His carefully chosen corner is well dusted – and his wife has kept his slippers beside his bed in exactly the way he wants them to be: one straight, one at a slight angle from the other.
He shuffles up straight and smiles across the room at his daughter, who blinks up at him with sleepy unseeing eyes. It is a holiday for her today.
He walks into the other room – his wife has kept a plate stacked with dry paranthas by the closed window.
His wife has gone off to work. She is a manicurist. She moves from house to house, knock-knocking on people’s doors. She earns more than he does.
He remembers seeing her for the first time. A parrot green polka dotted saree and a pair of catlike green eyes that looked – for the first time – not through him – but at him. Sitting there in Pasha’s bedding and mattress shop where he had been working ever since he had first arrived in Yelahanka from far away Kadappa in Andhra Pradesh, both skilled and ignorant– at the back in a dark corner, faded into the shadows, and working away with his quick needle, he had fallen in love for the first time.
Karamchand slips out the third parantha from the top of the stack and places it on his spotless plate. The third parantha is always the exact warmth he wants it to be.
He remembers when he was a child of nine – and ran away from home with forty rupees borrowed from beneath the new mattress his eldest brother had made. Forty rupees and his nimble fingers. He was the seventh and the youngest child of a family of mattress sellers. And he was fading every day into invisibility.
Back then the third parathas always went to one of his older brothers. And the last soggy one would be left for him.
He washes his plate – and the atta off his small intelligent fingers.
Then he slips on his grey kurta – which immediately fades into invisibility as it touches his brown skin, picks up his little rusty tin which holds his large shiny needle and his innumerable coloured threads and his bundle of clothes that are due today – and walks out into the street.
He does not need to look at the small mirror that hangs behind his front door. That is his wife’s – and he can’t see himself in it anyway.
No one sees him as he hops onto a 401 to New Town. No one sees him as he walks to his favourite spot – a dark corner up a tiny little dead end off Market Road. No one sees him as he arranges his things neatly around him – everything in its proper place – and sits down. No one can – he is invisible.
Only his large needle shines as he brings it out of its box – flashing with a tail of brilliant red thread – as he mends the shirt the little girl in pigtails gave him yesterday.
She’ll come along soon with ten rupees, one fourth of what he ran away with all those years ago. And he’ll make the first earnings of his day.
A large cat peeps at him from a window nearby. He finds it difficult to ignore it. He doesn’t really know why.
There she is now – just on time; she wouldn’t have seen him if she hadn’t known where to look. Like all the passers-by who can’t see him as they stride by. He is invisible, after all.
But she spots his needle first, large and bright, snipping in and out of the shirt once more before descending on it one last time with a final large knot of farewell.
And then his face merges into visibility with the power of her attention, his large smile that is always on his lips.
The girl had not needed to be brought to him – one of very few. She had spotted his needle that first day all by herself – and fascinated – come closer and made him visible. She’d been one of his frequenters ever since.
She has brought a friend with her again – who has brought him more work. The friend can’t see him yet – he is still invisible to her.
But as his bright needle catches her attention as well – both of them can see him now, him, his needles, his tin box and his wide smile.
She does not speak his language. The pigtailed girl is translating for her now. But she won’t have to for long. He is good with languages. He has already picked up two words from that last sentence. ‘Poysha’ and ‘rong’.
As he works he thinks – maybe if he doesn’t have too much to carry back, he’ll walk home today. He likes walking. On his sturdy little legs that carry his short frame along.
It is evening now. His corner has become too dark to sit in any longer. His wife must be home by now. Maybe he should get her some yellow bangles from Harish at the push-cart near the bus stop. Yellow to match her new polka dotted saree. Her packed parantha had been especially good today. And he isn’t planning on taking the bus.
The wind is cool under soft red clouds. He’d have to remember his broad umbrella tomorrow. It looks like rain.
