Between 2012 and 2015, I traveled between Delhi and Chandigarh, pre-dawn, more than a dozen times, to avoid the thick, white fog that made travel impossible after 10 a.m. Sometimes in a taxi, sometimes by train, and sometimes with my uncle, who pointed out the factories we passed, set off behind lawns or right up against the road, where he’d worked — this one, that one — as an engineer. At 4 a.m., the agricultural ditches of this industrial corridor radiate a lime-green and violet light. Make me a pair of earrings. Knit me a dress. No, these colors don’t have shapes. I hesitate to put them in my art, the paragraph.
*
Is it the dark phase? Yes, I said, it’s the dark phase, making conversation. But soon, an orange sun was pulsing like a flat disc in the creamy grey air. As the sun rose, the air dropped out of the sky, turning everything pale yellow for a few minutes. Is a memory an adaptation to a fleeting visual field? My uncle’s eyelids were heavy. I often lack courage, but when things are difficult, I know what to do. This time, we were heading south, into a city with immense luxuries, a red couch in every room. This architecture flowed like music, on and on and on. My uncle had a new job, developing estimates for real estate brokers and their customers. Tell me a story, I asked, as the car swerved in the small night then corrected itself.
*
In December and January 2015, an average PM2.5 level of 226 was noted by US embassy monitors in Delhi. That winter, I sketched out a zombie novel in a cafe in Gurgaon, taking the occasional sip of my excellent Madras coffee, which was gritty and fervent. Did you know that I had a home in India? Did you know that as I stepped across its marble threshold, its wooden threshold, its rotting threshold, I glanced back and at the last moment saw something wrapped up? It was a hand-woven rug, made by hand in the 1930s, by my mother’s mother — of a leopard. This colonial leopard was wearing a diamond and ruby necklace, and it was saying something — the words were woven in bright yellow against a dull brown hemp background — directly to the person looking at it. “Goodnight.” I like to think of this leopard walking next to me, lightly growling at a level inaudible to others. Goodnight.
*
This morning, the particles of PM2.5 in Delhi have the capacity to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, at levels that exceed, by four or five times, the emergency of 2014/2015. “The level of PM2.5 pollutants, which are the most harmful because they can reach deep into the lungs and breach the blood-brain barrier, have reached at least 999 in parts of the city this week, more than 16 times the safe limit of 60, ” I read, pen on the saucer, spoon in my mouth.
*
On the outskirts of Delhi, my uncle pulls into an Ancient Greek-themed rest-stop with white deities (as tall as two houses) carved in local marble. We order parathas and chai, taking our breakfast on the patio. My uncle tells me the story again, so that I can write it down. He’s speaking in Punjabi, a language I can speak but not write, so here is a story of the corridor in English, and it’s yours to tell and re-tell. Four stories. I’ve suggested, I suppose, that I was a kind of assistant to my uncle. That’s not exactly right. I was here to sell my ancestral house, or empty it.
*
We stopped on the way to take this photograph of an apartment building. I can’t recall if we were going home or embarking on the long drive north. It was my uncle who was accompanying me. He was driving. “Women are never safe,” said my aunt.
Delhi, Winter 2014 (on the drive from Gurgaon to Faridabad)
*
Story 1:
“I worked for a Dutch-owned company that presented itself as (avidly) maintaining environmental and ecological controls and yet which (privately) was just as corrupt, if not worse, than everyone else. All those fires in the ditches along the road? Chemical fires. They dump it all.
There was a Dutch manager who was bribed to accept a lower-quality burner. It didn’t have the correct protective…and the two Sikh boys, only twenty years old…. They were monitoring it. There was an explosion. One survived through the night. I went to the hospital and sat with him on the balcony as he moaned in pain, then finally passed away. The company gave the families of the two boys $4000 in compensation, and that was it. The government person brought in to assess the incident, and “ensure compliance,” was bribed in turn. He was high-up in the environmental agency. I tried to speak to the Dutch owner. I wrote to the Dutch owner, who I had known for many years. Do you remember? He brought a dog from Germany and gave it to me. The next month, I had to go into hospital for an operation to remove my kidney stones, and when I came out, there was a letter. I was laid off.”
*
Describing the boys, my uncle can’t speak. He stops eating, pushing his plate aside, then throws his tea into the grass. Let me get you some more tea.
*
Denmark is the 26th largest investor in India; the Netherlands are 5th. Norway just altered the status of Delhi as a “hardship posting” for its diplomatic corps, due to the air pollution.
*
The world feels networked to recede, like the moonlight.
How to sit through the phases that are non-apparent, occluded, put nothing towards hope.
*
Notes for a novel never written.
*
Story 2: “They made us go down the ladder to test the equipment without protective clothing. My skin was covered with boils. Each night, your aunt washed my body with olives mixed with soap. It was calming down, but then one day, I slipped and fell.”
Story 3: “At lunch, in the cola factory, we’d enjoy chatting in the foyer, sitting on our folded chairs. One day, we noticed that the cola concentrate we added to our water, with pepper and spices we brought from home, had burned holes in the marble beneath us.”
Story 4: “The janitor found a nest of cobras in the basement of the factory. The manager made him catch them. He was so afraid. Then sent him in a taxi to the forest. Almost to Simla. And set them free. Because if you kill the cobra then your factory is cursed. The janitor let the cobras out of the basket, but one had escaped in the car. This was the end for him. The manager sent me to bring his body back. I was an electrical engineer. He said, take this money, buy a sheet.”
*
On the divan, before everyone’s awake, I transcribe the news into my notebook, pulping its grasses in service of this other kind of time. This is not writing, but it’s weighted language, which I prefer. I am not sure about including these passages here, something to skim but not read. Perhaps I will include them. Delete: Lavish descriptions of the enclave, the balcony, the weather, the surrounding landscape, the sky-line, the dead hours between morning and night.
*
“Fearing court sanction, the Government of Delhi decided to close (or ‘seal’) all industries in this group until a solution could be worked out. In the meanwhile, the puzzle of which other industries were to be sealed led to complaints from the factory owners alleging wrongful and arbitrary sealing. The lack of reliable ground information and corrupt practices added to the chaos.” (Hindustan Times, 12-12-2000).
*
We’re almost home. Behind the enclave is a crumbling pink wall.
