Free The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha Page B

maybe a wind blew or there was something wrong with the hinges since the door, which he had pushed close, opened, not much, just a tiny crack restoring the link between the cage and the outside world, enough for one white pigeon to fly away.
    Now pigeons aren’t great fliers to begin with and this one was perhaps a young one since it fluttered for a while, hopped and then flew, only to go and sit on the tram wire above the street, looking this way and that, unsure what to do with its sudden freedom.
    The old man hurried out, half-stumbling, half-walking, locked the door, stood at the edge of the pavement, called out loud to the bird. It didn’t listen, he picked up a stone, threw it, it didn’t travel far, his hands were weak, he beat his walking stick on the iron chair, the noise was loud but the pigeon just turned its head to scratch its back.
    It continued to sit, its feet glued to the wire, it looked around, at the banyan tree near the oil mill, at the cage, it rubbed its beak against its neck, it preened itself. Not once did its little feet feel the tingle of the No. 12 tram from Esplanade to Galiff Street which was now just a couple of feet away.
    By now, the old man was hysterical. He called out to the tram driver; someone was walking by, he stopped her, asked her to call the driver, she walked by. ‘Fly away,’ the old man shouted, ‘fly away,’ but it was as if the bird was made of stone.
    The tram clanged, the old man shouted, the woman who walked by stopped and she shouted too, a crow, like an accidental ally, joined them, fluttered over the pigeon but nothing helped. The tram moved, the old man saw the pigeon fall, the white bundle drop onto the roof of the tram and then slide down, along the side, the dead pigeon, its tiny feet up in the air, its head lolled to one side.
    He rushed to pick up the bird but before he could step off the pavement a double-decker bus, No. 11A bound for Howrah Station, came rushing by, followed by a couple of taxis, another bus, a truck, so that by the time the road had cleared, most of the dead bird was gone leaving a reddish-brown stain on the manhole cover, some feathers drenched with blood.
    And as the day wore on, as vehicles kept going up and down the street, moving across the dead bird, parts of it stuck to the tyres, big and small, slow and speeding, so that by the end of the day, bits and pieces of the bird travelled across the city.
    The old man went back to his iron chair, one white bird less, the cage looked darker. Whether the old man cried we don’t know. Even if he had, no one would have noticed since it was about nine o’clock, time to go to office, time to go to school. Except for a little girl, about ten or twelve years old, standing in the balcony of her house, across the street from the oil mill, a little girl who saw everything and began to cry.
    The old man turned to sit down in his chair, this time facing the road, his back towards the cage, and when he turned, he saw this girl, dressed in her white nightdress, with red flowers all over.
    He couldn’t see her eyes, he was at quite a distance, but the sight of the girl, standing in the balcony, looking at him with a face wet with what could only be tears, offered him not only a distraction from his sadness but also a chance to silently share his loss, if only for a moment.
    Our story will, after a while, move across the street, over the manhole, over the reddish-brown stain, into the girl’s house and from there, into her heart, in one straight line.

 
N IGHT G AME
     
    On winter nights, just before Father switched off the lights in our bedroom, your mother and I played the Blanket Game.
    Our eyes still open, we pull the blanket over our heads, stretch it tight, turn over on our sides so that we face each other. And then we look at the light refracted through the woollen fabric. It’s a blue yellow orange red light, a strange glow that you see only in the movies.
    We then imagine that we have built