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This story is about the abrupt and tragic appearance of the Tetrahedron in the middle of a busy street in New Delhi, India. But it is also a story about one of the witnesses of this extraordinary event, a mousy girl wearing a dull brown salwaar-kameez, waiting at a bus-stop on the street in question. Her name was Maya, and despite all past attempts to the contrary, she was a remarkably ordinary young woman.

Her parents had made sure about that all through her twenty years. Each foray she made into something unusual (playing cricket with the boys, climbing trees, flirting with the boy next door, rescuing a dog from its neglectful owners, buying an entire tray of bangles from a beggar girl in the market, making friends with the girl in the next apartment block who rode a motorbike and was reputed to be "wild", taking up Chemistry as a major in college instead of Commerce) had met with firm resistance from her parents and much talk of duty, respectability and marriageability. So she had learned slowly and painfully to become an average girl, doing moderately well in the Commerce pass course at the University, respectably engaged to a young man with a good future in a business firm.

As she stood at the bus-stop on that fateful morning, having missed (as usual) the University Special, she was thinking about Kartik. He had been very nice to her when they'd first gotten engaged and even now his behavior was above reproach, but lately, whenever they met (under the watchful eyes of some elderly relative or other) he had taken to lecturing her gently on her failings. The halwa she had made for tea was a little too sweet, the pakoras too oily, but the tea was almost right. That salwaar-kameez was a little loud --- the bright colors clashed and they made her face look sallow. Now if she'd been fairer of skin! The way she set down the teapot was a little clumsy, and while she was up could she bring him the newspaper? But the worst was the way her mother and father acted around Kartik, as though he were some minor deity that must be kept in a constant state of appeasement. If only her brother Anuj, one year her senior, had been there --- he was the only one who'd understand, but he had escaped many years ago. He was in the Navy, stationed now in Vishakhapatnam. Her three elder married sisters were useless, especially now that they were harried mothers. As for her friends in college, Maya no longer found their obsession with clothes, jewelry and eligible young men diverting. These days she had been feeling very much alone.

She was busy with these thoughts, oblivious of the cacophony around her. Patel Chowk during the morning rush hour was not peaceful, if indeed it ever was. Traffic moved haphazardly on the road, horns blared, people shouted, buses slowed tantalizingly near bus-stops, playing cat-and-mouse with the waiting horde of passengers, who scrambled en masse on to the moving vehicle, holding on with one arm. Crows cawed on tree-branches overhead, an old man roasting peanuts on the sidewalk did a brisk business. Maya tried to keep track of the buses that came and went but it was far more pleasant to pretend she could stop time and be with her thoughts.

Then, without warning, an enormous tetrahedron appeared in the middle of the street before her, so suddenly and absurdly that for a moment she thought she was still in bed and dreaming. It was about two stories high, broad enough on its triangular base to span the road, all four lanes of it, and colored a matte black. There was a chorus of screeches as cars and scooters and motor-rickshaws braked in desperation, and then a series of prolonged metallic crashes as vehicles behind them made contact. To Maya's amazement it seemed as though the two buses, the cars and bicycles that had been in the place now occupied by the tetrahedron had simply ceased to be.

Curses, exclamations, invocations to various gods, then silence. A fearful, wondering silence came upon the crowds on the sidewalk, the people in the vehicles. Astonishingly, nothing had crashed into the tetrahedron itself, which stood quietly in the street, its pinnacle pointing straight up at the gray, polluted sky. In the buildings on each side of the street, grimy windows opened. The crows themselves stood silent on the branches of the old trees.

Afterwards Maya remembered walking towards the tetrahedron with a straggle of other bolder onlookers. They had stood around it, gazing at its opaque sleekness, its geometrical perfection, wondering, but too afraid to touch. Until a small street urchin had held out a dirty hand and touched the thing; then everyone followed suit, patting and feeling the smooth, unyielding surface. Behind them the crowd grew as people emerged from cars and buses to gaze open-mouthed at this unexpected sight and proffer theories each wilder than the last. Depending on which religion the theorist professed, it was a signal from the gods that the end of kalyug was come, and destruction was imminent, or that the one true God was about to emerge and pass judgement on the sinners... It was a government ploy (from a disgruntled clerk who refused to speculate as to how or why). It was a bomb from a neighboring country that would explode any minute now and why were they standing there anyway. It was a new secret weapon the government had developed. It was an invasion by Martians (from a boy in school uniform) or by Egyptians (from his friend, who was contradicted by another schoolboy: "it's a tetrahedron, not a pyramid, stupid!"). It was a sign of the mysterious unknown (from a well-dressed elderly gentleman). Arguments broke out regarding the possible validity of each theory. Meanwhile a young man was knocking on the surface of the tetrahedron ("to see if it sounded hollow") and was disappointed when it did not. Others were bemoaning the fate of the people who had been in the space occupied by the tetrahedron. They must lie crushed flat under this monstrous thing, said some, shaking their heads ghoulishly. Well, well, who knew where you'd end up when you left your doorstep of a morning?

Then the press came, and the All India Radio people from the next street, and, last as usual, the police. The latter were rather at a loss --- there was nothing in the Indian Penal Code about this. The police officer fell back on old ground and began waving his baton at the crowd, "Move on, you're obstructing traffic!" while some wisecrackers responded, "what about that thing, it's obstructing traffic, are you going to arrest it?" But finally, in the anarchistic, reluctant way of a large beast, the crowd was pushed back and railings set up around the tetrahedron. Several noisy, confused hours later, the army came in and restored order, traffic was diverted, the crows went back to cawing. But on the sidewalks a large crowd still stood and stared, and pickpockets and vendors of spicy and sticky concoctions did a roaring trade. Maya was interviewed by a reporter from The Statesman ("Did you really touch it? What do you think it might be?").

