Flash Fiction
The water outside was murky and black. It flowed and gurgled in the direction of the drains and sewers and splashed when struck by the droplets of the rain. The high, thin wheels of the three-wheeler rickshaws created waves that propagated outwards in a sharp, V-shaped wave fronts that collided with the walls and with each other and superposed and lurched upwards and crashed against walls and against gravity and sent sprays of dirty, mucky, waste water splattering all over the sidewalks and over us.
The drains were clogged, and the roads were open, their stomachs split bare to reveal their insides. Their insides were bitumen, tar, and feces. And the rain fell indiscriminately on them all, and on the uneven sidewalks and on people and dogs and cars and beggars; dissolving them. And they all dissolved and amalgamated indiscriminately into one throbbing, feces-covered organism that flowed downhill to where the working sewers were clogged, inadequate and choked with brown water; and where the working roads were clogged with the wriggling, uncooperating tentacles of traffic.
The stormy rain fell in bursts and gushes, clean water falling through an unclean atmosphere, clean water falling on filthy city streets, cleansing. But there was just so much filth to go around that it did not cleanse but gave rise to an eruption of dirt and excrement that swallowed the streets whole; and the end result was just gunk. Gunk that was now congealed, wet, and filthier than before.
But that didn’t stop the people. The speeding river of blackwater lapped at the doorsteps of houses and apartment buildings and trapped hapless inhabitants such as I inside, but the people of Bangladesh won’t be trapped. Some went about in rickshaws, the luckier ones in cars, and then came a time in the downpour when they were lucky even to get a rickshaw, and then they went on foot, their pants or trousers rolled up to their knees and their shoes in their hands. And they wade through the river, feces and all, mouths twitching, heads bowed to reality and to their level of desensitization. They walked through the water, lying to themselves, deluding themselves about the level of filth, telling themselves that it was alright, that it was nothing much. Nothing much, and nothing new.
I guess they all had to be somewhere. I did too. But I didn’t want to go wade out there, and I didn’t know if I was being privileged or level-headed.
Maybe I will catch a rickshaw. Maybe one will come in time for math class. Maybe one day our streets won’t be in such disgraceful disrepair.
When it rains heavily, the roads some parts of our city get so clogged with dirty water that it really does feel like a river flowing through the streets. One such day of heavy rainfall, I found myself trapped in the stairwell of a building, unable to attend my math class. The road ahead was under construction that week, and the sides had been dug open to expose large sewers thick with blackwater from hundreds of homes. The sewers lay exposed as the heavy rain churned through them, and out.
I did not make it to math class that day. But I hope to, someday.