An eye in the sky

Mr. Banerjee’s first steps of the day are angry. His right palm still burns, and his unruly moustache is damp with the remains of his breakfast.

As the door shuts behind him, there is a sound of anklets retreating across the tiles. One thud of a heel, followed by a sharp harmony of bells, and then a wet sliding squeaking step. A thud, a ring, and a squeak. A thud, a ring, and a squeak.

He inhales the cold air, waits for silence, and then stabs the elevator button.  

Winter presses itself against the towers overnight. Fog beads on parked scooters and clings to the lift doors; beyond the gate, office workers spill out in bright shirts that the smog quickly dulls. His route is exact: one hundred floor tiles, then left along the worn footpath to the gate.

Several men jog in unison, wearing nothing but thin white vests. Children’s shoulders are being pulled off their sockets, as their parents drag them and their backpack the size of a hiking bag towards the bus stop. Only a few aunties and uncles seem perfectly still with a newspaper in their hands.

His feet move all by themselves as he’s staring unabashedly at the morning unfolding around him. He says hello to a few uncles playing badminton before he reaches his daily commute.

The metro coils between buildings, screeching as it halts at the toes of waiting passengers. He doesn’t even have to move his feet, getting carried away into the mouth of the train car as if ants were scurrying inside their colony.

Inside, he is smothered by cheap vanilla perfume. Beside his ear, someone smacks Vicks onto chapped lips. A wiry barefoot man balances a cloth-covered parcel the size of a refrigerator on one shoulder. In one of the rare seats, a student chants notes beneath his breath as if praying.

The girl in front of him wears a bright green polo shirt and woollen slacks, a puffer coat tied around her waist. Sweat cools on her cheeks, and her shoulder strains to barely reach the overhead handrails.

Samarth watches the thin skin of her wrist.

“Put on your jacket,” he says.

She does not answer.

His fingers found the dry line of her forearm.

“You’ll catch a cold.”

The girl’s lips wobble. She sighs and turns her back towards him. Begrudgingly, she wears her jacket and slings her bright backpack over her shoulder.

After one last glance behind her, she shuffles towards the next train car, burying her face amongst the many working women in the compartment.

The air stiffens, shoulders straightening and stares thrown towards Mr. Banerjee. The wisps of multiple mascara coated eyelashes sharpen and pierce his being from head to toe.

Beneath the metallic shriek of the tracks, he cranes his ears.

Thud. Ring. Squeak.

He looks down. Every shoe on the carriage floor is still.

The train lurches, and finally the air shrugs off its coat of grey. Clouds crack and weep color. He glances out through smudged windows of the metro.

His humming halts. A thin bead of sweat rolls down his tan forehead littered with sunspots.

Other than the smog sleeping under the sky, not even a single bird loiters in the wind.

The train halts and sliding glass doors hiss as a cool draft threads through his feet.  A bright voice calls out the station name in Hindi, and then English. He leaves no time for the pleasantries to finish before he bustles through the exit, scratching the back of his palm furiously. Barking at an auto driver to drive quickly, he presses himself in the corner of the bumpy vehicle.

He runs to the office while covering his head with his backpack, even though there’s no rain.

His office is a concrete block skinned with broad, dirty windows. His black shoes leave damp half-moons across the freshly mopped tiles. He scans his card, scowls at the receptionist, and disappears into the lift, carrying the smell of phenyl.

Glancing faces peer from the windows, pale through the dirty glass. Someone spills dal on the second floor. Four sweaty backs shake with laughter on the fifth. When the lift opens on the eighth, Mr. Banerjee steps out with his jaw clenched. He walks past the water dispenser, past the clerk asleep behind a stack of files, and into his cubicle.

His heel dents the carpet as he walks over to his desk by the window and immediately closes the blinds. The slats clap against one another, leaving only a narrow white seam where they do not quite meet.

He keeps one hand on the cord. His other presses flat against the desk, beside a damp ring of chai and a pile of invoices softened at the corners by years of dust. For several seconds he does not move.

Then his shoulders loosen. He takes his seat.

By noon, the winter light has thinned to the colour of dishwater.

Beneath the window, the monitor has gone dark. Its screen holds the rounded rise of his stomach against the desk, the lower half of his loosened tie, one trembling hand still caught in the blind cord.

The fan turns above him, cutting the light from the blinds into thin pale bars. They crawl across his back, the carpet, the chipped rim of his teacup. Samarth works without looking up. He keeps his papers close to his chest, reads the same paragraph several times, scratches a correction into the margin, then crosses it out.

His chai develops a skin. When he reaches for the cup, the tea trembles once beneath his fingers. He leaves it untouched.

Later, he folds the monitor down with both hands. He stays bent over it, listening. Then he removes the framed certificate and wedges it behind the cabinet. The nail remains in the wall: a small, dark hook.

In the evening, his coat lies over the cabinet glass, the desk has been dragged several inches from the window, and the chair faces the corner. Samarth stands between the desk and the blinds with his back turned to both. At half past five, he leaves with his backpack already on one shoulder.

He does not wait for the lift.

The stairwell is wet and smells of cement. On the landing below, a woman in a red sari is speaking into her phone. Samarth turns before she can see his face and takes another flight down.

