A Burning

by Megha Majumdar

When he speaks once more, his voice finds courage, and he finds courage too. Look at the rapt crowd. Look at the public, gathered before him, drinking in his words while he stands where Bimala Pal stood not so long ago. By the end of the speech, he feels barely anchored to the stage by his hands on the microphone, his whole self charged as if by the wind in the field and the electricity in the wires. When the crowd disperses, they fill buses where they hang from open doorways, and return to homes where the pride of the year is a new refrigerator. They will bend in fields, earning two rupees for crops that will sell in the city for forty, and stand by roadsides hawking stacks of dinnerware which will chip at first wash. They will watch, wide-eyed, the one movie that plays in the theater on their half day off from carpentry or construction or cleaning bathrooms, while PT Sir, in the government office’s special elevator, moves upward.