The Song of Kahunsha Read Online Free PDF

from the walls of the orphanage, and he knows that he is entering another world.
    If my father ran from me, then I will run after him
. This is the thought in Chamdi’s head as he runs. He is running because he knows that his father has had a head start. His father is miles and years ahead of him.
    But there is another reason Chamdi is running. He is scared that if he walks, if he does not shoot through the narrow streets right now, Mrs. Sadiq might wake up and call him a traitor for deserting her and the children. So even though bits of glass from the street stick in his feet, he does not care. He runs faster and faster in order to catch the truck ahead of him.
    The truck’s heavy iron chain bangs against its dark green back. Chamdi has never chased a truck before, but he has seen other children do it. A white lotus is painted on the back of the truck underneath the words INDIA IS GREAT . He knows that if he jumps and falls, the concrete road will scrape his skin and break his bones, and it will not be the best way to start his new life, so he hangs on to the chain with all his might and uses the road to push off.
    He has jumped into a garbage truck, and is surrounded by rotting food. As the truck takes a corner, a rat is jolted out of its meal, and it runs over Chamdi’s chest. He tries to get up but then thinks that if the driver sees him, he might get angry and stop the truck. So Chamdi stays in the pile of garbage. The rat has gone back to its piece of mouldy bread. There is a crack in the side of the truck, more like a large hole, and Chamdi crawls towards it. The truck has gathered speed now, and the breeze blows bits of garbage out onto the street.
    The city passes by, but Chamdi cannot see it in its entirety. He sees it in pieces, through the hole. He sees small shops, the steel shutters down, beggars sleeping under them. Stray dogs walk towards a tree and some of the dogs limp, but the others seem happy. A fair distance later, the road is dug up. A small fire burns in a brown drum as workers smoke beedis nearby, and a line of slum dwellers walk with buckets in their hands. So far, there is nothing out of the ordinary. There is no sign of the violence that Mrs. Sadiq spoke of and Chamdi is thankful for that.
    As the truck takes another corner, Chamdi loses his balance once again and the garbageslides towards him. He lands on his back and is forced to stare at the sky. The sky is the same everywhere, he reassures himself. No matter how strange the city might look, or become, he can always look up at the sky and see something familiar. It is the same open space everywhere and it belongs to him as much as it does to anyone else in this world.
    He feels he is quite a distance from the orphanage now. He wants to get off the truck, mainly to avoid the smell, but it would be foolish to attempt a landing at this speed. If it were daytime, the truck would be crawling through traffic. He is surprised at how empty the streets are at night. The truck goes over a bridge, and Chamdi can see tall chimneys around him, so tall that they must be friends with the clouds. Apartment buildings are so close to the bridge that he can see right into people’s rooms—an old man is shaving himself in front of a mirror. Why is he doing that in the middle of the night? As the truck descends the bridge, the roads become narrower, and to his right, two policemen sit on stools outside a police chowki. One policeman has a beedi in his mouth while the other seems to be dozing.
    As the truck smokes its way through the streets, the policemen become smaller and smaller, until they are out of sight. A group of four or five black motorcycles overtakes the truck. Young men ride the motorcycles and their shirts balloon as they speed past the truck and swerve dangerously close to each other.
    Then Chamdi hears music. It blares from loudspeakers, and he likes how even though it is night, a song is playing. The truck slows down. Maybe the driver wants to