The Ominous Signal
The whole city pulsed with dampness, as though the walls and pavements and sleeping bodies had been steeped overnight in fever. A rain of dawn had washed Calcutta, leaving her sweating and swollen, heavy with her own breath. Sunil leapt across the water with three quick bounds, landing on the pavement like a man who feared the earth might swallow him whole. Winter rain perhaps, but in Calcutta every shower was the same: the streets turned treacherous, the stones dissolved, walking fast became a crime against gravity. Yet the girl—ah, the girl moved as if the city were her conspirator—darting like a kingfisher, skimming, leaping, her feet accustomed to Calcutta’s wounded body, the city that both betrayed and carried her. Mud gripped Sunil’s soles. The potholes yawned at him like the mouths of beggars. Communists had promised to mend them, but the streets had not believed. His shoes were new, two and a half days old, bought at Dharmatala with a pride that already felt foolish. Thei...