Outsourcing
It has been over ten years since I sat outside that blue hut on the banks of a rapidly swelling river. The Tehri dam has been completed and the valley that Sunderlal Bahuguna called home is now a vast glassy lake. I can picture the day the Bahugunas packed up their earthly belongings; blankets neatly folded, pots and pans tucked away like Russian nesting dolls, fragile ceramic bowls and dishes wrapped in newspaper and placed carefully in boxes. Maybe a son or a nephew with a flatbed truck came to help them load the furniture, the platform bed turned upside down to better fit the filing cabinets on top of it. The water would be louder now, the stream having pooled and engulfed the yard. Perhaps the water rose high enough that it marked a permanent dark, wet line on the side of the turquoise hut. Maybe, when the son or nephew lugged the heavy furniture out to the truck, he had to wade through calf-high water. I imagine once their meager belongings were packed and loaded, tied safely in place with rope, Mrs. Bahuguna sweeps the floor as though anticipating the day that they might return and again take up their protest. Sunderlal walks in the house, places a hand on top of hers, stopping the pendulum motion of her sweeping. In this simple gesture lies a resignation; this is not a fight that they could have possibly ever won. Forces larger and more powerful have brought about this destruction.
I imagine that there is a submerged ghost town under that lake. Fish that manage to make it over the dam walls swim in through the windows and dart around the vacant rooms. The tomatoes and ladyfingers have been replaced by aquatic plant life, and this sustains the town’s new inhabitants. The mango tree, its roots long ago drowned by rising water, has toppled on its rotted roots. Schools of fish, rather than small children, now play in its bare bows. The turquoise blue shack sits on the now muddy bottom, its vibrant color dulled by the murky brown water. Slowly, as the years progress, the floors so lovingly swept clean by its former occupants become dirtied by layer after layer of clay-like silt gathering like dust on a lampshade. The already peeling paint flakes off, catches on a current, and floats away. The boards crumble and eventually the house collapses in on itself.
