3
The Rickshaw Angel Zhou
His stomach grumbled, protesting the lack of sustenance felt deep in his abdomen, while his eyes focused on the sagging ceiling composed of gaping metal boards, unable to sleep. It wasn’t the putrid smell of liquid filth seeping from the narrow walkways that kept him awake, not his aching vertebrae pleading for a softer surface to lay upon, nor was it the alarming news of another vicious virus spreading in a neighborhood where clean water had always been a luxury. It was the deafening cries of his infant son that kept him awake, among many other concerns like the few rupees hidden underneath the insole of his left shoe. Were they still there, and if so how many were, and did it even matter? When news of the pandemic and a government-issued quarantine approached, Amit was still sweating amidst the sultriness of the March air. His back arched and ached. That day, the rickshaw he commanded held an unusually corpulent customer, an American lady-her accent gave her away-who repeatedly asked him to speed up in a muffled voice as she held tightly to her cheap fleece, not wanting to be late for an international flight back home. Upon their prompt arrival at the airport, she hastily searched through her wallet, only to find crumpled sheets of five hundred rupees. After some hesitation, she gingerly handed him the money, treating it like soiled underwear, it was a pandemic after all, then rushed through the glass doors. In return for receiving a generous smile from the green Gandhi, Amit’s wife tended to a new blister on the bottom of his left foot. The second blister could wait, for now. That was the last time Amit pulled his rickshaw. Walking back home, he heard from another rickshaw driver, Dheeraj, that people living in the city were becoming sick with “the crown prince virus.” The germ wasn’t allegedly deadly to young adults, Dheeraj told him, but fatal to the old and the young-it tended to extremes. Dheeraj also announced that the government had ordered a “lockdown” for the next twenty-one days. What was that about? Moreover, Amit was told to imminently stock up on necessities, which would be subsidized for those who lived in the slums, if one had a proper ID that wasn’t expired. With a valid purple sticker issued this year. Signed in blue ink on the back, not black. Amit didn’t even want to look. All Amit could think about was the fear that if the virus spread among the slums, like the odor of curry and spice, his son, Rahul would be among its first victims.
