Because We Are Able PT I

Prisha is dreaming. It’s a pleasant dream; founded in truth, but old truth. A truth from times long past. From the days when smiles and laughter were commonplace for Prisha. When she was young and in love and the future had held the naïve hope that blind love often brings. When her husband was still her husband. When her husband was still alive.

She is at her first home, just outside of the city. A humble, but solid little structure within a cluster of similar homes, occupied by families of a similar background. 

She is sitting outside, bouncing her baby boy on one knee as she eagerly awaits her husband’s return from the city. It is a warm afternoon. Warm, but not hot; and a gentle breeze carries the scent of flowers. In the background she can hear her mother singing softly as she prepares food for the family. Prisha looks into the deep pools of brown and gold in the eyes of her young son and laughs at the toothless smile and chubby cheeks.

Suddenly, her husband is there; stepping off the dirt path and crossing the small patch of green grass in front of their home. He is young and handsome; his eyes sparkling with love as he takes a knee and stretches out his arms and calls to her. She rushes to meet him, her son cradled in one arm.

 But that’s when newer truth worms its way into her dream. For when she crosses the small patch of grass that separates them, he is no longer there, but is now further away, on the path. When she reaches the path, he is gone again; now standing on the road. And now he is not alone. He is with that other woman. He points at her and laughs. The scent of flowers on the gentle breeze has been replaced with the smell of hours-old alcohol and cigarettes on his breath. She calls out to him, but he and the woman simply turn their backs and walk away. Suddenly they are gone and she stands alone with her son on the path.

He is crying.

Prisha is awakened by the sound of her own voice calling out her husband’s name. She hears someone near her asking her to be quiet and she whispers her apology to the faceless voice in the dark. She pushes herself upright on the hard ground and rubs dirt and grass from her elbows as her eyes try hard to find light within the blackness that surrounds her. She can feel moisture on her face and she wipes away a tear as the images of the dream begin to fade, but the feelings of sadness and despair remain.

She holds her cracked and dried hands to her face and sobs. The hopelessness of her situation takes hold once again as it has every day since the lockdowns were put in place by the government and her long journey home had begun. She isn’t even really sure where she is. She has no idea how long she has been on the road. She had quit counting days some days before. 

The caravan of migrant workers she is in has dwindled somewhat over time. First it was many thousands of workers from the city where she had lived for the past 14 months in the factory dormitory. Many from the same factory she had worked in. Others from farms. Some domestic laborers. All migrant workers many miles from their homes when the government shut down the factories and ordered all migrant workers to return home when the virus hit the region hard.

The journey thus far has been a blur of treacherous days that morphed into weeks on an endless, scorching highway. The first hundred miles had been traversed on crowded buses. They had been loaded like cattle; poked and prodded onto the bus by police using long, white poles to move them along. Then the buses had stopped, unloaded them on a straight stretch of asphalt and turned around and headed back to the city, leaving her with more than 200 miles to go.

Her sandals had fallen apart many miles ago and she had torn strips of cloth from her clothing to tie the soles back onto her feet. The cloth has since rubbed her feet raw and they throb and burn endlessly. She is hungry, dehydrated and exhausted, but she is still alive, which puts her among the blessed in the caravan. 

Many have perished along the way. Heatstroke took some she had come to know. They were usually the ones who chose not to take the daily detours from the highway to the river. Five were killed by one truck that struck them on a corner some days back. Many others had just wandered off the roads into fields or trees and simply gave up; their energy spent. Their bodies and minds broken and done. 

She doesn’t blame them. She has entertained the thought of curling up and going to sleep forever under a tree somewhere several times. But she can’t. She has a son who needs her. A mother who needs her. They have no one else to care for them and it has been weeks now since she used her phone to send them her last week’s pay. The phone itself had become a victim of the journey more than a week ago and she hasn’t been able to communicate with her son or mother. The last communication had been a three-day-old text she had received from her mother: The food is gone. Going to see if there are government rations in town. 

Prisha doesn’t hold much hope that her mother was successful. In her travels toward home thus far, she has found two food lines, both run by local charities, not the government. She had stood in line for hours and in both cases, received enough food for two days. Food that she had stretched into four days in each case with many days of hunger in between. She is weak from lack of nutrition and the thought of her son and mother feeling this pain is almost more than she can bear. How much further could it still be? How many days? How many nights? Will they still be alive? No! She cannot allow herself to believe otherwise or her will to go on will be lost!

Now there is a soft glow on the horizon and she can begin to see the shapes of trees as dawn begins. It’s time to get ready for another long day on the road. Best to travel early and stop before the hottest hours of the day. She stands on wobbly legs and gathers her meager belongings together into a small cloth bag. Three plastic bottles, two filled with river water, one now empty. Two pieces of fruit, harvested without permission from a roadside farm and a small piece of cloth to provide her head some protection from the blistering sun. 

She can see others moving about now; just shadows in the early morning light. She takes a ragged breath and breaths it out through cracked, dry lips. It’s time to go.