God

Mr Singh would leave out a small bowl of offerings to his god on the balcony by the chute. It would sit there, plainly, on the rough, dirty brickwork, under the rusty railing, over which you could see the trains below. Sometimes a pile of ash would appear next to it, accompanied by a strange fragrance. A few coins might sit in the bowl, matching the metal flavour of the bin chute door beneath it. And there were always wasps, dying, dead wasps, all over the floor. You could watch them crawl around, getting nowhere fast, some crouching into themselves and becoming completely still. Sheltered by spider webs from the rain blowing in from the sky out there, beyond the railing, from whence they came. The rain and the wind brought with them the screech and dust of trains running through the night. Cigarettes and matches on the stairs. The emergency bell ringing through the lift shaft that would rattle on for hours. I always wondered what Mr. Singh’s god meant by all this.