Nupur Chaturvedi

Rebirth

When I came back home that night, I was broken. I had walked all the way–some seven kilometres. Mundane life passed by me. Two college girls passed by on a rickshaw, trying to lead him to a destination, but thoroughly confusing him. In a Santro, a couple, with a toddler and a maid on the rear seat. Deadpan look on the mother’s face, but the maid cooing at the infant. Old man on a scooter, without a helmet. A woman in her early thirties, driving alone. Like me. No, not like me. She had purpose, I had none anymore.

I unlocked the empty house and entered it as an unwelcome guest. It was my house. When I was born, they brought me here from the hospital. It had watched indulgently as I took my first steps, spoke my first word, failed my first test. Now, it was waiting for me to vacate it. Impatient for new owners. Ah well, not long now.

I went to my room and opened the closet. For the last time, I checked if everything was in order. The papers were ready. Five hundred rupees had bought a couple of witnesses, another thousand bought a notary. Who cares why a single 45-year old woman wanted her will to be executed. Anyway, it was all going to the local organization that helped distressed and destitute women.

All my clothes had been covered with muslin covers and packed away in trunks. The phone bill, society dues, library fee–everything had been paid. The plants had been sold to the nursery. The maid had been asked to leave. All my affairs were in order.

So that night, after checking everything one more time, I lay down on my bed for the last time. For once, it was very, very quiet. Traffic on the road outside the apartment complex was less noisy than usual. The neighbour’s dog was having a quiet night too. The distant humming of the generator from the next building had a sedating effect on me. My eyelids were heavy. But I was alert enough to remember what I had to do before succumbing to sleep. I reached for the bed-side table and retrieved a couple of tablets from the bottle. There, it was done. Now I could sleep.

****

It has been exactly a year since that night. Since the night I gave up the ghost on my previous life and was reborn 500 kilometres away from it. A year since I sold my parents’apartment. A year since I stopped living the lie I had been living for a whole year before that. A year since I started life on a fresh slate in a new place. A year since I pulled the plug on both my parents, who had gone into a deep coma after a car accident.

****

The nightmares have reduced. I have started looking at myself in the mirror again. A few wrinkles have appeared since I last saw myself. He says I look years younger than I claim to be. Liar.