Nupur Chaturvedi

Metro

33234564

3-3-2-3-4-5-6-4

I don’t know why I was memorising the number. It could be because I had nothing else to do. I could barely stand, the Metro was so packed. Somehow, there was a straphanger free for me to hang my hand on. It was the rush hour and I was part of it. Another half an hour would go like this.

I was done with ignoring body odours, watching Monday morning faces resembling Munch’s The Scream, making eye contact with the one pretty girl I could spot through the sea of heads. I was just standing, hanging, passing my time in this shared purgatory.

That is when I saw this number scratched on the wall. Yes, the Metro has scratch-proof metal walls—this was etched on a poster. For some reason, my eyes zeroed in on it, and for some reason, I started memorising it.

There is a game I play during my commute. I pick any one person and make a story about them, a story of their life, where they come from, where they are on the way to, who is there at home. Sometimes it’s a simple story—mother and child on the way to her parents’ home or on the way from her parents’ to her in-laws. At other times, I put all the knowledge acquired from watching various versions of Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett will always be my favourite, though Benedict Cumberbatch comes close) and cook up a fancier story.

Today, I was bored. I didn’t want to play the game. So I started memorising the number. Today, my story would be about the number. In all likelihood, it was a phone number. It was probably a Delhi number. Who had etched it? A lovelorn Romeo who couldn’t afford to forget the hard-fought phone number of his beloved. Nah, too simple. A job-seeker jotting down the number of the company he (or she) wants to get into while speaking to the placement agent. Not exciting.

Let’s work a little more with it. What if it wasn’t a phone number? What if it’s a lottery ticket number? Or the locker number where that reformed gangster, fearing for his life, has stashed away the names of all those rich clients he has bumped off people for? Or maybe it is an exam roll number. Or a code? Let’s see: 3-3-2-3-4-5-6-4. C-C-B-C-D-E-F-D. That makes no sense. It couldn’t be that simple anyway. Coordinates? 33.23’45.64” Where would that be?

“The next station is Green Park. Doors will open on the right.”

Just a couple more stations to go. I start memorising it. When I get off at the station, I can’t wait to run up the stairs. As soon as I get a couple of bars of signal, I dial—011-33234564.

“This number does not exist. Please check the number you have dialed.”

I didn’t know I had banked so much on it being a phone number. I catch an auto to get to office. Monday stretched out like a lazy dog on an afternoon nap. Meetings, submissions, more meetings, and before I knew it, it was seven thirty.

I packed my laptop and got up to leave. My extension rang—probably my boss giving me one more thing to do as soon as I reach home.

“Hello”

“Is that Rajiv?” said a non-descript voice.

“Yes?”

“Don’t take the Metro on your way back.”

“Excuse me?”

I reach the Metro station. There is a crowd that doesn’t seem to be moving. I ask people around. Nobody seems to know what the matter is. I come out and see a colleague passing by in his car. He takes me in. He doesn’t live close to where I have to go, but at least I’ll get somewhere.

I reach home and switch on the television. Bizarre short circuit in a Metro train electrocutes three. Burnt coach visuals show the coach number: 33-23-4564.

Short story: Remembering Ashoo

He was coming back home after seven years. He had just finished his apprenticeship with Fiat after studying automobile design in Torino, Italy. The last time I’d seen him was when I had gone to the airport to see him off. He was going to the US for his undergraduate course. Several courses and an apprenticeship later, he was coming back home—but only for a month, to get married.

I can’t remember exactly when I met Ashoo. We were all in the same class, so I suppose I met him when I met the others. I also don’t remember the first time I noticed him. I have vague memories of sharing lunch with him (my tiffin box was hot property back then).

What I do remember, though, is the first time I fought with him. It was over a trivial matter, as most teenage fights are. We were in a school play together and I had asked him to pick up my costume when he went to pick up his. The morning of the play neither of us had our costumes. I had to persuade Dad to take me to the costume-maker. And Dad did not take kindly to last-minute confusions. Naturally, I screamed at Ashoo. He said if I’d have only waited till the afternoon, he would have got me the costume. We didn’t talk to each other through the performance (apart from the dialogues we had together, of course). The next day was an off, so we didn’t get a chance to speak anyway. Then the day after that, by the third period, he came over and mumbled something about the fact that he needed my notes for biology, could he have them please. I knew it was his way of saying sorry.

That was the fundamental difference between us. I liked the safe and the predictable. He was spontaneous and, well, according to me at least, unreliable. But he was also very lovable. I knew at least five girls who had a secret, or sometimes not-so-secret crush on him. I wasn’t one of them. My relationship with him was indescribable. We fought like siblings and played or studied together like best buddies. We were also each other’s confidantes. He opened up to me about how he felt not having his Dad around. His parents were divorced and he lived with his mother. His mother hadn’t remarried, and they had quite a scatterbrained house. Aunty, it seemed, was exactly like him. Well, he was like her. They were both bohemian in their lifestyle. I met her a few times, and thought she was very ‘cool’. She was an artist and would often take off for the mountains on a project. My own mother was very ‘proper’. She had certain ideas about how children should be raised and how any mother who didn’t make looking after her children a full-time job was nothing less than a criminal. I had been stupid enough to tell my mother how ‘cool’ Ashoo’s mom was.

Dad was not a particularly regular fixture in my life either. He was the curator at the State Museum and was either away at office most of the time or travelled to study other museums, the Louvre, the Van Gogh Museum, the Smithsonian, and so on. The only way I identified with him was in my love for history. We had a room full of history books and they made up my leisure reading, much to the disdain of my more hip and modern friends.

