Eavesdrop

A stranger comes to town and overhears a conversation

The black-capped yellow three-wheeler comes to a halt. The driver raises his right foot over the front wheel that juts up into the vehicle. He was the fourth driver I had flagged, and the only one who stopped. He had looked at the address in my notebook and studied me up and down. He steps out onto the road, left leg first. He gestures. I have arrived. I nod, knowing he has given me a special price because I appear foreign, despite my blackness.

I grab my grey, burgundy-lined faux leather holdall, step out, pay the special fee and get on my way. The house is long, mostly white, except where the ground around it has receded, painting it with an orange-brown border.

I am greeted by the helper, the pallu of her sari tucked into her hip to keep it from getting in the way while washing and sweeping. She points me to the side stairs that lead to the second floor and hands me a single key on a warped ring. As I make my way upstairs, she calls out and brings her fingers bunched up to her lips and yells out ‘ettu, saapida’: at eight, to eat.

I let myself into the room, get what I need from my bag and head downstairs. The shower is a tap on the side of the house, four feet from the ground with a faded red pail and a matching red scoop. A jagged edge where the handle has broken off. The tap squeaks on and cool water gushes into the pail. It takes roughly four scoops, a soaping and a scrub to get myself fresh before I go back to my room and collapse onto the bed in my wet towel.

I wake up to the familiar sounds and smells of a meal being prepared downstairs in the kitchen. Knife to board, black mustard seeds splitting, curry leaves crackling: a storm brewing in a wok. I hear faint talking through the floor. Murmurs, a pause, then a cackle. Then more talking, followed by a giggle, some more cackling, then murmurs again.

In my towel still, I walk out of the room to the top of the stairwell. I make out what sounds like chanting to the metal wok being scraped.

My curiosity grows.

I run back and search in my bag for a cord. I find it, red and black, intertwined, strong and long. I detach my ear from my head, attach it to the cord, run back to the top of the steps and lower it over the side. It hovers outside the kitchen window. And I wait.