18. Wake up Footy!
Sometimes the footpath doesn’t wake up at the right moment to remind the house. Am I feeling addressless right now? Damn you Footy. Wake up!
The footpath wakes up. Four kilometers later, it becomes a pedestrian path. 500 meters later under the big banners of the capital, it becomes a pavement. Six steps later it disappears into sand, cement and clay.
That day, six Thursdays later, house shrugs off another shit posting on its tile by Grey. That day, the house is in a mood for shrugging things off, but it is also offering an explanation. Everyone thinks there is a plan out in stars, so they look up and try to find a name for it. If you tell them that sky is not their home, they will break it. Having spent a favourable amount of time standing, I know that nothing looks it truly is. You look at a thing hard enough, you will start believing there is story in it. Stories are the ways they break skies, see a star and find some relation to have a name for it.
An ant travelled for 105 kilometers to tell the house that it had bitten 10 humans on the way and none of them felt the tick of its sting. None.
What the ant didn’t know but house knew, was that the man had stirred up. He woke up from his sleep that night and scratched the pain in his hand to reduce redness he was so clueless about according to the ant.
Everyday dust settles for a chat with the house. After all, it brings news. Aur didi kaisi ho? This sisterhood is bolstering since vacancy brings dust from other places. It brings the pollen of new flowers. It brings letters of prayer folded by trees for the house, and a farewell from the branch that will fall off the next month. Future arrives particle by particle. Nothing happens suddenly.
That branch doesn’t become a cushion. Instead, it becomes a lamp for Toto ki Mummy, who is currently walking three kilometers to buy Physical World Map for her children — Avi and Toto. The children show her the branch. Mummy is struck.
She sells it.
She sells the branch to buy newspaper for the next two days. Her children get to read news in assembly that week. They learn to speak. The branch has a voice for now.
Mummy tells her children that day to admire the house. She says in Bengali, “It is a yellow mango tree… No! You can’t climb it.” There is no hesitation in her voice. The walk has made her breathless. “Not every tree is for climbing. Not everything is ours to be taken away”.
The house sees many people walking by. There shouldn’t be any interests for the house. The house can understand, what putting one foot after another means, what that rhythm does to the ever-ticking-brain of people, what that ordinary thing of hearing is capable of, what seeing many things at once can make sense of. It just doesn’t footpath anything.
