Scene One: A Small Town in the High Ranges, Misted Over

Inside the bus station, surrounded by buildings and wide steps leading down into the asphalt of the bus bay. The wide steps have been transformed into temporary shelters, a roof of blue tarpaulin sagging under its own weight and supported by poles fashioned out of damp branches from nearby trees. The late sun of a July evening filters down through the blue of the roof, and in the grey of the rain, the blue hue gives a dreamy appearance to the view. The shelters are empty save for the blankets and sheets folded and covered by plastic. The people will return soon from the tea estates where they pluck young leaves from early morning to late evening. They wake up and leave for the estate in the rain, covering themselves with clear sheets of plastic that are stocked by many small shopkeepers who dot the town. Viewed from above, there are two roads in the vicinity: one follows the river’s serpentine path, now swollen by rain, and where leopards venture out in the dark; the other runs parallel to the first at a distance and is narrower. But people prefer it over the first because it is safer: no leopards to attack their cattle as they herd them to their grazing lands. In the bus station, in the first floor of one of the buildings surrounding it, is a room sandwiched between the stairwell and a shop. It has stayed unused for a while now; the previous occupant—someone related to us but we do not know who he is—had left a table there, which is now covered with dust and a white plastic bag. The other end of the room opens to a view of distant hills whose tops are hidden by a mix of fog and clouds.

Scene Two: Late Evening, Before the Wedding

Somewhere in Kerala, in a village where the town has intruded only through facades of recently constructed houses by the middle class—teachers, government servants, gulf returnees. A car arrives, stopping next to a house whose courtyard is covered with string lights and curtains. The wedding is tomorrow. The yellow light spills out into the dusty road, accentuated by the weak glow of sodium halide streetlights; here time runs slow. Through the windshield, two figures are visible: a girl, sitting alone in the back row, and a young man in the driver’s seat. She will open the door in a moment and exit, holding in one hand a towel folded many times and on the other an ochre cloth bag bearing a jeweller’s name. Once she closes the door, the young man will park the car a little way ahead, clearing the road for other vehicles. Right now, as the car has come to a stop, there is a moment stretched thin by her not opening the door and the young man waiting for her to open the door, because that is what he expects her to do. He had driven her to the town for her to pick up a piece of jewellery which she had asked the jeweller to polish; a last minute errand. The moment resembles two quarter notes of silence inserted into an otherwise unbroken flow of percussive music.

Scene Three: Grey Rain in an Unknown Place

The grassland descends slowly into the lake; steps vanish into the grey water churning in the wind and heavy rain. A sheet of grey and dark pale blue colours everything one can see from the high point of the hill. The umbrella is buffeted by the wind and his companion holds it against the onslaught of rain. He cannot recognise the pale yellow outline of the enormous building across the field. He tries to match the lay of land with what he remembers from years ago to no avail. The bus station, his companion tells him, is nearby. It has been there for all that his companion knows. It had never occurred to his companion that there was once upon a time no bus station in the vicinity. He wants to go to the bus station, he tells his companion. To get on a bus to ———. He feels that things will be alright once he gets there.