Behind the Glass
Ayushi Aruna Agarwal
Zhera pressed her nose to the glass wall, and as usual, saw nothing. A few hours earlier, a narrow stream of light had poured in through the window that could only be opened from the outside. A hand had made its way in with a plate of food and then shut the window firmly with a thud.
In a couple of minutes, she would be ready. The visitors would pour in.
As she dabbed red colour on her lips, she thought about her planned theatrics for today. Perhaps she would put on those long earrings, and comb her hair several times. Then she could sweep her floor. And perhaps sew something together. All of that put together, if done at a leisurely pace, could surely take thirty minutes. The block of visitors would change, and then she would repeat.
The green buzzer inside Zhera’s room started blinking. It was time. The counter next to the light read twenty-seven. She poised herself on her bed, untied her hair and started combing it.
Outside, twenty-six men and a little child, the first set of visitors in the 10 am slot, stood behind a barricade that rose up till the midriff of the tallest of them. Some on tiptoe, some shuffling for more space, all of them with their eyes glued to the glass wall.
‘Papa, I can’t see it!’ Four-year-old AR3.1 cried out. AR3, his parent, hoisted him up and perched him on his shoulders.
SW4 took off his jacket, as he unclasped hands with his partner.
‘Why is it so hot in here? They charge so much for the tickets, and it seems to just be doing one thing. Put up some air conditioners at least!’
‘Hey, I’ll take what I get. It’s my only chance to see a Woman,’ XV2 chimed in.
‘That’s true. Who knows if we’ll ever get to see one after this Woman is gone!’ SW4 looked in AR3’s direction and winked.
*
Zhera only faintly remembered the last time she’d seen a woman. It had been her mother. Zhera had fallen asleep as her mother ran her fingers through her hair. It was also the last time Zhera had felt any warmth in her chest and a lightness in her body. Her mother was sent off to the State Facility for Women when Zhera turned nine and was deemed Self-Sufficient by the Director. On the first day in her room, when the hand made its way in with a plate of food, she had violently struck the plate and some of it splashed on the grey wall. Her food had tasted strange for many days afterwards, and she’d pass out soon after finishing it. Eventually, she was numb to the separation from her mother.
Zhera’s mother had passed on in the same week they had been separated, according to the note that was put in Zhera’s plate. Now that she was old enough, she understood better what ‘passing on’ meant. She knew that she’d be made to pass on as soon as the visitors stopped coming. The Director, when he trained her as a girl, had hinted at this several times. She was almost thirty now, had several strands of white hair, and had performed the same routines over and over again. She doubted the Director would keep her for much longer.
One day, they were going to stop giving her food. Or perhaps they’d give her too much of the strange tasting stuff, who knew?
*
AR3 sighed and muttered under his breath ‘Yeah, no Woman to see, not unless their damn laboratories shut down’.
AR3.1 tapped at his parent’s shoulder and quipped ‘Lab-trip what?’
‘Erm,’ AR3 looked around hesitantly, ‘So … we give a very very tiny part of our bodies to a doctor in the State lab-o-ra-tory,” AR3 enunciated slowly for AR3.1’s benefit, “and in a few months, they give us back a baby. Just like you were given to me!’
‘Wow!’
‘Well, yeah. But you see, earlier, we didn’t have to give anything. We could get a baby at home.’
‘How?’ AR3.1 wanted to get to the root of this.
A few older men sniggered.
‘With the help of a Woman … like that Woman!’ AR3 pointed at the glass.
‘So the Woman was a doctor?’
A lot of men were laughing now.
‘Of course not! A Woman couldn’t be a doctor. Never. But what I’m saying is, like I’m your parent, the Woman could be your other parent. She’d be with you like I am. So you’d have … another me.’
SW4 glared angrily at AR3 as AR3.1 said ‘So why don’t I have it as my other parent?’
‘That’s enough!’ Z6, the in-charge, had been grinding his teeth listening to this conversation. ‘Do not give your child false and prohibited information. He will learn what he has to from the books. Take him out and do not repeat this conversation.’
‘I’m sorry, look, he’s just a very curious child. We’ve brought two full price tickets and we’d been waitlisted for so long. Just let our time slot end, please. He doesn’t need to know anything else.’
Z6 clenched his teeth and stepped back. The crowd, after this minor disturbance, turned their attention to the Woman, who was still combing its hair.
*
Z6 pressed the red button as he ushered the visitors in the last time slot out of the Museum. He looked at the pamphlets on the stand
‘The last Woman amid us – the last remains of the obsolete
part of our species. Come, watch it from a safe distance!’
‘Damn right,’ Z6 thought. Now that there was a laboratory method for producing male-children with the use of artificial wombs, of what use were women?
The Director would not be happy with what had happened today, and he was bound to get the video footage analysis marked red. It’d be better to directly take the matter to him.
Z6 tidied his uniform, checked his appearance in the mirror and then sprinted up the stairs with his polished boots clicking against the wooden floor.
‘Chief?’ The Director, Z1 looked up from his files. ‘There was another breach today.’
