God's Accident

Where the city ended, hutments had sprung up like mushrooms along the edge of the lakebed. The municipality saw them as eyesores. They had torn them down at least five times but eventually gave up in the face of humanity’s unrelenting instinct for shelter. Each time the huts were razed, they rose again almost immediately. Her hut stood at the very end of the settlement.

She built hers herself — raising the mud walls and stretching a canopy over them. All that she had saved, drop by drop, had taken the shape of this hut. Predictions came from every quarter. Without exception, everyone said her house would go under water when the lake swelled.

The lake was full after the recent rains, yet the water remained far from her home. Every now and then, she pushed aside the bamboo frame that served as her door and stood staring at the water. At night, she scattered vessels, plates and tumblers on the floor — hoping the rain dripping from the roof would fall into them. Her daughter Haseena, mother of a 20-day-old baby, spent the nights holding the child to her chest, searching anxiously for a dry patch to sit…