56, Lane No 70, is the title of a door in Bulandaar. The door opens into a corridor soaked in darkness. The corridor ends at an iron-grilled window. Beyond the window there is a yellow-coloured compound wall. The wall blocks the light meant for the corridor.

Near the window, the light resembling the sunrays, which pass through an uncut window, harbours at daytime. In that light sits a girl with curly hairs and big eyes, stitching children’s costumes. When the darkness spreads from the corridor to the window, with the aid of crutches she collects all the shreds of cloths into a bag and disappears into the darkness.

‘The heroine of a shadow play’, that’s what hornbills call her.

The hornbills stay at the thirteenth number room on the second floor.

In the centre of the corridor, on the left side, light could be seen spread across. While aiming at the light the legs would entangle a staircase. Along with it a strong smell of marijuana, rotten jasmines, urine and sambrani.

From the roof of the fourth floor hangs a serpentine concrete staircase. Venturing up, the second floor’s red bricks could be seen protruding into the steps. Take two steps, and there is the thirteenth number room where the hornbills reside. Thirteen hornbills. Thirteen symbols of thirst.

Foras Road and Grant Road receive a downpour. The hornbills quench their thirst from the rainwater mixed with orange-coloured dust and motor smoke. The cheap illicit brew helps hide the water’s dirt, saltiness and oiliness.

With the help of the crutches the heroine of the shadow play starts her sojourn to sell kids’ clothes on the streets. By the time she returns her face is sweltered by the blistering sun. Like a sweltered raat ki rani.

The hornbills compare her to the flower, raat ki rani, the queen of the night; the white-petal flowers on which the autumn’s first rain dews throb. On the rain drops the sky reflects.

Around that time, the father, Ramdhani, who introduces himself ‘Gwala’, could be seen sleeping below the stairs on a yellow towel printed ‘Ram, Ram’. He reached Bombay from a rustic Bihar village with two oxen; a milkman. But he ceased to be a milkman for many years. He was a watchman at Gijibhai’s mill. One day, tangling his uniform on the mill’s gate, he walked down to Bulandaar in his underwear. What then left were poverty and the name Gwala. The wife fell down at the entrance of Arthur Road Hospital, and breathed her last. The last spring cleansed by cholera.

Against 56, Lane No 70, there is a lamppost. Also a red signpost that claims the thirteenth number bus will halt there. The thirteenth number bus starts from the seashore where eagles feast on the naked, dead Parsis. The destination is an electrified crematorium.

‘The survival act of the survival’, that’s what the poet hornbill termed the movement of traffic on Lane No 70. ‘Survival of the fittest.’ Reminding the chariot race that apparently happened in Rome. The race is not based on speed, but strength. Colliding each other and collapsing, the vehicles pace ahead. The weapon of the thirteenth number bus is the First World War’s ‘smoke-screen’. An immaculate life-and-death moment of the vehicles on the street. The thirteenth number fills the sky with black effluents. Seconds later, once the screen of smoke recedes, all the vehicles will be on the streets.

Where is the thirteenth number?

The hornbills start their journey in the first trip of the thirteenth number towards the crematorium. The dawn might have descended by then. The sot-stained trousers and shirts of the machines. When they return at ten in the night the sot would be decorating their faces and bodies. In one corner of the room, in the sodden light of the kerosene lamp, they take their bath from the water filled in the earthen pots. Then the carbolic smell of the cheap, red soap would fill the room. And they go to sleep pressing their faces into oil-stained pillows.

Around that time, in the light of the candle erected on a trunk-box, on an ink-spreading paper with the help of a violet pencil, the poet-hornbill could be seen scribbling something.

C Vasu is the ever-pristine poetic hub of the poet-hornbill.

If the trunk-box is removed one could see, on the cement floor, scribbled by an iron rod, the name of C Vasu.

Years ago, in the monsoon season, the poet, who was finding solace in the veranda of a shop, was brought into this room by C Vasu, and gave him place to lie down.

C Vasu was a welder who earned twenty rupees a day. Died due to a cough called tuberculosis. The poet had to borrow the thirty rupees meant for the electric crematorium. C Vasu couldn’t repay that dept in the form of currency. That’s how this room came into the hands of the poet.

The personal properties of the hornbills are thirteen iron-boxes, thirteen pillows and thirteen earthen pots. And the public properties are the kerosene lamp and the thirty rupees.

The poet is the caretaker of the thirty rupees. Even if hunger threatens to kill him he refuses to touch that money. It is meant for the needs after the death. The charge that is to be paid at the electric crematorium. Things shouldn’t fail to happen without those thirty rupees.

Ramdhani’s snoring and the chariot race on the road outside would continue to break the night’s tranquillity.

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