Free The Leaving of Things by Jay Antani

of limbs and torsos. The mildewed apartment blocks loomed on one side, with TV antennas like charcoal etchings against the rain, and telephone wires crisscrossed like vines off their parapets. There was no drainage here, and the waters had risen quickly to make an ankle-deep lake of Ghatlodiya. Without hesitating, the rickshaw wallah weaved straight into openings in the traffic, pitching the rickshaw so sharply a couple of times that I thought we would tip over. Wildness and strangeness all around me, I wanted my video camera, some way to record all of this—the commotion of traffic, rain, floodwaters, the honking of horns. A way to contain the disarray for myself and organize it so that my own mind could make sense of it. I wanted to share this with the people who, for almost two weeks now, lived only in my mind, to share this with Shannon, Nate, Karl, so I wouldn’t feel alone in it, grasping for sense.
    Just then, the rickshaw wallah sped up hard, wanting to pull ahead of the bus that had now stopped to let offpassengers. We swerved past them before I felt the rickshaw jerk violently to a halt, and I saw a woman—small, a plastic bag in one arm, under a black umbrella—stutter-step backward to avoid us, saw her collide then with a milkman on his bicycle. Next thing, all three—the woman, the milkman, and his bicycle—went clattering in a whirl of panic and shouting into the water. The woman was sunk up to her elbows, her umbrella rumpled and smashed-in, and her bag’s contents of leafy greens, bananas, onions, and something wrapped in newspaper all thrown from her hands and scattered in the water. The milkman’s bicycle had tin pots attached to the rear of the frame. Their lids had been knocked loose, and milk poured from them into rain puddles.
    The rickshaw wallah cut the motor and got out. We both got out. Sloshing through the water, I went over to the woman and helped her to her feet. The milkman berated the woman for not watching where she was going, and the woman turned around and did the same to the rickshaw wallah.
    I shoved the onions, bananas, and the newspapered package back into the bag—everything miserably wet—and handed it back to the woman. The rickshaw wallah got the bicycle upright on its kickstand while confused passersby all gathered to watch.
    “Are you okay?” I asked the woman.
    She turned from her berating and told me in a voice suddenly calm and collected, “I am fine.”
    The milkman and the rickshaw wallah were in a full-blown argument now, slinging names at each other. The milkman was complaining about all the milk he’d lost, gesturing madly at the pale-white nebula of milk and rainwater at their feet.
    The woman checked her bag and then picked her way, soaked, from the uproar. That’s when the milkman shoved the rickshaw wallah and the rickshaw wallah shoved the milkman. This wouldn’t have much mattered were I not standing directly between the milkman and his bicycle. The bicycle and I went down together like clumsy dance partners. Gulps of water went down my throat, and I panicked, sputtering, coughing. I felt my back, my pants, my head, everything soaked through, and my arms caught between bicycle spokes. I tried to pry myself loose.
    Immediately, others rushed up and pulled the men apart. I felt hands grab me by the armpits and haul me up. I shook water from my eyes and spat several times. The rickshaw wallah put his hand on my shoulder, called me “boss,” asked me if I was all right. I felt woozy, nodded, and we sloshed back through the ankle-deep water to the rickshaw. The rickshaw wallah complained about the audacity of the milkman, whom I could still hear hollering as a couple of locals tried to calm him down and lead him away with his bicycle. One of the pots was missing its lid.
    After that, nothing but silence. The confusion of the rain-crazed world became strangely muted as if I’d lowered the volume on everything with a remote control. I heard only the