The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha Page B

property. But the damage helped, one hook gone, the drapes glided to the left.
    Through the window now, she can see the buses and the taxis glide down Shakespeare Sarani, their tail-lights blinking as they turn left at the Ballygunge Circle before disappearing into the dark clouds of their exhaust.
    In the little patch of green, between the Maternity Ward and the Administrative Block, she watches a man and a child, a little girl wobbling on a red bicycle. Their voices float upwards, towards her, but she can’t make out what they’re saying; the little girl loses balance and the man, perhaps her father, lurches forward to steady the bicycle.
    He holds the handlebars with one hand as the little girl, who’s wearing a blue frock, adjusts herself. And with his other hand, he holds the seat at the back, half-running, half-walking. Sometimes, his entire body shuts the bicycle out of her view and all she can see then is a middle-aged man running in the garden, half-bent and laughing.
    It’s evening; not yet seven since they haven’t switched on the street lights yet, she likes it this way. Her room is filled with the day’s falling light, the white walls dappled red; her wristwatch, kept on the bedside table, has stopped at two thirty.
    She will wait for the nurse to tell her the time.
    She walks back to her bed, smoothens out the sheets, fluffs the two pillows, puts one on top of the other. She can never get it right at home, he always complains, the pillows break into lumps.
    But here, the sheets and the pillows all are white, taut. He left his red handkerchief when he came to visit her this morning and she spreads it over the pillow. It’s crumpled but it looks nice, the tiny rectangle of red, alive on the deathly white of the bed.
    She feels tempted to switch on the reading lamp but checks herself: there’s nothing to read except some sales literature on the side table, blue and white, on some antacid which sounds vaguely familiar. More than reading, however, she wants to see what the room looks like when the street lights come on, the huge sodium vapour lamps, two in the park, one just outside her window, several lining the street.
    Last night, when she woke up for a glass of water, she saw it: a soft yellow glow that made the cold steel bedposts glint softly like gold, warm and rich. The light broke across her window, staining the glass in several colours, like the tall windows of her school church.
    And while falling asleep again, as her eyes began to close she began to see scenes of her childhood, half-remembered, half-forgotten: the Monday morning assembly in the St Paul’s Church, Sister Lucy reading from the school diary, God, make me a channel of your peace, an instrument of your love; the black rubber bands that held her white socks in place.
    Perhaps there’s a traffic jam.
    From outside, she can faintly hear the car horns, the revving up of an engine, a man’s voice calling out loud. Someone coughs in the hallway: it’s the sweeper doing the rounds, and after a while, when the road falls silent, she can hear the sound of his mop scrubbing the marble floor, the slap of his slippers.
    She turns back and walks to the window again. This time, the cars are stuck, like brightly coloured ants waiting in line; two police constables are waving their arms. The man and the girl are gone, a rag-picker sits on the yellow bench wrapped in his shadow. She can see that a wind has begun to blow, rustling the leaves of the giant eucalyptus trees in the hospital compound. There’s a banner strung between two, with a lot of lettering, from this distance, she cannot make out what’s written, maybe she needs glasses.
    She can’t feel the wind, it’s better this way, for through the thin hospital gown she can feel the cold of the room beginning to rub against her skin. The gown is at least one size over: its hem scrapes the floor and she has to be careful lest she trip; the straps keep sliding over her shoulders. The first