When school opened after summer vacation, the girl's holiday ritual received a setback. When she fell asleep after a tiring day or read for a test, the parents kept the vigil on her behalf and devoured the news, for it was one kind of shame for a local storm to be overlooked but a far greater indignity to be defeated by the inevitability of the news schedule.
Late at night, when the girl shifted in her sleep and saw the moonlight flooding through the open window, she felt at peace for she had passed on some essential truth to her parents for safekeeping.
Years passed. The girl became a young woman, trying to realise her destiny and become a cog in some great wheel. She now lived in a misshapen city by a coarse grey river. A spell of inclement weather, both in the city, and the towns and districts further away, made her call her parents and speak to them over the phone.
After the call ended, she realised they had paid their debt even as they were discussing mundane matters. With spirit and tenderness, she sat down and wrote, "Seven people were killed, including one in the city, when a cyclonic storm..."
Her boss summoned her soon after. He was a Party man, with a patient face and a droopy moustache, looking somewhat like a walrus. "Just rework the introduction, everything else is fine."
She waited for further instructions.
"It must begin by saying 'One person was killed in the city'", he explained. "Don't you see, the life of one person in the city is far more important than half a dozen in the districts."
(EOM)
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