The city feels dead. I had lived here in my childhood. But now it feels like it has grown old with me, starting as a vibrant, bustling young one jam packed with markets and people and now nearing the end of it's life like I am. I never thought I would be able to walk an entire street's length without passing another soul.
When I had arrived on this same street yesterday at least there were a few people. The place had really put in effort, wringing itself like an almost dry cloth to produce a few living citizens to greet my team. Make no mistake though, it was a solemn greeting, like a funeral procession had been carried out in advance of the person's death to greet the grim reaper.
Our clackety van passes through many towns, sucks the life out of them, and leaves husks of places behind them. And how, pray tell, do you kill a town? By killing the people in it, of course! But, obviously we do not call it killing people. We have more sophisticated medical terms to mask the unpleasant connotations of what we do.
As a rule, we are too tied up in the hospital to see what is happening outside of it. After our work is done we do not linger a moment and never ask about the state of that town again. Why torture ourself with the consequences of the "cure" we prescribe. However, my work in hospitals was not always this grim. And feeing the nostalgia brought on by working again in the first hospital I had ever practiced in, I had decided to make an exception to the rule today and venture out.
My feet unwillingly carried me through the city of my girlhood, intuition making up for my lack of knowledge about the geography. They pittered and pattered and finally stopped in front of that regular rendezvous point for kids, the park. I may not have thought about it in 50 years but muscle memory remembered it.
In sound of the rusty gate which had denied entry for many years, in the struggle to open it and the creaks not softened even by lush cobwebs, realization hit me all at once: there hadn't been any kids in this city for a long time.
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A gentle, artificial pinging suddenly begins in my earlobe. I tap the outer rim of my ear to receive the call while carefully finding my balance on the slippery, moss ridden stone path of the park.
"Hi, mummy," I hear, transmitted to my head.
"Hi, sweetie," I reply with the sudden sound in the background of the leaves of a grove of mango trees caught up in a loud breeze, wafting the smell of ripe mangos with it to me.
"I just wanted to say that this will be my last call to you from my apartment aboveground. The next time we speak I'll be in VR. I mean, of course I will take breaks from the VR every 3 months but I don't know how long those will be. So, this might be the last time we are able to have an out loud phone call in a while. Yeah," she says while tearing some tape and I can also hear the sound of cardboard boxes rustling on her side. A memory flashes in my head of me helping Meela unpack cardboard boxes when she had moved into her first apartment. The Peepal tree I am walking underneath then decide to unload some of it's accumulated rainwater on me.
"Did you get the article I sent you about…"
"Yes, mummy. I'm not having this argument with you again," Meela sighs exasperatedly.
"You should at least consider the health of your son and stay aboveground for a few years before going into VR. Just read the article. It says everything clearly." I urge her, panting a little as the path that I am taking has inclined a little.
"Mummy, there is no research that says that VR is harmful for the development of children. That article you sent is most likey a hoax written up to make people afraid!"
I trample on huge swathes of upward sticking grass as the path becomes harder to follow, cracked because of tree roots and hidden under leaf litter.
"If money is the issue, then I…" I get in before I am rudely cut off.
"You have to accept that our life is in VR now. And, isn't it a bit hypocritical for you to be fighting against this? You, the doctor who specializes in sending people into VR permanently?"
"Those people aren't like us, Meela. They live in squalor and I am doing them a favor by ending their poverty and keeping people like us safe from them. But you and I don't have to live like that. We have resources…"
"Bye mummy, I have some urgent work to do. I'll call you in a few months, ok?"
And just like that she cuts the call, without even letting me speak to my grandson. The path is now visibly more elevated than it's surroundings and has abruptly come to an end at a viewing platform of some sort. I can vaguely see a blurred ring of banyan trees surrounding the platform through the tears of frustration streaming out of my left eye. Each of them have aerial roots as thick as the circumference of a few trees combined. But the showstopper of the view by far is the sunset, disappearing into the hills over yonder. A sun my grandson will never get to see.
The orange hues don't inspire awe in me and instead I completely break down. I loose control for a moment with only the thick, saffron clouds witnessing me and the ancient banyans judging me. I imagine the generation of humans that have passed before them and how small I must look in comparison. Then, the clouds envelop the receding rays of the sun reminding me that it will be dark soon. So, I hastily wipe my eyes and head back towards the hospital, my breath still a little shaky when I reach the rusty old gate.