Nowhere To Go

by Ankita Athawale

Ankita’s story is about someone who anticipated the journey of a lifetime but found that he was left behind. How did he make sense of it all? Where did he end up? Does the absence of an experience make us know it in a way that we wouldn’t have if we had had it?

As the day drew closer, the city was held up by a lightness. People didn’t trod as heavily, their smiles softened and they felt their hearts ease from everyday wringing. Like every year, if only for a spell, it seemed that things couldn’t be so bad after all. With all that music and fruit, flowers and colour, even those who had looked upon the imminent festivities with gloom (for one or the other had lost a father, a friend, a job, a limb) found themselves swept up in an unreasonable joy.

Our lodgings, though not airy or bright, were comfortable. They were temporary. Our hosts were gracious. In their care, we remained rested and radiant for the big day.  Of course, there was money in it for them. Nonetheless, I thought their interest wasn’t only the money. There was something more, something I would have called kinship.

The young boy was the only one who didn’t seem to notice us at all. We didn’t like it, of course. But why bother about him when the entire city was bright and busy in our welcome? It all seems so flimsy now but then, we drew power from the faith that other people placed in us and the cynics made us wary. Some in my group were especially sensitive, so much so that one uninterested boy tipped them over into existential angst.

‘What about chemicals? What about noise? What about water bodies? What about the commercialisation of rituals, the hooliganisation of everything?’ they began to ask.

I was among those who abhorred such talk. Why raise this now, we argued. Look what we’re making of a happy time, we said. Someone suggested thinking positive — being thankful for the present, smiling more, chanting a little, meditating. This met with general approval and so we went back to talking about fine things like clothes and food and gold. However things turn out, food and clothes and gold will remain fine things, synonymous with good times.

Oh, the wonderful anticipation of those days!

Then, the big day arrived. With great fanfare, amidst calls of ‘Ganpati Bappa Moraya’, the lucky ones left one by one.  By the end, we were down to forty where once we had counted five hundred. The owner of the workshop came for the last one of us who he was taking home himself. And that was it. Thirty-nine with nowhere to go. The music didn’t stop. It was crass. It mocked us as it played for those who had very little to show for why they were chosen over us. It is not that I did not know this could happen. It is only that it always seemed like something that happened to others.  If not this, what was I to do? If not this, what was I to be? Was I no one if not in relation to someone else?

I must confess it would not have mattered so much if all the others hadn’t gone either. It is the worst, the very worst feeling when unfavourable events must be attributed to slovenly chance. To be left behind, to not be singled out for attention, affection or applause while another not much different from you should have in his destiny, grandeur and veneration – all this without good reason!

Only two hundred rupees and even that was too much of an ask? What should I say, it broke my heart to think of it. And I couldn’t stop thinking. Attention is an addiction. The more you get, the more you expect. And you forget that your privilege is another’s prerogative.

I know I am no work of art, cast in bulk and brushed over with paint. My maker was in a hurry. Is that my fault? But there are many who were made in poorer taste than I was and they got to be Bappa while I remained only a figurine in a workshop. When you are taken with love and made to stand in for greatness, despite your mediocrity you become something of what people see you for. That is why becoming Bappa is such a big deal. If you are no one’s Bappa for ten days, you could well be a mound of clay or plaster of Paris in a plastic can.

I would have liked to be taken in by a very poor or a very rich home. I am told that they praise and petition the gods with especial urgency. That would have been nice. Since I am neither plain nor exquisite, neither discounted nor cheap, I expected to end up in a middle-class home after all. I tell you I wouldn’t have complained. Any kind of people is interesting, if one has the time and attention to spare. I have both aplenty. Once I have been asked for as a god, I give myself fully to the task. I listen, I listen, I listen and I say nothing. And people, even though fearful of little things, are hardy, hopeful beings. They want to be heard without being told and they do just fine if you let them.

I noticed the passing of time only when the music fell silent. They had bid farewell to Ganpati. I told myself I’d have to wait – even a whole year perhaps – before anyone came for me. I was preparing myself for the worst. How was I to know? One day, the owner of the workshop came in with a few other men.    

‘These are taking up space,’ they said. That broke us.

‘They’re mostly broken anyway,’ they said.

That was the last I heard because I was one of first ones to go.

Just before I was flung into the air, I caught the young boy looking at me from the corner of the room. For a moment I thought he would come to save us. Or only me, at least. He had sad eyes. They were looking at me and I thought I could make him feel something. Now I think he must have been trying to make sense of his own situation, not mine.

I am now lodged between a piece of pipe and a slew of plastic bottles at the edge of this wastewater drain. The water is shallow and full of water hyacinth. I have lost a piece of my left ear. No pooja, no visarjan, nothing. That remains the biggest humiliation of all. At first, whenever I saw a broken arm or trunk being washed away, I would wonder what happened to the rest of them. Then, one day, a faceless, almost unrecognisable one washed up alongside me after the rains. He had been Bappa. He had had a pooja, a visarjan, everything. Yet, here we are, both of us, imperishable but useless.

Ankita wrote software, then business plans and project proposals until her love of music, literature and theatre trumped her interest in algorithms, business strategy, organisational behaviour and such. She now learns classical music and teaches herself creative writing with more than a little help from every writer she reads.