Simultaneously, Alive

Siddhå was a son of the slums.

His father had a small cellphone repair store where he used to sneak in and watch old-school Bollywood movies on antiquated iPhones, stealing wifi from the rich mutton vendor who watched ‘adult’ programming in his air-conditioned shop, away from the eyes of his doting wife. Siddhå’s entire education was a combination of what he saw in movies, and what Kaal Ikka told him.

Siddhå was four years old when he became a man.

That birthday, his father had bought him a painted toy train that Siddhå had not wanted. It was true that Siddha stared at the train that zipped past the slums every day. His father, in some attempt to win the child bought him the closest version that he could. Unlike other children who would have probably appreciated the effort and been distracted by the happily painted toy, Siddha didn’t understand what he should feel. He stared at the real train because it was alive, and seemed to take people away from the grit of the slums. He wished his father had bought him a ticket to sit on the trains instead. He saw people hanging out of the doors of the train, swinging freely and looking onwards into a somewhere that Siddha didn’t know -he couldn’t see the end of the tracks. This unknown always fascinated Siddha.

Still, holding the toy train that his father had bought him, gave him some peace that didn’t stay long. His father chided him out of the house to play with the train outside the chawl. Even at that age, Siddha knew he was being escorted out for a reason. It was that time of the afternoon turning into the evening when father bought Radha Maasi home. She was a flower vendor with long black oiled hair, green glass bangles and crooked teeth.

Holding his red train in one hand, Siddha watched as his father walked behind Radha Maasi into the four-walled cubicle they called a home. His father locked eyes with Sidda for a moment before shutting the door and Siddha for reasons unknown to him felt like smashing the train to the ground. Instead, he ran to Kaal Ikka’s store. Ishu, the lamb who had been there for the past month would cheer him up. Siddha had made friends with Ishu. Kaal Ikka had allowed him to untie the lamb from the post he was stationed at and take him for a walk around the store. Today Ishu had a red mark, like a tilak on his forehead. Siddha didn’t like the mark and tried rubbing it off, it wouldn’t come off though. Kaal Ikka had told him that he couldn’t take Ishu for a walk today so he sat down beside her trying to get the static wheels of his toy train to move. He looked up surprised as his mother called his name. She gave him a hug and said that she was going to make his favourite dinner tonight; birthdays are special, she said and he wondered why. She had come to Kaal Ikka’s store to buy the meat for the meal. Siddha immediately cheered up. It wasn’t often that they got to eat meat. Hand in hand with his mom, Siddha said bye to Ishu and walked to the front of the store. As they waited for their cut of meat, Siddha suddenly remembered that he had left that godforsaken train near Ishu. Although he didn’t want it at all, he was afraid of being beaten to death by his father for losing it. He informed his mother that he’ll be back in a minute and ran out of the store to the back. That’s strange, Ishu was not at the post but the train was. Oh well, he thought, and just as he was about to run back to his mother, he saw Ishu being walked by Kaal Ikka to a thin corridor at the very back of the store. That’s mean, Siddha thought stubbornly, I could have walked Ishu. Then he noticed that Kaal Ikka had that knife in his hand from the front of the store. Siddha’s heart started thumping loudly. He vision fogged and he wanted to move those legs that were suddenly planted heavily into the ground. It took masses of effort for him to turn and run. It was too late- he heard an all too familiar bleat for one last time and imagined the rest. He went back to his mother dazed and forced his hand into hers. His mother’s joy at making him his favourite meal kept him silent.

Ishu arrived folded in yesterday’s newspaper. There was nowhere in the house Siddha could go and cry privately so he sat stone-faced next to his father waiting for the meal to arrive. He looked nauseated at the plate in front of him and then looked at his mother’s joy in serving him what she could on his birthday. He saw the train next to him and the meal in front of him, two unheard wishes and unwanted gifts. He slowly and deliberately forced the meal down his throat, tears streaming incessantly and involuntarily down his face.

He realized his third unwanted gift that day, he had grown up. This is life, Siddha had decided. He will not wish. He will not hope. He will do with what he had. From that moment, he switched. The tears dried. He forced himself to enjoy the lamb curry as he forced the train’s wheels into movement. Much better, he said to himself.

His father saw him play with the red train. His mother saw him eat. They went to bed happy and made love that night as he wept himself to sleep. Little did they know, that they brought their second son to life as they killed the first.