A couple of times Ashalata had nearly tripped over as her bulge hit against the shelf when she got up for a sip of water in the middle of the night.

“Hey, careful,” Nanhe-Joon would say, following his cautionary advice to his wife with expletives aimed at the shelf.

Those final few months of Ashalata’s pregnancy had been tough on them as it were. As her belly kept protruding, she couldn’t squat to knead the clay dough and put it into the mould, brick by precise brick that she would lay on the ground to dry. When her productivity dropped by a few hundred bricks a day, so did their income. Instead of the eight days’ worth of ration money, Kailash Nath deemed it fit for the couple to receive six days of ration wages per week. Nanhe decided they needed to adjust their diet too -- they would give up the onions and green chillies with their rotis and instead get a half-litre packet of milk for Asha to drink through the week. He couldn’t take any chances, not after the previous two times, when they came close to becoming parents, before...

When Munnu finally came along, the milk went towards feeding him as Ashalata’s breasts didn’t have any. Jagdish and Chandni, their next-door neighbours, supplied them onions and chillies for the next three months, until Ashalata felt strong enough to return to work. The women took care of Munnu in turns -- making sure to wrap his head with their odhnis to save it from burning in the summer heat. The older kids did their bit to keep the infant entertained – with songs and toys, Parle-G biscuits crushed to powdery bits and licks off the odd ice lolly bar when they got hold of one. Initially he cried a lot, from exhaustion and thirst, but soon got used to it all, like every child born in a brick kiln does.

Jagdish was the first to suggest turning the shelf into a stroller. Ashalata’s face beamed at the idea -- she felt relieved to think that Munnu would have a place to rest as she moulded fresh bricks or loaded baked ones onto a cart. Nanhe-Joon wasn’t as convinced. What if Maalik walked by suddenly on one of his checks? Of late, his visits had become infrequent. But one could never be sure.

“Leave it to me,” Jagdish said. His insouciance was directly proportional to the length of time -- eight years -- he had spent at the kiln. He knew how to handle the boss and still keep his job. Gleaning inside information from the contractors and builders who came for business using his ready-to-eavesdrop ears happened to be his biggest weapon to dodge the Maalik’s suspicions.

Nanhe-Joon would have still not agreed to repurpose the shelf had Munnu’s all-curious, fidgety hands not toppled it. A sharp chip of the wood pierced his toe as he sat on the floor to examine his dismantled exhibit. While Asha scooped him up to stop his wailing, Jagdish gathered the remains of the shelf and took them to his room without waiting for Nanhe’s permission.

When it took shape, the stroller looked a lot less awkward than its predecessor. It came with front and back wheels that Jagdish sourced from toy buses he’d built for his sons when they were toddlers. It was fairly basic otherwise, more like a miniature cart. To pull it, Jagdish fastened ropes at both ends that were tied to a knot in the front, anchored by the remaining tether of the rope. It worked perfectly. Taking little Munnu around the kiln became a hotly contested chore for any kid over the age of eight. Pratap, Jagdish’s 14-year-old son, took charge of this activity. To Ashalata, Munnu appeared like royalty, being strolled around like that.

Before Munnu’s birth, Nanhe had no intention of returning to the kiln after the current season. He’d had enough of getting his face blackened by the torrid smoke that blasted him every time he lifted the iron lid off hot sand to shove more coal into the baking kiln. Enough, already. One season would help him earn close to the entire sum he needed to pay off Bauji’s debt taken from the moneylender in their village. His father, a sharecropper like him, had suddenly passed away, struck as he was by lightning one evening on his way home from the field.

But Munnu’s coming changed all his plans. That perfect face of his, smooth as a marble ball, those delicate fingers -- nah, there was no way Nanhe would let those hands hold bricks.

“If only I...we…work here for a couple of years, we can save enough to put Munnu in a school,” he told Ashalata. They didn’t share this thought with anyone, not even with Jagdish and Chandni.

One evening, the kiln closed down. Abruptly, without notice. Nanhe and Asha had exactly a week’s provisions left. Their neighbours began packing up and leaving for their villages. The boss announced the kiln would remain shut until the government lifted its lockdown orders. Since it had come upon him so suddenly, Kailash Nath could only give 500 rupees to each of the labourer families. Bas. With that, he’d ordered them to vacate the premises within a week.

Everyone but Nanhe-Joon’s family left. They would have gone, too, but Munnu stopped them. With a body-shivering fever. In the beginning, half a crushed Crocin in his hot milk seemed to help. But by the fourth night, they were out of the medicine. The nearest chemist shop was two kilometres away. As if he understood his parents’ predicament, Munnu remained feverless for two days. Nanhe-Joon looked at the sky and uttered a silent prayer.

“Bas, we’ll leave tomorrow morning,” he told Ashalata. She nodded yes, patting Munnu’s back to lull him to sleep.
That night, the fever returned. When Ashalata sat up with a start on their bed, her six-month-old son’s whimpering barely registered with her. A downpour outside slashed through every possible sound and threatened to ram through their flimsy door. Her hand nearly burned when she put it on Munnu’s forehead. Asha sprang off the bed to bring wet rags. The noise woke up Nanhe and as he sat stunned, trying to fathom the power of the mercury seizing his son’s body, he put on his clothes and dashed out. He didn’t wait for the umbrella, crooked and torn, Asha brought out for him. He kept running for the entire two kilometres, stopping only when he saw the signboard of the chemist shop. Its closed shutters mocked him like the thunder that split his ears. The 24/7 sign didn’t gleam like it always did. It was in lockdown, like everything, and everyone else.

“We’ll take him to the hospital in the morning,” Nanhe told Asha as they kept changing the wet rags on Munnu’s forehead throughout the night. The boy drifted off to sleep.

The hospital visit finished quickly the next morning. They had brought a dead child, the doctors told them. They buried his body by noon, then packed their things and set off for the village, 220 kilometres away. On foot. Nanhe-Joon vowed never to return to the city. The city that swallowed his son. The city where you didn’t have even a single soul to call your own. The city with its high-fi showrooms that didn’t have one strip of Crocin to spare for Munnu.

Next to Ashalata, the vacant stroller walked as she pulled it along. Many hours and kilometres later, a kind man stopped them near a roadside tea stall. He offered them tea and buns and asked them about the empty stroller. Nanhe could barely keep himself together, shaking every now and then, as he told him the story. Ashalata’s face was a noiseless waterfall.

“Why are you taking the stroller to the village? You already have so much stuff to carry,” the man asked.
“I will look at it and think Munnu is still there,” Ashalata finally spoke, her voice, a trembling gasp.