Hi-Vis
by Rhea Bhagat
Sunil hated frozen yoghurt. The cutesy contraction. Fro-yo. The frosted coils, swirling and melding. Taffeta pink and java brown, with overpriced toppings. The too-bright fluorescent lights, like he was about to get a prostate exam. The staff packed the order for Kirsten (2km away), swirls and toppings pumped out in a production line. They wore lab coats and goggles, like they were handling hazardous waste. Matcha Madness, topped with coconut shavings. Seventy-eight dollars and forty cents. He still converted everything to rupees, and cringed at the amount. The moment the yoghurt spiralled from the spout, it was already turning to sludge. He imagined the sticky trickle seeping through his backpack, staining his shirt green. Sunil often felt repelled by his orders: flaccid rice paper rolls, yellowing bacon. He pictured Kirsten, swishing her ponytail as she yelled inside her apartment: the delivery guy took forever, it’s already melted. She wouldn’t tip.
Kirsten was all downside.
The delivery guy. At least he didn’t have to wear one of those goofy jackets. They were always a lurid pink or yellow, conceived in a boardroom for hypervisibility. There were new apps springing up—new guys were crowding in, turf wars over neighborhoods. It was a slippery slope. He knew why the rookies joined. The barriers to entry were low, and they didn’t have to change their names (the fucking degradation of ‘Sunny’). Already, he could see a group of drivers outside, huddled under the awning in their motorcycle helmets. Oh perfect, it’s raining. He hated being back on the bike. After clawing his way up over years, he was back to pedal pushing. The pond scum. The lowest of the low. He often fantasised about the plush interior of a car.
Two guys swaddled in jackets entered, and nodded at Sunil. They were the UberEats originalists. They understood the hierarchy, how to juggle apps and optimise routes.
Did you hear about Ranbir? He went home in March, and now he’s stuck in Amritsar. They’re not letting him back.
He couldn’t afford to anyway. There’s no way to make money there.
Ranbir was one of those overachievers, with a 4.97 star rating and a tangerine Toyota Camry. He loved the Fast & Furious franchise and drove with his windows down, blasting Drake and Honey Singh. He gave Sunil a lift once, and spent the entire time giving him Reddit bodybuilding tips (his handle was ‘SunnyLeoneSuperFan91’). Sunil got the sense that the water fasting and ketosis was in service of a larger goal: sex, preferably on the hood of his car, preferably with the North Indian Michelle Rodriguez. Ranbir had sent Facebook friend requests to every woman with a Punjabi second name within a fifty kilometre radius until finally, his parents had set up his rishta.
Wasn’t he supposed to get married this year?
The girl’s family called it off. Apparently he wasn’t such a hotshot NRI.
Sunil’s stomach clenched. Non-resident Indian. That coveted title. It was how his family described him to their village. Sunil sends us money every month. Sunil, the electrical engineer in Melbourne. He could picture the stream of Whatsapp messages, filled with Modi memes and ayurvedic flu remedies.
They stood in a group, waiting for their numbers to be called. They were some distance from two women in puffer jackets, who kept smoothing their hair and adjusting their masks. The taller woman kept rubbing her hands together, like an insect with feelers. Sunil felt them inching away. The negative space felt charged, heavy with meaning. At least they have a good excuse now.
🚲
The gate was a sentinel, iron bars topped with spikes. The driveway beyond gleamed a ghostly white, curving upwards like a wide-toothed smile. A film spool shimmered before Sunil’s eyes.
A girl lost in the woods, surrounded by gnarled branches. She walks in circles, signs pointing to dead ends. A gleaming set of teeth looms in the darkness, followed by a pair of yellow eyes. The Cat grins at Alice—stretching out, polishing its claws, swishing its tail.
This suburb always unnerved him. Its fortress-like mansions, squat and imposing. He missed delivering to flatshares, with their wilting herb gardens and upended milk crates. He pressed the buzzer and waited. He felt the gaze of security cameras, which left a tingle on his neck. Run, rabbit, run. He imagined a security guard sitting in a bunker, his shirt smeared with ketchup, watching footage of Sunil while wiping crumbs off his straining belly.
The house was surrounded by high walls, threaded with ivy. Through the bars of the gate, he saw a vast expanse, like a public park. There were perfectly cut hedgerows, mushrooming across the lawn. He could hear water running across marble stone, a burble like a forest brook, and it made his bladder seize.
He looked closer, pressing his face against the gate-like bars of a cage. The dark garden was littered with sculptures, twisted pieces of metal and wood; animals lined up in pairs like Noah’s Ark. They reminded him of the sculptures Raj used to make: from tin, plastic bags, coils of twine, scraps he found on the street. He constructed bodies, sinewy and kinetic, always mid-flight. He was obsessed with this Italian guy, Giacometti, who made nightmarish, spidery figures. Sunil would never forget Raj’s heartbreak when their mother threw out his creations, because it was time he stopped playing with garbage.