The Director signalled towards the panel in his office. Z6 nodded and switched on the recording of the footage. He skipped to the part where AR3 was talking to his child, AR3.1.
The Director observed carefully. ‘You didn’t have to wait so long to intervene.’ Z6 stared down at his boots.
‘Anyway, this has been happening once every month at the very least. Why don’t they just shift it to the goddamn State Facility for Women and let it pass on! It is so obvious that putting it up for viewing is dangerous.’
‘Yes, Chief. The money we get from the visitors is hardly enough to maintain this Museum. There is no profit either.’
‘It is not even enough to pay me a good salary’, the Director fumed. ‘The damn books are enough to tell them Women used to exist, like dinosaurs, you know? Ha!’ His eyes glinted as he reflected on the clever point he had just made.
‘Okay Z6, do this – compile all the instances of breach and have it ready by tomorrow morning. I’m taking this to the Ministry.’
*
Zhera sat down on her bed with her plate of food, as she read through the letters she’d been writing over the years. She wrote them to her mother, telling her all the things she’d have said if they could meet and asking her questions that she couldn’t find answers to: how tall were the other walls in the world? Was the entire world covered by a grey ceiling like hers? Were there other girls with hair as long as hers?
A few days ago, as she slept, she had broken through the glass wall and galloped into the world – a beastly thing, an other-wordly thing. She ran so fast, she couldn’t tell if it was her legs carrying her or if she was flying with the wind. Her long brown hair was dancing all around her, and no one could see it. Yes, there was dance and no visitors. She burst onward and onward…
The green light was blinking already. Zhera tucked all the sheets of paper under her bed. It was forbidden for her to show any sign of ability, talent, or aspiration. The list of forbiddens was long and detailed, but the Director had made Zhera narrow down on activities she could perform that breached none of these. Today, she was going to lay out her bed and fold her sheets, then dust her room. That could take thirty minutes. Repeat.
Outside, a hoarding read Last three days of the last Woman in our land.
The State press had declared last week that following a meeting between the Director and the Minister for Cultural and Historical Affairs, it had been decided that the museum would be repurposed to showcase state-of-the-art technology.
Swathes of men had been applying for a ticket, and several thousands of them were never going to get the chance to see a Woman, even though time slots had been shortened and the capacity had been doubled.
*
Zhera had been getting more visitors than ever for the last three days. Seventy men whose faces she could not see in each slot from morning till late evening.
She stared at her plate. The food tasted strange; as strange as it did back when she was a little girl. She picked up some of the rice and sniffed it, turning it over and over. Why did they want her to sleep better today?
The door clicked behind her. It hadn’t been opened since she was brought in.
Z6 entered and surveyed the room. ‘Eat your food!’ he bellowed. His eyes seemed to be following the length of her hair with disgust. ‘And tie that up. You have five minutes.’
The sudden increase in visitors, the food, the door being unlocked … Zhera breathed in deeply. ‘No.’
Z6 stared in disbelief at her response.
‘NO!’ she shouted again. Her eyes were swelling with rage and her palms were clenched into tight fists.
Z6 smirked and grabbed her by her arm. He started dragging her towards the door while Zhera tried to firmly plant her feet with all her weight. It was no match.
The Director was staring at his watch outside the room. He looked at Zhera’s face distorted with anger and shook his head as Z6 dragged her towards him. ‘There’s a huge crowd outside. If you behave, maybe they’ll remember your kind well. Or you could choose to be an utter disgrace.’
Zhera was on the brink of tears but she wasn’t going to pass on without a fight. ‘Let me go back to my room!’ she bellowed.
The Director looked at Z6 and rolled his eyes. He beckoned to a guard standing nearby, who grabbed Zhera by the other arm and pulled her towards the entrance of the museum.
*
As Zhera came into view, the children broke into applause - they had never seen a Woman, and they were so lucky to get a glimpse before their kind was wiped out altogether! Many were carrying small flags and waving them. It was a spectacle.
The morning sun shone harshly on Zhera. She flinched as she tried to survey the crowd: a sea of similar looking men and what looked like their younger replicas. ‘Don’t!!’ she screamed again, and the cheering got louder.
The Minister for Cultural and Historical Affairs chuckled as he came up to the podium. He raised one hand to quieten the crowd.
‘The last female of our species,’ the Minister spoke, ‘has run its course with us.’ He paused to let the crowd cheer.
‘It is time for it to pass on. Let us say goodbye to this vestige of our past.’
As Zhera was dragged into a van, she looked up to see what colour the world’s ceiling was. In the cottony blue sky with streaks of yellow and orange, a bird soared, its wings stretched against the sun. She wondered if it was a female bird.
*
Ayushi Aruna Agarwal is a lawyer, teacher, researcher and writer, working primarily in the area of human rights law. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Oxford and is an Assistant Professor at Jindal Global law School. Her poems and short stories have appeared in The Bombay Review, The Alipore Post and are forthcoming in Sahitya Akademi’s journal Indian Literature.
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