She sometimes found it hard to believe that she had been working for the Serene for ten years now. The time since leaving Kolkata seemed to have flown. So much had changed in the world — change, she realised, that sequestered with her work in the wilderness city she had hardly noticed. It was only when she fulfilled the needs of the Serene once a month, and found herself waking up in various locations around the world, that she came to realise the extent of the changes. She had seen cities transformed, slums giving way to new poly-carbon developments, impoverished citizens replaced by well-fed and well-dressed individuals; and, most of all, pessimism receding on a wave of optimism.
She had visited every continent on Earth now, and at least a hundred cities — though, over the course of the past five years, those visits had been restricted to the cities which contained the obelisks. She wondered why this was so. Every time she came to her senses, she was in the vicinity of a jet black tower. There had to be a link, though one to which she was not privy. Yet another enigma of the aliens who had changed the world.
In the early days she had found herself fearing coming to her senses in these strange and far-flung places, and she would flee to the airport and wait until the sleek Serene jet was ready to take her back to India. She was allowed a day or two to herself in these exotic cities — a reward, she supposed, for whatever work she did for the Serene while unconscious. Over a period of time, as she gained confidence, she remained in the cities and explored a little, knowing that physically she could come to no harm. She had experienced other cultures, other ways of thinking, other foods — strange, at first, after her staple diet of curry in India — and met people of all colours and creeds.
A couple of years ago it came to her that she was, truly, a citizen of the world. She had learned to speak English, was learning French, and had a smattering of Italian and German. She wondered what the ignorant girl she had been, ten years ago, would have thought of this sophisticated woman she had become, who wore Western clothing and could order food in three or four different languages.
She looked at her watch and smiled. Kapil was late, which was not unusual. Despite his many excellent qualities, punctuality was not one of them. He often kept her waiting — up to two hours on one occasion! — and he blamed it on having a mother and father who had both worked for the Indian railways, where good time-keeping was a given. He said he had grown up despising the tyranny of the clock, though Ana teased him that he was making excuses.
She had met Kapil Gavaskar at the Andhra Pradesh wilderness city two years ago when he had flown in from America on a fact-finding mission. Ana’s city had just achieved record levels of fruit production, and the world was lining up to find out how.
She had been immediately attracted to the tall, slim Indian-American, who spoke Hindi with an odd twang and professed a dislike of Indian food. She had set about remedying the latter by taking him to her favourite restaurants, and even tutoring him in how to pronounce certain Indian words without a Texan vowel extension.
They tried to see each other once a month, which sometimes didn’t happen. When their itineraries proved impossible to match — like last month — Ana felt bereft, but it only served to make their next meeting all the more exciting.
They had not talked of marriage, yet, though Ana often considered life with Kapil on a permanent basis. She had yet to meet his parents — old-school Brahmins, who would doubtless turn up their noses at her lowly dalit origins.
She jumped as she felt hands on her shoulders — then relaxed as he kissed the top of her head. “Ana,” he murmured, “I’ve been watching you for the past minute. You were miles away.”
She clutched his hand as he took a seat at the table. “I was thinking about you.”
“Flatterer!”
“It’s true.” She stared at his face, drinking him in. “Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
He ordered a coffee and sipped it as he stared at her. He was thin-faced, handsome, with humorous eyes and a quick smile.
He frowned. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
She had told Kapil about her childhood shortly after they’d met — thinking that it was best to get the truth out of the way early on, so that he could leave her without breaking her heart. One of the many things that made her love him was that he had listened to her admission in silence, then kissed her on the lips and said that if it was her upbringing that had made her who she was, then he could not fault it.
But she had never told him about Sanjeev Varnaputtram, and what he had done to her and countless other street kids.
She did so now, choosing her words with care, and finished by recounting their encounter yesterday.
“The bastard!” he cried. “I’ll have him arrested!”
She smiled. “He is already chemically castrated, which is punishment enough. And he is old and ill.” She shrugged. “But it was so good, Kapil, to tell him that his victims are all now prospering. I felt… empowered.”
He took her hand and kissed her fingers.
She said, “How long do we have?”
“Until the morning. I must leave for China at ten tomorrow. I’m advising them on their sustainability program.”
“One whole day!” she laughed.
“I haven’t been to Kolkata for at least fifteen years. I was thirteen, and my parents were taking me to see an ancient aunt before we left for America.”
“Perhaps I could give you a guided tour — show you Howrah station, the streets I played in, Maidan Park where I watched the rich kids flying their expensive kites.”
He looked reflective. “I might have been one of them…”
She drained her lassi, and he his coffee, and they strolled from the square hand in hand.
They spent the day wandering around the city, visiting the sites of her childhood, the station and the park, the once mean streets between them, and Ana relived memories of her childhood, but told him only of the good ones.
She took him to Bhatnagar’s that night, and she feasted again. Kapil, thanks to Ana’s expert tutoring, had come to appreciate the cuisine of his home country. They finished the meal and strolled through the warm night, bought ice creams and promenaded along the revamped sea front, watching the liners and cruise ships leave the port and head off into the Bay of Bengal.
On the way back to the hotel they passed a store selling softscreens and other hi-tech goods, and the window was a flickering panoply of visually discordant images. One caught Ana’s eye and stopped her in her tracks. Kapil stopped too and glanced from screen to screen, unable to discern which image had arrested her attention.
Ana stared, open-mouthed, at the Indian with the long ponytail and ear-stud, who was mouthing silently to the camera.
“Ana?”
She pointed.
“Ah… handsome, no?” he said.
She dug her elbow into his ribs. The young man vanished on the screen, replaced by sports news.
Ana walked on in silence, lost in thought. That was only the third time in ten years she had seen Bilal on television, and always the sight of him touched some deep regret within her.
“Well…?” Kapil prompted.
She stopped and faced him in the moonlight. “I’ve never told you this, Kapil. But I had a brother… I mean, I have a brother.” She pointed back to the shop-front. “That is him. Bilal Devi. He ran out on me when I was six.”
He guided her to a coffee house, sat her down at a quiet table, and demanded the full story.
She told him how Bilal had protected her from local children, made her cheap kites from newspaper and twine — and how, when she was almost seven and Bilal sixteen, he had vanished without a trace.