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A car is honking in the neighborhood.
Mouli feels as if she has just woken up.
She thinks of shutting the window. But cannot.
The glass pane has been imploded by raging Aamphan. Since then her bed, bedroom
floor has been spread with glass shards; flooded with storm water gushing
through the hollow of aluminum window frame. Flood water surged through kitchen
and dining area to living room and apartment entrance.
Startled by the sound of shattering
windowpane, in the early evening, Mouli left her home office, in between living
room and kitchen area, in awe. Reaching bedroom, she has obtained deep cuts on planters
of her feet.
By this time, the storm water has
engulfed the home power back up system by the apartment entrance; made it
defunct, in exchange became electrified. It shocked Mouli’s submerged feet; made
her climb on the bed; squirm at a corner away from hollow of the window.
Darkness, dampness, dull inactive
passage of fathomless time accompanied by crazily forceful tropical cyclone
continuing over six hours at a crushing hourly speed of two hundred kilometers
seized Mouli’s consciousness, sealed her eyes.
Earlier in the day, the client has sent
page to Mouli’s team. It was Kushal’s shift; hence, he was responsible for acknowledging
receipt of the page within an hour of receiving it. Mouli waited for half an
hour for Kushal’s response, then she called him. After several calls over an hour, he picked up
and asked, “Have you responded to the page?”.
Mouli reminded him, “Since I’m your
manager… I must, hence, I saved the deadline. Now start fixing the bug. It’s in
client’s B2B transaction module.”
Hanging up she sighed, “Quite
unprofessional!”
Kushal gave up after two hours of effort
or its pretention, around standard siesta time.
Then, Mouli had left with no choice but herself
fixing the code timely to secure earning few thousand dollars for her employer
and enhancing business relationship with the client. Otherwise, her employer would
lose the business, incurring millions of dollars in penalty for damages caused
to client’s business by incompetence of Mouli’s team, abiding by the agreement.
Hence, Mouli scanned through lines of
the code, found the block of method that had been manipulated by client’s latest
requirement; checked the methods linked to the changed method; figured out how
to tweak them as necessary by logic. Yet she could not fix the code.
Power supply of entire city was turned
off since the landfall of the cyclone, late in afternoon. Mouli’s power back up
system kept her laptop and internet router alive for few hours, till her
bedroom window broke. Then, she received text messages from her internet
service provider intimating breakdown in internet and cell phone services. She
surmised that all the electric poles and posts, connecting optic fiber cables
carrying internet signals, were probably uprooted.
Without electricity, broadband, mobile
data, communication became impossible, even with respective service agencies.
Nor Mouli could resume resolving the business problem in hand. She helplessly
observed tampering of her hitherto impeccable reputation of punctuality. Imagining
the consequences of missing delivery to her employer, ensuing cascading effect
on her career, then on her life, life seemed to be decimated.
Life had already been at its knees due
to lockdown. Mouli had spent no weekend with her parents, siblings, or friends,
at her place, or at their respective places, or someplace away from the city,
for months, maintaining social distancing. Constant view of ugly erratic
hardscape of maximizing profit per square feet, without considering comforts
and convenience of dwellers and durability of structure constructed, strained
her neurons, fatigued her muscles. Even glass-iron-concrete box, called office,
appeared a soothing isolation from noise in surroundings and thoughts.
Probably, the shed of neighborhood car
parking was blown off. The crown of Mahogany tree standing by the parking has
been fallen on the cars. Consequently, cars started honking as alarm.
Nobody dared going outside to stop the
alarms.
The honking has shaken Mouli to senses,
probably. She feels like being drowned in her own perspiration, smelling like
vinegar. Her hands are immovable, like being in a straitjacket, of a flex
banner printed with, “Honking won’t widen the street.”
After Mouli shouted it, once, a lady
left her car, rushed to Mouli to respond with slur. The street was inundated by
water from roadside drain, failed to hold rainwater from previous nights,
fortnights, yielding invisible potholes. The lady stepped into one of them,
fell and was drowned. Without underground sewerage canals, as wide and high as
two-lane street, overflowing drains, consequent road corrosion creating
potholes and loss of lives remain inevitable.
Nobody sued the authorities, provider of
roads, though dilapidated, yet social benefits, for citizens, hence, like
royal, feudal endowment, beyond reproach.
She has thought of renting ad spaces to
flash her anti-honking slogan; yet abandoned the idea. Electronic billboards
are few.
Someone copied her slogan, made a cheap
campaign with flex banner, fitted over iron frames or wooden batons, which has
just been torn by storm wind, gushing at hundred and twenty something miles per
hour, dropped in front of a moving truck and covered its windscreen.
The truck failed to sense total loss of
visibility as visibility was almost nil over quarter of a day, drenched in
Amphan rain. It stumbled upon iron traffic barriers lying flat on the street, slammed
earlier, from their upright positions, to the street floor by storm wind, due
to lack of weight of sand sacks on their respective bottoms.
The truck lost control; rammed into
Mouli’s apartment building. The impact made the banner fly from the trucks’
windscreen, enter Mouli’s bedroom through the broken window and whirled around
Mouli.
As Mouli struggles to free herself from
the wrap, a piece of left-over wooden baton, protruding from the flex banner’s
edge, pierces her left eye. Rolling in pain, she crosses the edge of the window
of her seventeenth-floor apartment.
Subsequent thud on the ground remains
unheard. Rain washes away splashed flesh, blood, warmth.
