A SHORT FICTION

It was around six in the morning. I was in my dream. A phone call forced me to open my eyes; reluctantly I opened, since I had no choice. It was an unknown number. Even I had true caller installed; it didn’t recognize the number. How can true caller recognize a number? The call was not from a smart phone; it was from a normal 2G phone. You might wonder in the age of technology who else uses a 2G phone? I must tell you that majority living in the village use a 2G phone. The technology didn’t reach to them. People even sometimes have to climb a tree to get signal strength to make a phone call. You may laugh but this is the reality of the village. I will tell you about the village. If you have time I will definitely take you there. The place is not too far from a city. It is around a hundred kilometers from one of the cities of a state, but it looks as if the place is too far even from a small town. I must bring a statement quoted by Anees Jung in one of her books, “Seemapuri is in the periphery of Delhi but it is miles apart”. There is no any exception to the village.

Sorry I took you towards an unending process. I said it unending because one can’t explain the village in one go. How can one do it since it was my village? The village where I grew up. I made you wonder, I know; let me take to the main point. The ‘phone call’ if you remember. It was early morning for me since I shifted to a city but for them it was not. When I picked up the call it was a familiar voice from the caller’s end. It was Raju (Name changed). He told me the miseries of his life along with the entire people living there. I jumped from my bed because I never thought that this would happen to my village. He said the entire village has become a river. They are staying in a refugee camp provided by the local authority. When I enquired further, I found that they became homeless. The thing that shocked me was that they couldn’t save anything; even the documents due to the sudden increase of water in the river. The flood swiped their lives. They lost everything. Everything means everything; they just were able to save their lives.

The same thing had happened to our family years back in the year 2000; I mean some 20 years back. The sight came to my eyes fresh; as if, that had happened yesterday; the day when we lost everything. But we were relieved because we were able to retrieve our documents that were very important. You may wonder documents can be retrieved from the universities. I agree to it but I was talking about all the documents we had from ages. The documents were our identity. Now you may agree to me; why I was serious when I said documents. We were forced to leave the village. We did; since we had limited choice.

Raju is homeless now. Not only Raju, the entire village is homeless. Some, who had money they bought land outside the village but I was thinking about the families who could afford only two ends meet.

This is not only the story of Raju, this is the story of millions living near the riverbanks. Hope Raju would get a better job and help the family survive in this planet.