Nupur Chaturvedi

Think

“Sit here by yourself and think about what you have done. And when you have figured it out, knock on the door and I’ll let you out to hear your apology.”

She walked out of the room quite briefly and banged the door behind her. I heard her go down the stairs, then come back up and bolt the door from the outside. So there. She went down again and switched on the television. I couldn’t hear what was on, except that it was interspersed with laugh tracks. To me it sounded like she was narrating my ‘antics’ to a roomful of people and they were all laughing at me. This point of view led me to believe that if it was so funny, she could not be that mad at me. On the other hand, there was my present circumstance of being locked in the room to be considered. It hadn’t happened before, so it must be serious. Now, what had I done that had been so bad? You know, I don’t really know. But she had asked me to think about it, and my freedom depended upon it, so thinking about it was probably a good idea. I could just knock on the door and apologise to her. But something told me that just an apology was not going to be enough. The emphasis on ‘thinking’ was unmistakable. I had to run the whole episode in my mind, stand apart from it and look at my actions from the outside and then give it a critical appraisal. Since it was a foregone conclusion that I was at fault, the subject of the appraisal was not whether I had done anything wrong, but what it was in my actions that had been wrong. I had to deconstruct the episode, extract my contribution to it, dissect it, scrutinise it from all angles and then prepare a report on my findings.

So I sat down to think. As I sat down on the floor, it occurred to me that even after this whole exercise was over and I was ready with the expected apology, my freedom would not come easy. For one, how would anyone hear my knock in all that din? The laugh tracks were getting louder every minute, as if the story was nearing its climax and the audience working itself up to a crescendo with the laughter.

Anyway, that bridge would have to be crossed later. I had thinking to do. Except that I did not want to think. I wanted to go out and be with Mister Spock and my friends. Of course, Mister Spock had been locked in another part of the house because of his hand, or rather paw, in the whole affair. Mister Spock had been my birthday gift last year. Now he and I had been locked in two separate rooms at two ends of the house.

Sitting on the floor did not seem to be resulting in a lot of thinking. So I went up to the window instead and looked out. It was a beautiful day and if it had not been for my house arrest I would have been out with the others. I could see them now, huddled over their latest project. If you went out looking for any of us, you would always find us huddled over a project. It was mostly because we liked huddling, even if the project did not require a planning process big enough for a huddle. Anyway, I could imagine them huddling and I badly wanted to go out and join them.

The window view was distracting me, so I sat down on the floor again to think. What had I done? What had I done that warranted the severest punishment I had received to date? In my three years on this planet, I had managed to get into quite a few scrapes, and the punishments started coming in quite early. Raps on the knuckles, angry glares, loud recriminations…each day had its share. But this was by far the severest. And it was not as if I did not receive the other forms of punishment this time. Before I had been unceremoniously dragged into the room, I had received a thorough dressing down. The whole family standing around me, looking down at me—it was intimidating for someone just about a meter high. The dressing down part was very efficiently handled by her, as was the unceremonious dragging. We all know the rest.

I decided to stare at a blank wall so that I could do the thinking without any distractions. I sat and stared at the wall. It was blue. I liked blue. I would have liked yellow better, but the house had been painted when I was born, so consulting me had been out of the question. But, blue was nice. And blue was helping me think of what I did. I thought about it, ran the whole episode over and over again in my mind. And the floor was so nice. If I lied down, I would be able to think better. It was so nice to lie down and stare at the pristine white ceiling, infinitely less distracting. I thought about the incident some more. It was very relaxing to lie down and look at the ceiling. And it was just the right temperature to lie on the floor. Very relaxing…

The moment

The car stopped softly in front of the gate. Siestas are sacred in this part of the city. He opened the door of the car, picked up his leather bag from the back seat and fished out the key to the door. It’s not just her; the entire city covets this time of the day as three hours of undisturbed meditation on the essential questions that surround our lives. Hers involved the future of their marriage. He knew this was the worst time to confront her. The questions would be fresh in her mind and so would the historical events to support her line of questioning. He was hoping to sneak into the house and prepare himself, before she emerged from the room that had been her brooding den since that eventful evening when he first raised his voice at her. It wasn’t the volume that had mattered, just the fact that his tone matched his volume and his words—and they all told her that her position as the adored, innocent beauty was on very shaky grounds. It wasn’t as if he’d said anything particularly harsh to her—just begged to differ from her, with conviction on an issue that she’d always assumed was hers to rule on. He could see he had stunned her with his sudden taking of a stand, but now that he had, he couldn’t go back to being the adoring, puppy lover she had got used to. And so her mind began a series of furious meditations, the conclusions of which he always got to hear as soon as he reached home. They started with a vehement “I want a divorce!” But when he quietly handed her the papers the next day, they’d started getting tempered down from “It’s just that I’ve never heard you speak that way to me,” to yesterday’s “why don’t you take a break for a few days and we’ll go out somewhere.” He wondered what was in store for him today. For the most part, they only spoke to each other functionally and seemed to have settled down to an unspoken truce. All that was going to change now.

He turned the key in the door and gave the door a gentle nudge and was about to put his first tiptoeing foot in when his cellphone rang. The ring echoed in the silent, sleepy house—it was loud enough to raise the dead. That was the end of any possible respite.

Her door opened and she came out wearing a salwar suit that looked crushed from frequent tosses and turns on the bed. It was the one he’d given her on her last birthday, which was years ago, as far as he was concerned. But she looked very pretty. That part was hard to deny—there was never any doubt in his mind that in marrying her, the part of his body that he’d obeyed was neither his heart, nor his mind. But he had to forget that now.

“Hi!”

“Hi! You’re home early today.” It wasn’t a question. She’d either been expecting him, or it didn’t matter. He wasn’t sure anymore.

“Yeah. I’ve a plane to catch.” His stomach lurched as he said that, sure of which way the discussion was going to go now.

Silence. She looked at him in a way that made him look away. She looked different, like someone who had just made a monumental decision in her mind. There was also a silence in her eyes—usually they had a way of saying to him what she wanted him to hear. It was what had first hooked him to her.

“Why don’t breathe easy and tell me what you have to tell me.” His universe shifted a little. His life flashed in front of his eyes. His stomach was an ocean now and breakers hit his insides. Then all settled down. The twister had passed. It had taken away something from him that he couldn’t hope to ever get back.

“I thought about what you said yesterday. They are sending me to Germany for a project for a couple of months. I’ve to go today.” The moment had passed. “I’m hoping you will come along. It’s no holiday, but at least a change of scene.”