Free The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha Page A

certain rainy days, when the sky was dark, it seemed tiny clouds had slipped into the cage each dragging with it just a little bit of the sky. And then one afternoon in 1977, the oil mill closed down. Just like that, all of a sudden.
    It was the time they started painting Moral Science lessons on trucks and trams, buses and taxis. In black cursive letters:
    Work more, talk less. Honesty is the best policy.
    The owner of the oil mill, a heavy man in a silk kurta and dhoti, his chin glowing from the necklaces around his neck, there were at least four, drove up to the mill door that evening, stepped out of his car, and walked to the gate, two locks, one in each hand. The workers waved red flags, shouted their protests, one even spat in his direction but it didn’t matter because the owner kept walking as if he couldn’t hear; with a smile on his face, he locked the gates, put the keys in his pocket, the workers heard the clink and he began to walk back to his white Ambassador. When suddenly, he stopped.
    He saw the old man in the crowd and he walked up to him, the old man, afraid, hid behind some young men, the owner put one hand on his shoulder, lowered his mouth to his ear and said something which made the old man smile. This whole thing lasted not more than fifteen seconds before he turned and walked away towards the car.
    Some workers, the more angry ones, ran after the car, chased it over a distance but the car was faster. They returned, cursing the man, calling him names, they then circled the old man, asked him what the owner had said.
    One young worker shouted at him. ‘Don’t double-cross us,’ he said. ‘Don’t stab us in the back,’ another said.
    The old man just smiled, a sad and nervous smile, and said, no, there was no deal, the owner had told him to take care of the pigeons, to look after them, to see to it that they got fed every day and the cage was cleaned every morning.
    This gave the workers some hope because it showed that the owner had a little bit of his heart still left. And no one protested, no one was against the pigeons.
    But like water in the sun, this hope began to disappear, in patches, so that by the time summer slipped into the monsoons, it was gone. A team from the Labour Commissioner’s office came to inspect but nothing happened, the mill never opened.
    Some workers stayed there at the entrance, shouting slogans, propped up their flags against the door, and when it was too late, when the rest of the neighbourhood had gone to sleep, they sat down, in a bunch, played cards until they fell asleep.
    As the rains came, the flags got drenched, discoloured, the red turned into some pale brown, the older workers began to leave the group, in ones and twos, to look for other jobs. The younger ones waited and waited to teach the owner a lesson but nothing happened. Until one day, they too went away, leaving behind the red flags drooping over the signboard. Only two things remained unchanged and unaffected: the pigeons and the old man.
    From the very first day, they fell in love, the old man and the birds.
    Morning, afternoon, evening, he sat on an iron chair, his back to the road, as if in a painting, looking at the birds. When it rained, he sat with an umbrella; when it got cold, he sat with a shawl draped over his head, a small pile of wood, old newspapers, burning at his feet.
    Exactly at eight every morning, when the siren from the flour mill, about half a kilometre away, went off, he would get up, steady himself with the walking stick and climb up the two steps that led to the door of the cage. He would unlock it, enter the cage, close the door behind him, pick up the broom that lay on the floor.
    The birds flew around him, some perched on his shoulder, on his back, their feathers falling across his face but the old man looked as if he were walking in paradise, in the snow, all wrapped up and warm, the flakes falling across his face.
    Until one day, when he walked inside, something happened,