In the lobby, the glass doors catch the evening outside and lay it over the room: headlights, wires, passing bodies. He opens one door with his sleeve over his hand.

The road is louder now. Horns, engines, a pressure cooker whistling from somewhere above the shops. He finds an auto already moving and waves it down with both arms.

“Okhla Metro” he says.

“That will be 80 rupees.”

“Just drive.”

He sits forward, elbows on his knees, facing the road. Every few seconds he looks at the driver’s mirror and then away. At a signal, the auto stops beside a water tanker. Its steel body holds a warped strip of the road. Samarth folds into himself.

The signal changes.

He bites the inside of his cheek and pays without counting the notes.

The platform is already full when he reaches it. He stands beneath the route map with his face turned to the tiled wall. The metro whistles as it slows to a stop. Doors slide open. Bodies make room for him and then close around him again.

He leans against the wall and keeps his eyes shut.

The carriage rocks forward. Someone’s backpack brushes his shoulder. A child is crying somewhere near the far end. A phone plays the same three seconds of a song until its owner silences it.

He opens his eyes and looks down at the floor. A man’s polished shoe catches the carriage light. He shifts away from it, bumping into a lady behind him. The plastic cup buckles in her hands. Sweet tea runs over the toes of her black shoes.

They both look at each other silently, and the carriage falls quiet in the way public places do when someone has done something not quite wrong enough to confront.

At the next station, he forces himself out with the crowd.

Mr. Banerjee pierces his doorbell with the pads of his fat fingers. Only a beat passes when he starts to rattle the heavy door. The bronze grille is made of thin rods, dancing, intertwining, mingling and twisting into flowers. At the very center, is a talisman; a lemon and two green chilies, pierced just above his head.

Thud. Ring. Squeak.

The door opens. A pair of kajal lined eyes peers through the entrance as he storms inside. The woman limps as she pulls herself from his path. One hand holds a frayed dish scrub; the other grips the counter until her knuckles lose their color.

“Priya, what took you so—”

He glances at her bandaged foot. The question dies there.

She clears her throat, “You look especially tired today. Was it a difficult day at work?”

Mr. Banerjee sits at the edge of the couch, his shoulders tugged up all the way to his chin as he takes a sip of water. His head remains still as the rest of his body shakes with his tapping foot.

“There’s a giant eye following me. First, it was in the sky and now…” He looks over her shoulder. “It’s behind you.”

Priya looks at the window over the sink. “If it can see you,” she says, “then it can see me too.”

He turns. “What?”

She starts scrubbing again. “You’re imagining things.”

“No, I’m not!”

Mr. Banerjee’s wife nearly drops a steel plate into the sink. The bruise at the corner of her mouth tugs with her cold smirk. “I think that office lady of yours is starting to get into your head.”

His chest punctures, refills with anger, and exhales with feigned calmness. “Priya, what are you trying to say?”

Priya turns from the counter, shaking off soap suds. Her bangles clang against each other like clashing swords. “Do you think you’re so subtle? I know you’re quick to anger. I know this, and I still forgive you for it. But this is too much for me to ignore, Samarth.”

“How dare you say my name!”

“What, so you’re going to kill me for saying your name?” She seethes. “I’ll say it as many times as I want! Samarth, Samarth, Sama- “

Samarth Banerjee lunges for her pale throat, fingers slipping against sweaty skin. Her head jerks sideways against his hands.

“I should…” Her voice shakes “I should have known you weren’t right in the head the moment I married you.”

Thud. Ring. Squeak.

The thunderous beat pounds through the room, cups and plates shivering with the rhythm. It gets faster, adrenaline guiding the earthquake of a heartbeat as the man continues to crush his wife’s windpipe.

“You leech! You think you’re the one who chose me? You good for nothing woman. You were wed in rags and fed until you got plump. I can tell you’re not going to repay me with a son. You only want your own husband dead!”

Her bangles strike the floor once.

Ring.

Her heel drags against the tiles.

Squeak.

Samarth raises his foot.

From somewhere beneath the sound of his breathing, came a third rhythm: small, wet, and furious.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

He looks down.

Priya’s hands are over her stomach.

The kitchen light goes out.

When the sounds in the kitchen finally abate, Samarth is no longer in his home. His tie is completely undone; shoes dark with blood as he presses the elevator button to the top floor.

The asphalt reflects his skin as he clambers up the rusty staircase to the roof, where a few water tanks sweat with condensation, distant traffic softens to a low roar. Pipes fork and branch on top of the cracked cement, leaving little room for a footstep. They groan and bend under him as he drags himself to the cold railing.

From up here, the apartment complex shrinks to concrete slabs embedded in dying soil. People scurry like insects into the cracks of cement, freckles of light splattering across the stone as the sky fades. Samarth’s lips are tight as he considers and considers. His nailbeds are gardened with blood, knuckles blooming and fading with color as his grip tightens and loosens on the railing.

“This is my divine punishment, isn’t it? I must have done something horrible in my past life. Tell me!”

He stares at you.

You try to speak, try to demand an explanation. You look into his eyes, searching for any emotion but only pick out flecks of hazel. Questions and accusations build against the sky, pushing and bending, looking for a fissure in the twilight.

But you have no mouth with which to ask him.