When she went home (who could sit in an accounting class after this?) her parents were watching the whole thing on TV. The third of her married older sisters, who was here for a visit, was cooking something in the tiny kitchen of the flat, while little Chanchal gurgled in her grandmother's lap. Maya's parents were horrified when she told them she had been there and had touched the thing, but when she mentioned that The Statesman had actually interviewed her, their horror knew no bounds. What would Kartik say?

Fortunately Kartik did not subscribe to The Statesman. When he came for tea on the following weekend, he talked at length about the tetrahedron, unaware that Maya had actually been there when it appeared. Kartik's theory was that it was a Pakistani secret weapon. Apparently aware that he had a captive audience, he waxed eloquent between mouthfuls of hot samosas about the various ways in which India might retaliate. Gratified by the attention of his hosts (his future father-in-law had nodded several times) he grew expansive, dandled little Chanchal on his knee (ignoring her outraged cries) and gave Maya a significant look. Maya, lost in thoughts of her own, stared blankly back at him, although her sister gave her a dig in the ribs and blushed and simpered. Maya had cause to be distracted. The day after the Appearance, she had gone back to Patel Chowk as though pulled by an invisible string. There were officious looking policemen guarding it from the public and a small army contingent occupying an entire block (just in case). Within the cordon, a group of people had been busy with instruments, in the important, oblivious manner of scientists. Among them she recognized Samir Sinha, a Ph.D student of Physics, who sometimes used the same University bus Maya did. He had once been introduced to her by a giggling friend as a second cousin, and she remembered his intense, intelligent gaze sweeping over her then with no more than a polite interest.

Seeing him, she forgot how awkward it had been meeting him the first time (they'd avoided each other after that; at least, she had --- he always had his nose buried in a book). She had gone over to the cordon and called impulsively out to him, to his considerable surprise --- but he was just finished and it had been only natural to go to the university together and to talk about the whole thing at the tea-shack. Nursing her tea in the chipped glass, Maya had told Samir about her witnessing of the tetrahedron's arrival. "It didn't arrive," she'd said, "I didn't see it come down from the sky, or through the trees. One moment it wasn't there, and the next moment it was." Samir had listened with great interest.

Now, as she poured Kartik more tea (the best Darjeeling her parents could buy), she thought about the past two days of drinking strong, cheap masala chai with Samir on the old wooden benches in front of the tea shack. She imagined her parents' shock and horror. What would Kartik say to that?

Samir had told her that the night before the arrival of the tetrahedron there had been an unusual event --- a series of radio pulses from the vicinity of an ordinary yellow star that was not known for such activity. He theorized that the tetrahedron was an alien device, traveling at near-light-speed through space via some unknown mechanism. He was disarmingly frank about his bias towards an astronomical origin for the tetrahedron --- he was a student of astrophysics after all --- but next to the Pakistani-American secret weapon-theory, the astronomical one was the most popular. The people whose relatives had been in the buses and cars that had disappeared were demanding a complete investigation of every possible theory. Foreign scientists had flocked to Delhi in droves as had New Age groupies, end-of-the-world cults, members of the American and British press and ordinary gawking tourists. Suspicious governments from the West had to be assured that the tetrahedron was none of New Delhi's doing, and had sent their investigators. Suddenly New Delhi, with all its confusion, pollution and inconveniences, was about to become one of the most popular travel destinations in the world. Maya and Samir had laughed over newspaper headlines --- the government was building more hotels! The Western press was floundering, unused as they were to reporting anything but disasters and political unrest from the third world! A tabloid reported that India had been chosen for a special reason by a wise alien race, and would shortly receive a message of epic importance concerning the next elections!

But what Maya relived most often in her mind was the feeling when she had touched the tetrahedron --- the feeling of how useless and insignificant her life was against the unending mystery of the universe. Now, with Samir talking eloquently about aliens traversing the distances between stars, she had felt it again, the pointlessness of a life lived small. Going round in the same old circles like a dizzy frog in a well. In a few years she would be like her sisters, plump and resigned, children running at her feet while Kartik gazed benignly at her from the sofa over the evening paper. "Maya, you know that sari color does not suit you!" Maya this and Maya that. Could she take a lifetime of it?

Of course, she had only herself to blame, choosing Kartik. Her parents had left the final choice up to her, from an army of eligible bachelors of the appropriate class and caste. Dressed in her best, serving tea and pakoras and pastries to a succession of potential in-laws and their self-conscious offspring, she had been impressed by Kartik's assurance. But now!

Now there was the tetrahedron. In her mind it loomed larger than ever, obsessing her with its quiet presence. It stood in her dreams, silent, mysterious, while humanity surged foolishly around it, wondering and touching like villagers marveling at some high-tech device. What was it trying to tell her? What was she trying to tell herself?

She stopped going to class. Every day she left the tiny, crowded flat she shared with her parents and went dutifully to the university, where she hung around the tea shack until Samir came out from class. They talked, drank strong tea in ancient glasses that had seen better days, and speculated about the tetrahedron. The scientists had found nothing. The object was made out of an unbelievably hard substance that could not be chipped off for testing. X-rays bounced merrily off it. It was much too heavy to be moved. Corrosive chemicals had no effect on it. Digging under it for the remains of the unfortunate bus and car passengers, the authorities found nothing --- no bodies, no crushed bones or flesh, no evidence of charred remains, just dirt and the impenetrable substance of the tetrahedron standing over it. It stood implacable, a question with no answer.

(To be Continued).

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