F
10
FICTION
SABOTAGE By Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha.
Mini rang the bell once, then a second time. There was no sound inside. Meanwhile there was another bomb explosion, more gunfire. Mini hadn’t counted, but there had been at least three hundred rounds of firing. The granite lobby was wrapped in an icy silence. One lift was still on the twenty-second floor. The other two were stuck on the ground floor. No one was coming up or going down in any of them. If someone were coming up Mini would have assumed it was Sumit, that he was on his way. He hadn’t called because it was often a struggle to get the network in this area, particularly inside the complex. Mini had called Sumit as soon as the first bomb had exploded, but the network had been unreachable since then. When the fusillade of bullets had begun she had called the main gate on the intercom: “What’s going on? What’s all this firing? There’s no trouble inside the complex, I hope.” The security officer had reassured her: “No, madam, how can anything happen inside the complex? Don’t worry, whatever’s going on is over at the Singhanias’. But the main gate has been locked, the entrances to the towers are being locked too. Please stay inside your flat.” It would have been safest for Mini to have done just that. But most of these flats had glass walls. Even the railing of the balcony running the length of the building was of glass. Mini considered these glass walls instead of concrete extremely dangerous in any case. And up on the twenty-third floor she felt no security at all in the balcony; it was as though she might fall any moment. She would drift downwards like a piece of paper on the wind, except that she would be hurled onto the ground at the last moment. It was true that these glass walls had created the proposition of all manner of light and shade playing with the lives of the residents. A glow at dawn, twilight at dusk, the uncompromising noonday sun, the threatening night – all of these could enter every corner of the flat unobstructed. But the same glass walls vibrated so uncontrollably under the impact of loud noises that a cowardly woman like Mini felt the ten-foot-by-ten-foot panels would be shattered, the splinters raining down on her head. The first bomb exploded not at one or two a.m. in the morning but at precisely ten thirty p.m. Then came an unrelenting barrage of explosions and gunfights, and with them the constant shuddering of the glass barricade on the twenty-third floor. It was fear that propelled Mini out of her flat. No one else lived on this floor. All she knew was that one flat at the other end of the twenty-second was occupied. The lights were visible from the driveway. She didn’t know anything more, just as she didn’t know anything beyond the fact that the combatants in the bomb- and gun-battles were rival land mafias here in the Rajarhat area of Kolkata. She climbed down one floor out of fear, and spotted a thread of light beneath the door. So she rang the bell. Once, then a second time. With no response forthcoming, she was about to leave when the door opened. A man in track-pants and a T-shirt was looking at her,
