Eagles of Hyderabad

We mixed Plaster of Paris for SUPW, for some reason. And I discovered I was allergic to Plaster of Paris. But it was too much fun, and I kept showing up, my school uniform stained with plaster, scaly rashes covering the length of my arms. That’s a storyteller’s life, possibly:, showing up, despite the rashes, because it’s too much fun. Because there’s no life-like detail like a rat brushing past you in dance class, or opening the electric switchbox to touch bats nesting inside; because the third-floor toilets didn’t have doors, nor a roof, and it was an exercise in trust and ties, to stand guard for one another. Always a chance to look up, the shrill call from the skies, the lone eagle streaking across the July or October sun. Always there were eagles.

Nearly thirty-five, when I discovered this layout is called a railroad apartment. At five or fifteen, it would’ve helped to know there was a word to describe the wall, complete with windows and window ledges and doors, that separated the bedroom from the dining room. A sheet of thin plate glass that ran the length of the dining room, say hello to the neighbors. Always things alive, the gigantic black spider that crawled up your leg. The splat of a lizard losing its footing and falling into the water filter.

Once, in the open wooded land behind the house there was a cow. From the Portion balcony it was pale and sweet and lonely. My sister and I went to feed it bananas, possibly. Certainly fed it green grass, watched it settle into the makeshift cowhouse. The woods were a litigation land and teemed with urban wildlife. Knee-high grass, mole-rats. Snakes. As a rule they are poisonous. As a rule they are killed on sight. Remember Friends of Snakes? They made us line up and touch a python on the school trip to Mrugavani. Remember the cobra, rattling violently in its cage. Remember seeing its fangs sink into the gauze covering the glass cup, the method of making antivenoms. Always remember what the snake looked like if one bit you. Memorize the markings on the cobra’s hood, because that may save your life. As a rule, snakes are poisonous, as a rule killed on sight despite being a friend. And they bit the beautiful white cow. If only the eagle could have spotted it in time. But the eagles are dying, remember?

The railroad apartment had a rooftop. Unendingly vast if one is a child. On the rooftop an assortment of abandoned lives from past tenants. A rusted moss green metal baby cradle. An unending stock of sponges. Reams of kite string. A sewing table. Beyond the woods, an abandoned movie theater, a favorite nesting place for eagles. On the rooftop next door lived the boy who got beaten by his grandmother. Not even a railroad apartment, they had a one-room Portion next to the overhead water tank. Whatever was his name, started with an S, possibly. Then we’d sit in the moss green cradle together, watching the skies for eagles, shredding old sponges, claiming to have stuffed toys.