Alien

The eco-friendly park boasted of horticulturally opposed specimens of tea, bonsai and cacti as well as markets which showcased arts and crafts from rural villages dotting the outskirts of the city.

Triangular mounds of soil were duly perched next to their unkempt counterparts with gardeners strolling through like priests administering their last rites; anointing each stupefied tangle of roots with stimulant explicitly designed to shock them out of their agitation at being uprooted from their homes.

This is not my city, she mumbled to herself. Language was too fickle a binding agent, especially one adulterated with an engineered stutter.

She moved amongst everyday chatter. The tempo was too fast, the tone too harsh. She found the intimacy of delivery unnerving, accustomed only to the formality of her parents’ conversation. The result was that each new phrase sounded like the cacophony of her high school string orchestra where Beethoven’s Five Seasons had been systematically annihilated by pre-adolescent tendency towards flat pitch and fumbling fingers.

“May I have a cup of chai, please?”

A sentence which was syntactically faultless, marred only by the explosive outburst of derisive sniggers which accompanied her antiquated prose.

A hot flush of humiliation graced her cheeks as she mourned a spoken lexicon delimited by the crassness of everyday rhetoric.

The shadow of spoken impotence followed her like a stubborn compass as she traveled north towards the mountains, where her precarious stutter was silenced into linguistic incomprehension the further they progressed into icy desolation.

Five thousand meters above sea level was enough to subdue even the most talkative of travelers and thus she took refuge in frozen solitude, fumbling with words the way she did with snow gloves like a drooling, gawking toddler learning to speak. Stiff-lipped at the thought of addressing the friendly kitchen hands as “brother,” a perceived demotion; reluctance to subscribe to an easy familiarity which felt garish. A disquieting proposition that she didn’t understand the mechanics of language.

Figuring out the appropriate form of address had turned into a game of Russian roulette, uncertainty causing her to backpedal and crucify a well-intentioned phrase into a garbled succession of words inconsistent in prose.

The fluorescent streetlights winked on one by one as night fell, and she was thankful for the shroud of darkness which subdued wary lovers and small-time drug dealers into  silhouettes of shadow puppetry; their profiles generic enough for her to feign ignorance towards a city she did not feel entitled to call her own.

She moved towards the waterfront where paddle boats drifted apathetically through a listless lake, coming to a standstill at artificial sandbanks. Even the breeze which ruffled the plants seemed to have abated, unconsciously tuned by the harmonics of the strictly regulated environment like the synchronous movement of women’s periods.

“Are you far from home?”

The question drew a lump in her throat.

“Yes,” she concurred, willing herself to look at the speaker.

“Then let me take you back.”

The taxi driver set his meter and proceeded down a sprawling highway, cars flying in all directions like a dodgem car race.

“What’s the name of this road?”

“There’s no name,” he yelled. “It’s still in the process of being commissioned.”

He went on to explain that this was a fairly normal practice which often led to nameless streets being orphaned from the sweeping infrastructure of the city. If they were lucky they would inherit the identity of one of the adjacent roads.

Her reservations at duplicate street names was laughed off. He pointed out shabby financial institutions and government buildings, their importance divulged once one looked closer at the name, as suitable landmarks to confirm the veracity of a street.

He stopped near the playing field, leaving her outstretched hand holding a limp 100 rupee note. Sister, he called her as he left.

The evening turned the emaciated frames of stray dogs into languid, forlorn Dobermans; silent caricatures of benevolent doormen eagerly awaiting a chance to doff their caps with an expressive smile. She was taken aback after one such mystical being glanced up at her with a knowing gaze; dopey, doleful eyes filled with crystal clear comprehension and for a moment her head spun with amazement at what she perceived to be a glimpse of the universe.

She squatted onto her haunches; a primordial movement, and stared back.

The affirmation she was seeking was quashed as the dog continued to stare at her dully; wary eyes turned weary at the intrusion, and a wave of desolation rolled over her. A flash of brilliance illuminated the mishmash of streets; sparks of electricity leaking out of over-saturated power lines; the artisans quadrant a scapegoat for the cancerous pulsation of electricity which hung over the newly developed flats in the city south-side.

The side gate was open, and the cheery doorman ushered her inside, inundating her with questions, each inquiry suffixed with a questioning mam? The customary form of address grating; only accentuating her perception of herself as an outsider.

“Thank you,” she said tonelessly, leaving him to draw shut the metal grille overlaying the sliding door with a screech, the heavy padlock clanging against the metal bars as he fastened the sliding bolt, shutting out the night.