The Bridge · The Long Way Down to Morning · Pulse Beat
She does not remember deciding to go out that night. It was after midnight and raining a little. She walked without direction, past the lit windows of strangers, along a canal, and stopped on a…
She does not remember deciding to go out that night.
It was after midnight and raining a little. She walked without direction, past the lit windows of strangers, along a canal, and stopped on a footbridge where the water below was black and slow and offered nothing. She stood with her hands on the cold rail.
She was not thinking, exactly. The thoughts had been worn smooth long ago: You were meant to be something, and you are nothing. You owe everyone, and you can pay nobody. Better if it were quiet. They arrived without drama, like the weather.
Then, from a long way behind her, a violin began to play.
Someone on the other bank was busking in a doorway, and what he played was bad: out of tune, too slow, a folk song, wandering. But it was a violin, and it was playing a tune she knew, a lullaby her mother had sung, and before she knew it she was crying, loudly, the way a child does, with her mouth open.
She took her hands off the rail. She took out her phone. She called her mother. It was nearly dawn in Kochi, and the phone rang once.
"Anika?"
"Amma," she said. "Amma, I need you to come."