerves and tissues, cells and veins being evened out into the skeleton.

I stood, watching the process.

Soon it became a pastime for me.

I would run up to the terrace and check out, how many rooms, what is the length of the slab in the kitchen, is the bathroom basin at a right distance from the commode pit, why is the switch-board to the right of the door as one enters, this room is looking too small, what will they put here, this balcony is too narrow, they could have added this space to the bedroom and made an inter-connecting door there, between those two rooms. Wait, is that flat smaller than this one? Yes, true. This bedroom must be, I calculated, twenty by fifteen, quite big. That one can’t be, ummm, more than twelve by ten. Oh, so the flats on this side are larger.

Before I knew it, I began doing something else too.

I began ‘working’ on the interiors of the flats.

When people come in, they should place the dining table here, this wall, and the window there should remain unobstructed, why not put a small table with a vase there, a bright yellow stem of flowers waving at the sun coming in from the window? The bed ought to be here, this side, that is west, it’s going to be hot there, the wardrobe can be against that wall, and the lighting, yes, the lighting, two shaded bulbs on these two walls, and a reading spot light from the ceiling here. Then the sofa should be below the reading light. The refrigerator is ideally placed here, it’s adjacent to the kitchen, and this place should have a flat surface where they can arrange vegetables, keep the utensils, and with a plug-point there they can place the microwave oven here, right here. I drew designs in the air as I went about doing the interior decorations. The masons may have seen me once or twice. I no longer noticed.

My ‘work’ progressed well enough for a few weeks. The people in charge of the work of completing the building progressed well too.

One full moon evening, with my daughter having finished her drawing and then practising dance for her school programme a few days later, I ran up to the terrace. It was late, quite late. Eight, maybe.

Bathed in moon-light the unoccupied but nearly completed building stood. My view had in fact become compromised of late, because the walls and the ceilings of each floor had been done. The labourers had left. On the branches of a tree next to the building from the other side of the road sat black patches of crows. Their beaks and tails hung out as bats from the corners of an unused desolate building.

I set about to ‘work’.

A crimson curtain here, this room. That window must have a heavy one, with a thick white lining behind to push back the afternoon sun-rays. A light blue colour for the drawing room, matching furnishing for the sofa and the centre table. Dark brown ones for the bedroom, double ones, a sheer curtain first and then the cloth one. A young wife, after a long hard day, moves up to her frowning husband, immersed in calculations of EMI, and pulls him towards herself…The husband’s mental arithmetic gets upset as his hands land on her body…My dark brown curtain the hero of the moment, shields it all from our eyes…

Lost in my world of colours and body-geometry, I stood.

“That’s all, not another spoon?” I asked my tired husband at dinner.

“N-no”, he waved his left hand. “G+5, the next building, all the flats sold out in two weeks! Should have been a real estate developer!”

“Sold out, isn’t it?” I said absent-mindedly, separating the fish from the bones on my plate. “I hope they put the dining table in the right place.”

“Huh?”

“Do you think a brass wall-hanging would look good? On the front door?”

My husband frowned. His tired face tried to make sense of my words. “What are you up to?”

I shook my head both ways. “Nothing,” I said coyly.

A few days after my daughter’s fifth birthday, the invitation came. With all the usual courtesy and the sociability that is expected of a new neighbour.

“A house-warming party!” I sounded happy. “It’s on a Saturday, you will return early, right?”

My husband nodded, smilingly.

Appropriately dressed, a useless gift in hand, and with an excited daughter, we turned up at the right place at the right time.

“Hello! Hi! Good evening!”

“Come, come! We are so happy you have come! No, no. Don’t take your shoes off, come in, come in!”

Around two dozen guests, many of them neighbours common to all of us, a few unknown faces, coffee, unhealthy aerated drinks, trans-fat-filled fried items, low music, make-up-ridden faces, one stiff young lady, an over-smart young man, a loud and haughty short fellow, tissue papers, good smell, created warmth, noisy children running around, little neighbourhood gossip, in short, the perfect party to warm the erstwhile skeleton.

The hostess offered me some French fries. Taking a couple I said, “Your microwave oven is there, isn’t it? Just outside the kitchen?”

She looked surprised but smiled and nodded affirmatively.