The sculptures through the gate had the same shrunken bodies, distended and underfed. Like all the animals on the Ark had starved to death. Which on reflection, seemed probable. When the flood ended, it should have been a cargo hold full of rotting carcasses, with a couple of carrion birds circling the top. Knowing rich assholes though, these skeletons probably were Giacomettis. And of course the owner would just dump them in his garden to be rained on, or shat on by birds.
The sculptures were arranged in concentric circles, surrounding a central statue on a plinth. This arrangement was unnerving; almost cult-like, the animals worshipping an overlord. Straining his eyes to make out the centrepiece, Sunil stared for a few moments, then began to laugh.
A goat mounting another, wiry limbs askew, faces impassive, in the throes of silent fucking.
🚲
The phone had a heavy electronic pulse, like a second heartbeat. Sunil pedalled harder, sucking air through the gauzy fabric of his mask. His oversized backpack chafed, and sweat was pooling in his armpits. The rain had stopped, but he was soaked through. He loved this brief interlude, when his mind felt slack and the kilometres dropped away smoothly. He didn’t have to make any decisions, the voice just told him where to go. He was alone. He was in motion.
But then a bodily need would overtake him. Every week he cooked huge mounds of rice and dal, eating bowl after bowl listlessly. He bought dusty lentils in bulk, trudging to the Indian store that smelled of tobacco and Old Spice, the chain-smoking auntie watching 90s era Shah Rukh Khan movies on her iPad. She would hum while she counted his change. His dal was watery and insipid, cooked on a single hotplate. It was never enough. He was always seized by an endless appetite, his hunger wrenching and constant. His hair was starting to fall out, tufts accumulating like tumbleweeds on his pillow, choking his shower. He always had hair like a steel wool sponge, coarse and tightly coiled. Except now there were craggy patches, cratering across his scalp.
At the end of every shift, he would lie in bed with aching legs, staring at the circuitous route he’d cycled. Above him, the springs would creak as Venkat watched his favourite Pornhub category (a crossover of ‘Popular with Women’ and ‘Erotic Massage’). He could hear Rashid praying namaz in the other room, and the heavy bassline leaking through Binh’s headphones as he did his YouTube “prison workout” on the sliver of free floor space.
They were all trapped in this interminable summer camp, sleeping on IKEA bunk beds and fighting over hot water. Sunil draped a sheet over his allocated space like a partition, his roommates apparitions beyond the fabric. He liked to imagine it was mosquito netting: the image would transport him back to Delhi, a terracotta city sprawling beyond his window, clothes rippling on the washing lines, the thrum of crowds in the gulley below. He hated this cloistered room and the smell of bodies, the dust from pulverised Twisties settling into the carpet.
He was hungry again, each pang a stab to the abdomen. He pedalled harder. He would always try not to eat or drink before his shift—there were no toilets anymore. Even McDonald’s had been sealed off like there was a nuclear fallout. Some of the car guys had portable urinals, but he was a pedal-pig, so he had to be strategic. He optimised his bladder function, worked out the minimum amount of water he could survive on. And as he pedalled, he tried to ignore the need to piss, the beginnings of a rash blooming on his thighs. Five minutes to destination. It was nearly curfew and the streets were empty, but he felt a break in his solitude.
From Sunil’s periphery, he could spot a man in lycra emerging from his flank. He was on one of those sleek mountain bikes, aerodynamic and silent, the ones which shot forward like an arrow. The sound of Sunil’s grinding bike chain felt magnified, his delivery backpack lumbering and obscene. Between the intruder and a line of parked cars, Sunil felt trapped on the tiny sliver of road, wing mirrors from parked cars grazing his handlebars.
Lycra Man overtook him, radiating a determined fury like he was in the final stretch of a triathlon and Sunil was his arch-nemesis. Sunil stared at his leathery neck, the steroidal body with ‘City2Surf’ splashed across the back, and felt a surge of hatred. He sped up, trying to keep pace, but the distance kept growing. Nearly there. At the next intersection, he could see that Lycra Man sat unmoving, toying with him. The space was shrinking between them, he could still cut in front, the gap was closing fast, the chain grinding in his ears, when Sunil felt a sudden force of impact.
As his bike crumpled, the first thing he thought was I need to land on my stomach. There was gravel embedded in his cheek, the feeling of air being wrung from his chest. It was as though he’d vacated his body and was watching from the sidelines—a dispassionate spectator. Sunil knew what he needed to do. Inching forward, he dragged himself onto the nature strip like a turtle, his backpack still fixed to his shoulders. The wet grass was cool. He pulled his phone from his front pocket. The screen was webbed with cracks. He started typing:
Sorry, I’m running a few minutes late.
Rhea Bhagat is a writer, political podcast enthusiast and fast talker living in Melbourne. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Junkee and The Lifted Brow, among others.
