Written piece
The Boundary Wall
Swastika Chatterjee Das
India
About this piece
A flash-fiction depicting the painful impact of unplanned urbanization of rural and semi-rural areas, on the social cohesion, trust and neighborly fellow feeling between the locals and dwellers of the newly built gated housing complexes.
It’s only a week, Manisha has moved into her new apartment. This afternoon, after the chaos and ordeal of the past few days, she finally had some breather to enjoy her “me-time”. She settled on the armchair of the balcony. The uninterrupted view of the vast, lush greenery from her 8th floor flat of this twenty storied building, located in the city-fringes, is quite a soothing treat for any urbanite.
Afar, there are some tiled huts clustering together…as if, somehow trying to stay put, resisting the encroaching city. A tiny, sharp thorn of bitterness pricked Manisha. She frowned, turned her chair and shifted her gaze away to the fields. Some children are playing there…frolicking unbridled and unmonitored…couldn’t possibly from this gated complex!
Manisha’s thoughts travelled many moons back, when they were growing up in a suburb, mostly a settlement of refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan….families of varied status, still bound by shared ache of uprooted lives. “How we mixed freely and played together, oblivious of our backgrounds”. Waves of nostalgia washed over Manisha. She felt, almost foolishly, a childish urge to feel the vivacious warmth of those rustic, carefree souls.
The fields are just beyond the boundary walls of their housing complex; Manisha, walked there almost impulsively. But midway, her fidgety steps slowed…the kids have stopped playing; staring at her wide-eyed started edging away warily.
A girl, taller than the rest, stepped forward. She wore a shabby frock, its stretched neckline slipping off her shoulders. In a shrill, precocious tone, she asked, “Are you from those high-rises, looking for domestic help?” Manisha froze. She wanted to cry out, “I am your neighbour; want to re-live my childhood with you”. But the words died in her throat. No, her ‘otherness’ would make that sound fake….the boundary walls are way too steep.