“You know, that corner, yes, that one, has your maid cleaned it well? The masons, most of them, used to spit there, routinely.”

She cringed and twisted her nose.

“Can you place a small couch in the bedroom? After placing the bed, there isn’t much space, cramped up, is it?”

Now she looked a little hurt and then both of us agreed that that is how they were making flats these days. Miserly, I said. Exorbitant, she added.

“Look at that bathroom, for instance. No, not this one, the other one, to that side. There, behind the kitchen.” I moved my fingers to indicate the way.

“You seem to know my flat better than me.” She excused herself and went to attend to another guest.

My husband may have heard her comment for I saw him looking at me searchingly.

I smiled at him and assured him that everything was fine.

On a sofa were seated three men, two of whom I knew by face. They were discussing the re-sale value of land in New Town. Two of them were using their phones to counter-check their facts and assumptions.

“Had they put a reading light here, here, on top, you could have seen the screen better,” my judgment was, although not flawed, completely uncalled for.

“You want to sit, Madam?” One of the men attempted to stand up to create an empty space.

“No. I am not talking about sitting. See, look up, this side of the room requires a light. A reading light, here, up here, to shine and the sofa will have such a soft shimmer then.”

My husband cleared his throat loudly and gestured to me. I ignored him, smilingly of course.

The middle-aged woman from the building across the road had also been invited. She had been a friendly neighbour for some years now, often advising me about my daughter’s necessary nutrition. She saw me alone and came to my side.

“See, the curtains here ought to have been blue. This colour isn’t matching the décor of the room at all.” I said even before she could seat herself next to me.

She smiled embarrassedly. “Their choice…”

An unknown woman came to us and said, “Hello, I live in the other flat, yes, yes, same floor, that side.” Everyone gathered there smiled and greeted her.

“Oh! The one with the large bedroom! There! I was telling her, if she had a large enough bedroom, she could have accommodated a couch. I am sure you have one. The couch has a moss-coloured cushion cover? Tell me, have you put a sheer curtain along with the actual drape?”

My hostess who was nearby heard me. She looked quite irritated at me. The woman with a larger bedroom looked clueless, and more distressingly, angry. My husband came up to me and called me to one side.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Who told you to comment on everyone’s interior decorations! Don’t you have any sense! Stop talking about their couches, ovens, sofas, lighting, sizes of rooms! What is this! What are you doing?”

I looked very guilty.

I resolved to keep quiet.

I shall only observe and note down where their decorations and arrangements have gone wrong. I won’t say a word more.

I wanted to put up my index finger over my lips the way my daughter does in her school. And, I took a deep breath, I shall do that when I go home. Not now, not here. This is my neighbour’s flat, my new neighbour. I have been invited to a social party. I nodded my head, made myself understand and smiled at everyone gathered in the room.

As I was quietly dipping my fish finger into the mayonnaise, my hostess approached me with a man by her side. Her face was pretty formal now. She looked disinterested to talk to me or even be anywhere near me. The compulsion of formality had brought her to me.

“Meet my husband, Amitabha Dutta.”

“Oh! Your husband!” The fish finger broke into two and one part fell off, smearing the floor with mayonnaise. “Yes, yes, of course! Your husband!” My excitement was considerable. I stole a glance at the broken part of the snack lying crushed on the floor.

Visibly belligerent now, my hostess demanded to know, “Yes, my husband. Why? What’s wrong with that?”

“No, no! Nothing’s wrong. How can anything be wrong? He is very loving, very romantic!” I giggled. “He caresses you so lovingly. His arms are so manly, so strong.” Then with a look of genuine concern on my face, I asked, “By the way, is the EMI very steep?”

As my husband dragged me out of the flat and I insisted on telling everyone that I was merely trying to suggest what interior designing would work best for them, I remember seeing my hostess Anuradha giving a dire look at her husband, the man with strong arms.

BIO

Shrutidhora P Mohor writes literary fiction and has been listed in several competitions like Bristol Short Story Prize, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, among others. Her writings have been nominated for Best Micro fictions 2023 and the Pushcart Prize 2024 and are a part of several anthologies and magazines. A collection of short stories, A Moon-Measure of All Things is her recent publication. Mohor is the pen name of Prothoma Rai Chaudhuri, Faculty, Department of Political Science, St.Xavier’s College, Calcutta.