The Forgotten Twin Sister of the Zoned City

Yesterday, at a large function at the Town Hall, the Zoned City announced that it has decided to embrace another city across the oceans as its twin sister city.But it is often forgotten that there was another city,separated at birth from the Zoned City.Discarded into the sluice that runs through the outskirts of the zoned city, this twin city was splintered into a million tiny cities teeming through the networks of sewers and drains before they reunited again at the mouth of the river flowing into the ocean--activating a violent current in the seas which culminated in the city rising as a tsunami and washing over onto the coast of another country,clogging its drains ,setting the platform for breeding what may never be recognized as the real twin sister city of the Zoned City.


It may be the city to which you cannot take a trip because your wife suspects you or fears for your life, but it is also the city that celebrates everything that you were ashamed about in the Zoned City.It may be the city where the kitchen sink multi-tasks to serve as a urinal,but it is also the city that offers you air-conditioning for thedirt-cheap cupboard-sized room you are stationed at.It is the city where they use Teddy Bears to stuff drugs with,where the same table serves as the base for dining,drinking,gambling,negotiating,celebrating and also,during the day, as a point on the assembly line connected to other points through a ladder going through the kitchen chute.The odd plush toilet of a bygone era has been cleverly converted into a special economic zone where crucial currency exchange take place over hushed voices.The same building may house the headquarters,the subsidiaries,the quality checking unit,the retail outlet and the scrap yard.There is a courier service which handles the transport and delivery of letters,packages,drugs,toys and dead bodies.

At a particular floor of a certain curious building in the city, the tailors produce clothes which are packaged and passed off as being produced in one of those Special Manufacturing Zones(SMZ) of the Zoned City.People,the world over,are absolutely crazy about wearing clothes produced at these SMZs.On TV,these clothes are advertised as befitting the "One Man Who Can Don Many Roles".As the tailors catch this fleeting advertisement between their favourite dinner time soap opera,they are amused as to how their everyday way of life could be an elusive ideal for the Zoned City folks.The same tailor could be a tout,a waiter and sometimes on some nights,wear a wig to become a female prostitute and why not? Something of the caprice of the city has infected them.A city where the same space at the flick of the right switch,transfigures into a hotel, a tavern, a shop,a kitchen,a bedroom and then again into a factory."One Man,Many Roles"--they chuckle,thinking about this tagline while slurping at their noodles.


In this way,(and not just because of the frequent power cuts and electrical fires)this city seems to be dying and resurrecting every few minutes to play its several roles,compressing entire lifetimes into a single day.Much unlike the Zoned City, whose map with its carved up spaces,seems  sometimes like a cemetery containing men with  bodies-monstrous and deformed.Not all twins are identical,as they say.And history will allow the reunion of even fewer twins separated at birth.