Grey Moon, Red Mars, Green Earth - Chapter 2

Gafur was a tall neatly dressed man. It was not everyday that a man like him walked into Sarabhai Nagar. He walked to the bank of elevators marked 4 and went down to the twelfth level. He took out his phone from his pocket to look for the flat number of Anwar’s residence. He saw a girl hugging two other girls and a boy. She looked like an Earthling. He felt like the Earthling was a younger version of someone he knew.

He dismissed the thought from his mind and walked up to the room 1209. He knocked a few times. When he did not hear a response from within he used the keycard from the company to enter the premises. He walked into the neatly kept room. It almost looked like it had not been used. He heard someone coughing in the bed quarters. When he entered the room, he saw Anwar kneeling down on the floor and coughing blood into a utensil. He took out his phone and called the emergency number. He then called the office emergency number.

“Anwar, you should have called me..”. Anwar fainted in front of him.

The office emergency vehicle arrived first. Two men with a pressurized pod came and got Anwar in. They used the emergency service lift to go up to the surface. Gafur called his office and informed the office that they would be in the Sarabhai Hospital. He got in to the emergency room a few minutes after the emergency vehicle. The doctor had just completed examining Anwar.

“Is he a Martian?”

“Yes,” said Gafur.

“I hope he does not plan to stay long on the Moon. This is an allergic reaction. To moon dust. We try to keep it out of the colony but its really difficult to achieve 100%. But, you know that.”

“Yes. He mostly stays within the office or in the quarters.”

“They are young kids. You never know what’s going on in their head.”

Anwar was unconscious for an hour since they had got there. Gafur saw no point in waiting any longer. He sent a message to Anwar’s phone asking him to call when he woke up. He then left for his office.

Anwar woke up and saw the message from Gafur from three hours ago. He tried to get a nurse or a doctor to tell him what was wrong with him. None of them paid him any attention. They seemed stressed and overworked. He felt weakness in his stomach. When he tried to open the pod it did not budge. For a moment he was afraid. He started hitting the inside of the pod. A nurse saw him banging and walked into the room. She pressed a button outside and opened the pod.

“The doctor said that you are allergic to moon dust. You will have to stay in the pod. We will open this only for food or for bathroom breaks.”

She spoke in a way that he had noticed other people who had been on the Moon for sometime spoke. Brief, efficiently getting across the point. It’s like opening their mouth more would make them catch his allergy.

He nodded in response and then laid down in bed again. She pointed to a button next to his left ear which said, “Press to call nurse”. She then closed the pod.

Anwar was 10 years old when his father and his family were deported to the Moon. When they got there his father had returned home one day saying that most of the people there were being moved to Mars. They had moved to Mars three weeks later. They were not allowed to leave during their entire time there.

They had arrived on Mars a month later. Most of what he could remember on Mars was the colour red. His father was a robotic machine operator. Since his background was in civil construction, he had been shortlisted to work on constructing the Mars colony. He was not expected to attend school because there wasn’t any. His mother had been an accountant back on Earth and she taught this skill to her son. She seemed to intuitively know that her son did not have a mechanical mind. He did well with accounts and started to earn some money by keeping books for his mother’s food and tailoring business. His mother encouraged him to then move on to larger establishments.

When he turned 14 he became of employable age. His father took him to his office and tried to make him work in different departments starting with his own. Anwar did not have an inclination to operating machines. He had told this to his father. His father thought that he had gone after him. Three weeks later he had sent him to P G Nair sir in the Accounts Department.

Nair had a reputation as a taskmaster. He assigned small tasks to Anwar and found that he did them better than anyone he had in his department. He slowly gave him more complex accounting tasks. Anwar went to Nair with certain problems but these were ones that Nair did not expect a fresher to solve on a daily basis. Nair had asked Anwar to send the reports back to the Moon, a month after he had joined the Department.

Nair met Anwar’s father in the cafeteria during lunch break.

“How is he doing, Nair sir?” Anwar’s father asked.

“He is good.” Nair said and went and sat with his colleagues in the Accounts Department. Anwar’s father was overjoyed. This was high praise coming from Nair.

Nair had got a call and was going to his office to take his call. On the way, he tapped on Anwar’s father’s shoulder and said, “Perhaps I spoke a little too soon. It is Gafoor from HQ. He called about the work that Anwar is doing.”

Anwar was having snacks on his desk when Nair walked in. He asked Anwar to follow him.

Nair sat in front of the computer. He turned on the video conferencing software. He adjusted his hair and glasses when the camera turned on and he could see himself.

“I am sorry to disturb you during lunch hours, Nair.”

“It is not a problem, Gafoor sir.”

“Who has been making these reports that you have been sending me in the past one week?”

“It is a new boy, Anwar. I am sorry if there were any mistakes that I may not have caught.”

“These are the best reports that I have seen from your office in quite a while. I think Anwar belongs in HQ and not on Mars.”

“If you think so, sir.”

“Let me talk to HR here.”

Gafoor disconnected the call. Nair heaved a sigh of relief. He looked at Anwar and said, “Nothing to worry about. Tell your father.”

He stood up and went back for lunch.

Anwar met his father and told him what had happened. They had shared the news with their mother over dinner. She was very happy. She asked Anwar’s father to talk to Gafoor and try to get Anwar a position on the Moon.

Three months after that conversation, Anwar found himself on the way to the Moon. Closer again to Earth.

He was woken up by a nurse. She gave him a change of clothes and told him that he could return to his quarters. She gave him the hospital number in case of emergency.

He messaged Gafoor to update him about the situation and headed back to his room. When he reached home after a brief walk along the train tracks, he found Gafoor standing near the elevator marked number four.

“How are you doing now?”

“I am good. Thank you for taking me to the hospital.”

“When I got to your room, you had a temperature and were vomiting blood.”

“I am sorry to be a cause of trouble.”

“Do you go out anywhere after office or … ?”

“No,” he lied.

“The doctor said that you were allergic to moon dust.”

Anwar looked back at the route he took. He was sure he had got himself exposed to more moon dust.

“Don’t go out without wearing this.”

He gave him a contraption that covered his face and had a small bottle of air attached to it.

“It lasts for 4 hours. You can recharge at office.”

Saying these words Gafoor walked back into the train station.

“Thank you,” Anwar called after him. Gafoor did not even glance back.

When the elevator door opened he saw Shruti. She was a software engineer in his company.

She pointed to his phone.

He saw her message, “Are you okay?”

He replied on his phone, “Moon dust allergy.”

“LOL”, she replied. She walked towards the train station.

He took the elevator down to the twelfth level and returned to his room. He saw the utensils and the mess that the emergency personnel had made of the room. He took out the cleaning supplies and began the slow process of cleaning the room. He turned on the music to keep him company. The slow ghazal made him feel sleepy. He sang along with it.

He returned the cleaning supplies to the closet. He returned to his bed pod and went to sleep. The pod reminded him to take medicines. It did not close until he did. He felt like he was continuing his sleep from the hospital. He did not understand why he lied to Gafoor. That thought did not let him sleep peacefully that night.