Late every night, a truck pulls up on the street below my apartment. Two men descend, walk over to the back, and get to work. Dozens of red plastic crates, filled with some mysterious commodity, are unloaded and deposited in a small godown that constitutes one of the many tiny enterprises on our lane.
Every now and then, there are passers-by on motorcycles or on foot; but none regard this nightly operation with as much curiosity as I do from my balcony. What is in those crates? Is it money or gold? Is it an exotic meat that is only available in remote parts of the world, and illegal in most others? Is it something so unimaginably, excitingly mysterious that the grandness of the endeavour can only be compared to that of a sneaky moonlit operation in a Roald Dahl children’s novel?
I don’t know what the men are unloading, but I know I don’t want to find out. What if the reality of these crates, just now clothed in the mist and sparkle of fantasy, cannot live up to my expectations? I would be devastated. As it happens, life and those two men care nothing for my devastation, so, one day I find out. It is bread. Hundreds of packets of bread in dozens of plastic crates. And it is too mundane to accept.
No, I decide, these men are smugglers of pearls. The bread is a façade. Hidden in each packet is a single, tiny pearl, sourced illegally from places with unutterable names. They bring them in every night, systematically smuggling invaluable treasures that all the right people in the neighbourhood know about. They have the perfect guise. No one will look twice. Indeed, they are so accustomed to their crime that their actions appear normal, and their gleaming sweat like the result of honest work.
This new rendition of the story is considerably more exciting, and I take pride in my creativity – it is ultimately what sustains us. The shackles of reality cannot trap me in their grey clutches, no. I will not allow the act of bread delivery to steal the stage of these fantastic nights. It must be, and is now, a sensational spectacle.
One morning, we are short of bread. My father goes downstairs and picks up a loaf from the godown, still open and reliable through pandemics and lockdowns. There are no pearls on my plate, but I do get a real, wholesome breakfast out of it. The Pearl Smugglers roll in that night as per their routine. I don’t see the precious stones in their crates anymore – this is the labour of bread. It would not make for a good Roald Dahl novel, but it does sustain us.
Two men pull up on the street below my apartment every night – driving, lugging, loading, driving, every night. The sweat on their brows gleams like pearls in the moonlight.
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