THE CITY WITHOUT ADDRESSES
-
Poulami Chakraborty
(India)
On certain nights in the city,
the street lamps seemed dimmer, as if they too were weary of watching strangers
pass without recognition. Rhea often thought of this while returning from her
office in a glass tower, where her name was reduced to an ID card and her worth
measured in login hours. The office corridors, polished and cold, reflected
nothing of the people who moved through them. Everyone seemed to vanish behind
their computer screens, leaving only the tapping of keyboards like an endless
rainfall. It was a world of deadlines and targets, where humanity dissolved
into glowing screens.
Her days followed a
predictable pattern, metro, office, cubicle, deadlines and home. There was
rarely anything that interrupted this cycle except the occasional power cut or
sudden drizzle that sent everyone running for cover. The city prided itself on
being fast, efficient, always awake but
Rhea often felt it was half-asleep, moving in mechanical rhythms, blind
to the hearts that beat within.
She lived in a rented flat
that looked like every other rented flat, cream walls, peeling paint on the
balcony grill, and a view of other tired balconies. The city was crowded, yet
it lacked the simplest thing: a sense of belonging. She was here, but she was
never of here. The neighbours seldom exchanged words, not out of hostility but
because they seemed bound by a silent agreement to remain unknown to one
another. Faces were familiar, but names were not. In time, even familiar faces
blurred into the anonymity of the crowd.
One evening, the lift stopped
midway between the seventh and eighth floors. Inside, three people stood with
her, school teacher carrying a bundle of exam papers, a young man with
headphones pressed tightly against his ears, and an old woman clutching a
plastic bag of guavas. For five minutes, none of them spoke. The hum of the
machine, the faint scent of fruit, and the shuffle of shoes merged into a
silence that felt heavier than words. Rhea looked at them one by one, struck by
the realisation that they were as unknown to her as passersby on a railway
platform. The proximity of their shoulders, the shared air of that small box,
meant nothing. They might live beside her for years and still remain strangers.
The lift finally moved again,
jerking them back into motion, and soon they scattered in different directions,
vanishing behind their doors as if erasing the brief moment of togetherness.
That night, Rhea lay awake, staring at the ceiling fan circling slowly above her.
The image of the three strangers lingered, and she could not shake off the
thought that the city was not built of buildings, but of countless lives
stacked next to each other, side by side, never touching.
Her loneliness deepened on
weekends. The office chatter ceased, and silence filled the flat like water in
an abandoned tank. Sometimes she wandered the streets, pausing at tea stalls or
small parks where children played. But even there she felt invisible, as though
she were drifting through a dream in which everyone else was awake. It was then
she began noticing the small signs of weariness etched across the city, the
crumbling posters layered on electric poles, the graffiti washed away by rain,
the tired faces of rickshaw pullers waiting for passengers who never came. The
city, she thought, wore its loneliness openly, even if its people did not.
One Sunday evening, she met an
old bookseller near the railway station. His stall was nothing more than a
wooden table with leaning towers of second-hand books, their pages yellowed and
spines cracked. She picked up a worn copy of Tagore’s short stories, and he
smiled. “These books know more about the city than we ever will,” he said. She
wanted to ask what he meant, but he had already turned to arrange another pile.
Later, reading the brittle pages, she thought about his words. The stories
carried voices from another time, yet the ache within them felt familiar.
Perhaps, she thought, the city had always been this way, a place where people
carried unspoken sorrows in silence.
It was around this time that
she first saw the light. It was late, nearly midnight, when she stood at her
balcony sipping tea. The streets below were mostly deserted, the occasional
bark of a stray dog breaking the quiet. Then, at the far end of the lane, she
noticed a small, flickering glow. At first she thought it was a lantern,
swaying gently as though carried in someone’s hand. But there was no figure, no
sound of footsteps. The light moved slowly, steadily, until it disappeared
behind the corner. Rhea blinked, unsure if she had imagined it.
The following night, she saw
it again. The same faint glow, appearing in the same place, tracing the same
path, dissolving into the darkness. Night after night it returned, and night
after night she watched, her curiosity battling unease. No one else seemed to
notice it. When she mentioned it casually to a colleague, they laughed and
said, “Maybe you’ve been working too much overtime.” She let the matter drop,
but the light remained, threading its way into her thoughts.
Finally, unable to resist, she
decided to follow it. One evening, wrapping herself in a shawl, she stepped out
quietly. The streets smelled of damp earth after a brief shower, and the city
seemed softer, as if exhaling after the day’s exhaustion. She walked quickly,
keeping her eyes on the glow that floated ahead like a wavering star. It led
her through lanes she had never walked before, past shuttered shops, silent
construction sites, and half-lit courtyards where stray cats lounged lazily. At
times the light dimmed so much she thought it had vanished, only to flare again
just enough to keep her moving.
At last, it brought her to the
old railway colony near the edge of the city. Here, the air smelled of rust and
coal dust, and the buildings bore the weary dignity of another era. She paused
before a house with broken windows and sagging walls, where the light seemed to
linger. For a moment she thought she saw a shadow at the window, a figure too
indistinct to describe before the glow sank into darkness. Silence closed
around her. Only the distant whistle of a train broke the stillness.
Rhea stood there, heart
hammering, unsure of what she had witnessed. When she finally turned back, she
carried with her not fear but a strange calmness. The city, she realised, was
not entirely indifferent. It had its hidden languages, its secret signals.
Perhaps the light was nothing more than her imagination. Or perhaps it was the
city’s way of reminding her that beneath its anonymity, there pulsed a quiet, watchful
presence.
In the weeks that followed,
she continued to see the light, though she no longer felt compelled to chase
it. Instead, she began noticing other things she had overlooked before: the
kindness in the tea seller’s eyes when he added extra sugar to her cup without
being asked; the way the watchman at her office hummed old songs during his
night shift; the laughter of children flying kites on the rooftop across from
her balcony. The city had not changed, but her gaze had. The walls were still high,
the distances still wide, but small bridges appeared where she had once seen
only void.
One evening, she saw the old
bookseller again. “Did you ever follow the light?” he asked, as though he
already knew. She hesitated, then nodded. He chuckled softly. “Ah, then you’ve
learned what I meant. The city speaks, but only to those who listen.” She
wanted to press him for more, but he simply handed her another book and turned
away.
Months later, Rhea still lived
in the same flat, still rode the same metro, still worked in the same office.
Yet something had shifted. She no longer felt entirely invisible. When she
crossed paths with neighbours, she offered a smile, and sometimes they smiled
back. She joined a small reading group at the library and found herself talking
late into the evening with people she had once walked past without noticing.
The city had not given her an address, but it had given her a story, and that
was enough.
On certain nights, she still
looked for the light. Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it did not. But she no
longer needed it to guide her. She understood now that belonging was not
something granted by the city; it was something created, piece by piece, in the
quiet gestures that stitched strangers into a community. And so, in the vast labyrinth
of the city without addresses, Rhea finally found her own place.
****