Edited by Sahana Inuganti
1
There is an art to waiting with strangers.
The metal box rattles with the growl of a thousand questionable clothing choices. The lights flicker. There is a stench in the air—desperation. And probably other things. It’s a dark bathroom in the middle of the night. He’s wearing a black hoodie, pacing around the stained gray floor. There’s a basket of used clothes on the lone stool in the corner.
How long has he been waiting?
There are four minutes left. It is a battle of wills, this strange conversation between man and machine. The man knows that the machine is mortal. That it will die one day, in the dark bathroom in the middle of the night, with all the fanfare of a single beep. But we seldom comprehend the ending of things. Time splinters in the endless infinity between now and then.
There is nothing here, but the waiting. Perhaps it is madness. He thumbs through his phone, rapidly swiping between different posts.
It buzzes. A message.
Pausing, he reaches to reply to it. What could it have been? His face is expressionless. Once he finishes typing out the reply, he stares at it for a second, before the swoosh echoes through the room.
He’s sent it.
But his expression betrays him. Worry. What has happened? What terrible news has been relayed, what earth-shattering confessions have been made? It is not to be known. The stranger with a head full of secrets, in a dark bathroom in the middle of the night. The metal box rattles.
I turn around, still holding my bag of clothes. Another time then.
2
They stare like wolves. At the empty road under the moonlight, with fire in their eyes.
When a group of wild animals approaches you, do you wonder if they know each other? If they’ve seen each other at their worst? If they’ve survived, because of, and despite each other? Or do you only see the hunger in their expressions? It is their nature. The need. Maybe it would be comforting, knowing that three of them are family, two of them are lovers, and one saved the other’s life. What a pity it would be, to be mauled to death by strangers.
The guard tilts his head. He looks tired, and it’s the last shuttle home. He holds the stack of laminated tokens and appears to count the number of students again. Sundays were always bad, but today, it had been something else. Hordes of people, pushing and shoving their way to the front. Human beings turned into a force unto itself, a wave no less real than water crashing into rocks on some faraway beach. It can be so easy to rob someone of their civilization.
The freshman who answers too much in class, and says ‘thank you’ to all of their professors before leaving and diligently waits in line for mess food, shoving aside their friends, and their strangers, and any sense of moral virtue—because the shuttle can take them home, and it’s been hours and they’re hungry and they’re cold. They need to. Does it matter, that the stone you stepped upon was one you had seen before, if the path is long enough?
The girl is sitting on the edge of a short metal railing. Her legs hook around the bars to stop her from falling, and she’s holding her face in her hands, cradling it like an old porcelain vase that’s been broken and glued back together. She’s sobbing. The heavy, heaving sobs that wrack your chest and seem to escape you no matter how hard you try to stop them. When you gasp for breath and your mind decides that Something has happened that is so terrible that it is better to feel and drown than it is to breathe and live.
No one is looking too hard. It’s the kind of glance you give to a professor when he mentioned that there would be a quiz, but the class is about to end and you think he’s forgotten. There’s a small circle around the girl that’s empty. It’s like the crowd collectively agreed that, here, this is the line that marks the fourth wall. Beyond it, you are a story.
I wonder if there was someone there that knew her. Maybe saw her, in a class. Or in the hallway. Living the same life she did, just a little bit to the left. How ruthless they can be, these parallel strangers. But of course, it is their nature not to notice, is it not?
There is light at the end of the road. The shuttle has arrived. The crowd shifts excitedly and moves towards it.
3
I saw the girl again, if you must know.
It was a Thursday night. The waiting crowd looked upon the mysterious blazing light with enough devotion and reverence that I suspect, given enough time, the entire ordeal might begin a small religion. The Dhaba counter beeped loudly, and a swathe of people sighed as their number was skipped again. She was sitting on a corner table, alone. She looked sad.
I got garlic naan and some paneer butter masala. It was pretty good.
4
What must dogs think of hospitals? The place where the old humans go, and return young.
The infirmary smells clean, like a spiked bottle of alcohol. The sort of smell that tries so hard it makes you wonder what it’s covering up.
The doctor stares at me. I wait.
His eyes are solemn. Have they seen something? What terrible news am I about to receive? What earth-shattering confession?
He regards me, reaching into his coat to take out a stack of papers. As he flips through them, reading whatever terrible diagnosis has been pronounced upon me, he looks up and says…
“You’ll be completely fine.”
Huh. Less severe than I thought.
After prescribing me a couple of over-the-counter medications, he waves me away.
As I turn to leave, someone coughs.
I look.
There are curtains drawn around a bed, in the corner of the room. Not all the way though—there is the tiniest gap through which I can see the person lying on the bed.
Washing machine boy. The one with the ominous message. He looks weak, like he hasn’t been eating much. Dark circles ring his eyes. He’s alone.
I pause.
It’s not like I can walk up to him and say, “Hey, remember the time I saw you doing laundry? I still think about that sometimes.”
But something in me still wants to try.
I take a step forward, filled with purpose.
Then the curtain is suddenly pulled open. I see them then, three or four people sitting around the bed. One of them has just gotten up, and she walks up behind me in line, waiting to see the doctor.
She stares at me.
I step back. The way she’s looking at me, with such a curious expression, a part of me thinks she has to be looking at something else instead. I feel the urge to turn around and see what she might have spotted.
I look around, and the frosted glass of the infirmary reveals a hazy world outside. It’s late enough that the sun has turned shadows into long towers, spreading across the world.
Sunshine drips through the glass.
There, I see a figure, near transparent, like a ghost.
It stands, just out of reach, and I look at it like it’s the first time. It looks back at me.
Maybe we’re all waiting with strangers.