The whole thing happened as if in a dream. The government had offered her an opportunity to go on a retreat somewhere remote for an extended period. This was in response to a growing demand by artists that they be shown more consideration and respect and be given the chance to take a break from society and the daily humdrum routines of life by sending them to faraway places where they may pursue their work in peace. There will only be you and your art there, they announced, and handed over a ticket, visa, etc., and sent the woman on her way.

What the woman had said was that she was getting tired. Of the demands of society, friends and relations. But first, she had to take part in a protest against Parliament because although the government was sending her on a wonderful residency to work on her art, they had also stood by silently when an artist in the city had sculpted a nude statue and some right-wing activists had broken into the sculptor’s studio fully armed, stripped him naked and smeared him in blood, all for the sake of preserving the modesty of the naked statue. The government hadn’t made the slightest effort to arrest anyone involved in the matter.

Emerging from the protest – aah society, relations, culture! – the woman then attended a party because for the first time in the country’s history, an untouchable had topped in the country’s civil service, and this was a moment for celebrating progress.

Finally done with all this excitement, the woman arrived at the airport, which was so chaotic, it might as well have been an oxen stand or a bus stop. People were cutting and twisting the queues to such an extent that they didn’t seem like lines any more but rivers that flowed throughout the country, pooling and ponding in some places, springing forth in others, and damming up to such an extent elsewhere that they were causing drought.

The woman began to feel like she was turning into a statue as she stood in line, but just then a worker came and snapped her from her reverie. Madam, he said Madam, only one cabin bag allowed

But I only have one, the woman said, showing it to him.

Only one, the worker repeated and he touched her backpack and then motioned towards her handbag.

But this is a handbag. Ladies’ purse, said the woman confidently.

Zero tolerance. It’s the latest law for all the airlines.

It was useless to argue. The woman emptied the contents of her carefully packed purse into the backpack and shoved and squeezed everything in.

Security, Ma’am. If we let you go, they’ll stop you up ahead.

One bag. Nowadays. Any gel, liquid or prohibited items? Colgate?

No, Ma’am. Security.

Body lotion?

Sorry, Ma’am. Terrorism.

Some things went in the rubbish bin, others got squished into the backpack.

If she took her clock with her, the X-ray machine would object.

But it's just tiny and I was going to check it in the luggage.

But it has a battery in it.

So?

Please remove the battery.

Rummaging about, everything nearly ripping at the seams. The watch was rendered lifeless, everything was repacked, and finally the suitcase was allowed through.

When she had finally squeezed herself through the machines, after doing the same to her belongings, she sat down at last in her seat, extremely exhausted; all her joints were aching.

I wrote all this out in detail to explain precisely that:

When she finally sat down in her seat, she was so discombobulated that bits and pieces of her were falling out here, stuffed in there, a bit broken from her liver, another lost in the celebration she'd attended, another stuck to the nude statue by the denuded artist, everything huffing, puffing, winded hanging by a thread.

As the plane took off, the clouds of the nation shivered, and the woman thought, oh my, all this has been happening, and I am off all the same, and she felt tired and fell asleep.

Meaning the woman, who was tired, fell asleep.

She had a dream. A tortoise appeared in her dream. It was a blue tortoise. So beautiful, so blue, as though someone had dipped it in blue dye, totally drenched it. It was not fitted with a battery, motor or computer. That is, the tortoise that appeared in her dream was alive. But how did it turn blue, wondered the woman with surprise.

The dream was surprising, but as it progressed, the woman's surprise transformed into a deep understanding that when everything is blue, of course a tortoise will be blue as well.

She felt that the dream was very beautiful, and the tortoise was also very beautiful. A deeply satisfying blue. Lively, yet tranquil.

She also felt that a singular event occurred during this time. Someone lightly tapped the airplane in which she was seated. As you might tap a ball. And it turned slightly.

This is what happened with the plane: At the moment of the tap, it was at the edge of the orbit of the world, and it shifted slightly and slid outside that orbit.

When the woman opened her eyes, there was nothing but an abundance of clouds outside her window. From that moment onwards, she stopped feeling alone. But she also did not miss any of the folk she had left behind.

Slowly she felt suffused with a glow of joy that was a harbinger of her coming union with the sky.

The new sky was behind the clouds. It was new but centuries old. Apart from the world she'd left behind, a part of this new galaxy.

It would be misleading if I were to say that there were no two-legged or four-legged beings that moved about on their own in this world at all. In fact, there were, and they moved about with great purpose and intention. Hold on, what do you mean?

This: that when the plane landed and the woman emerged, she beheld a world much like what they call a still-life in the art world, only this was a framed moving-life picture. As though all the beings ran on a mechanism by which they transitioned from immobile to mobile.

After getting out of the plane, the travellers entered the frame and became part of the picture. The moving picture, that is. By which I mean they moved. Or rather, they stood in a line.

The woman glanced at the faces of her fellow travellers. Had all these entities been sitting with her on the plane? Since when?

She didn't recognise a single one. Everyone was staring straight ahead, which was nowhere, at nothing. They had opened their bags, and held out their passports, tickets with checked bag stubs, and landing cards as they stood in a line.

The woman felt as though she was composed of an odd assortment of limbs, each making their own willful movements, and it shouldn't be like that. She pulled herself together and joined the line in imitation of the others.

The trays were also lined up on the belt in front of the line of people. When a tray appeared before someone, they would pick it up. Then they would open their jacket and take our their wallet, keys, flotsam, jetsam, and place them all in the tray. Then they would take their jacket off and put it in a tray. Then they'd lean over and unlace their boots or shoes and place them next to the jacket – ew, probably dirty! Then they’d place their baggage and the packed tray back on the conveyor belt.

All that was required next was for the belt to move and for the two-legged being to walk alongside it. The tray would enter an X-ray tunnel, and the two-legged would walk like an automaton through the metal detector. As soon as they reached the other side, they stood on a small platform – the kind you see at a cobbler's shop holding both arms out at ninety-degree angles. What an odd shoe that would make if the uniformed airport “cobbler” were to hammer it into shape.

The woman, quietly, unquestioningly, did everything in the moving picture that the rest did. Even if it seemed strange. Especially the part where you get brushed, wiped and hammered like a pair of shoes.

The strange thing was that it all seemed peculiar to her but not bad. She even felt at peace with the fact that sticking to emulating the others was the path to both salvation and escape. To the other side of the airport, where the sky was.

She had a subconscious sensation that it was waiting for her. The sky. Meaning that they were both, the sky and the woman, S and W, awaiting one another.

Of course they didn’t know all this beforehand. How could they, the woman and the sky? Who could imagine there was such a place in the galaxy, or just outside the galaxy, where only one woman and one sky are truly alive?

The woman stood in the taxi queue bewildered. When her turn came, an automaton opened the door for her, took the address card from her hand, sat down in the driver's seat and stuck the card in a machine attached to the windshield. The address smoothly entered the consciousness of the taxi, and the driver-bot began to turn the steering wheel to manipulate the wheels of the taxi.

Excerpted with permission from ‘So Much Sky’ in Once Animals Lived Here: Stories, Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, Penguin India.

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