Ashoo was the only one who understood me in that. He was just as passionate about cars. Not in the way most young boys are. In our country, where anything blue-collared is considered menial, he apprenticed at the local mechanic’s garage. His mother, he said, was very proud of him. As opposed to my mother, who thought I should concentrate on looking good, eating well, sleeping well and behaving well and not spend hours on dust-laden books.

Ashoo and I would talk for hours. He had become my best friend. He had a girlfriend, and she definitely saw me as competition. For some reason, I never saw myself as competition. She was welcome to build her castles in the air with him. We never talked about the future, unless it was in the context of a career. We talked about a lot of things—politics, home troubles, food, cars, history, and of course, nothing in particular. Being older than me by a few months, he of course thought he had the right to tell me what to do and what not to do. When Karan pestered me, Ashoo told me how to handle him. He told me how to handle a lot of people actually. I, in turn, would counsel him on how to handle his feelings for his Dad. He felt like he should hate him, and tried very hard to do that. But deep down he knew that neither he, nor for that matter, his mother had any feelings for the man who was once a part of their family. It seems his parents realised that apart from a passing physical attraction, they really didn’t have much feelings for each other. Apparently it was his mother’s idea to go their separate ways, and the fact that she was pregnant at the time didn’t really make a difference. In fact, it seems she didn’t even tell his father that she was pregnant. She thought that if he knew, he would feel too honour-bound to leave. Ashoo felt that it was his right to at least know who his father was and would often have arguments with his mother about it. I would hear about it the next day, or sometimes the same day on the phone. But overall, he didn’t see the need to rock the boat either.

The boat was finally rocked just after our class twelfth exams. At the farewell function, parents were invited. And for the first time my parents met his mother. Ashoo’s mother was my Dad’s first wife. Ashoo, it seems, was my brother—well, half-brother. I had never known that my Dad had been married earlier. My mom did, it seems. But they hadn’t known about the existence of Ashoo. Suddenly, our lives were joined by links we hadn’t forged. I think that’s what hit both of us the most. We had met as friends, and to all those around us, we seemed closer than any boyfriend-girlfriend or siblings. We had a special relationship, and now it had a name. Only, we hadn’t chosen that name.

My Dad, always the one to do the right thing, decided to give Ashoo his name, and to fund his further education. At first his mother protested, but then, she knew that my Dad needed to do that. My Mom thought it was nice that Ashoo had us now, and didn’t need to rely on an absentee mother. As for the two of us, we were awkward with each other and would only meet when we were forced to. I went to Delhi to seek admission in the History Honours course, while he prepared for SATs. Our lives were going separate ways. I got admission and also got hostel accommodation. He got through an industrial art course in a college in the US.

He was to leave for the US from Delhi. When he came here, he gave me a call and asked to meet. We met and talked properly for the first time since that whole episode. Ashoo thought our Dad was a nice person, and overall, this was as amiable as it could have been under the circumstance. It’s just that our relationship had become weird. I said I agreed with him. But then, we decided to leave it at that and see where time took us.

Over time, we got around to talking and then chatting on the messenger. We re-established our relationship, this time as brother and sister. As we went through relationships, we found in each other the same comfort that we had always had. He told me when he met Tina in Torino. She was the daughter of an NRI and had never been to India. After a tumultuous relationship, which I got to hear a lot about, they decided to get married. They were both coming tonight and I was going to the airport to receive them.

Short story: Anniversary

The doorbell rang at 8:30 in the morning. Supriya removed the heavy arm draped over her and struggled out of bed to open the door. She peeped through the bull’s-eye and saw no one. That’s when she realized who, or rather, what it was. She opened the door and picked up the bouquet sitting on the floor. She didn’t need to know who had sent it. She knew it would have the words Happy Anniversary written on the card, with the lower-case ‘a’ in both words ever-so-slightly higher than the other characters.

It was Supriya and Ajeet’s seventh anniversary and this was the eighth such bouquet—the first arriving on the night of their wedding. Every time, the bouquet would be a bunch of red carnations—twenty on their wedding, and then one more every year. So she knew this one had twenty-seven.

Ajeet and Supriya took turns teasing each other about it, saying it was from the other’s secret admirer. But with each year, there was also a growing niggle of unrest. Who could it be from? Why this secrecy? Will they never know?

Supriya kept the bouquet on the dining table and went back to bed. As she lay down, Ajeet stirred, opened one eye to look at her. “Happy Anniversary, baby,” he said, in a sleep-heavy voice. Supriya moved closer to kiss his bare shoulder and said, “The bouquet has arrived.” She could feel him stiffen. He was now wide awake, so he sat up against the back-rest.

“Twenty-seven red carnations this time?”

“Do you even need to ask?”

“This isn’t funny anymore, Supriya.” He always called her that when he was tense, or if they were not on the most amicable terms. Otherwise it was Priya, Piyu, Super, or usually, baby.

“I know it isn’t, Ajeet, I am just as uneasy about this as you are. I can’t even begin to imagine who it is. I have run through friends, family, acquaintances—everyone I can think of. And every time I hit a dead wall.”

“I know. So do I. But somehow, we have to find out. An idea has been forming in my mind. Today is Thursday, right? So, let’s call everyone we know for a big party on Saturday. And we’ll place the bouquet in front of everyone and find out their reactions—what say?’

“I’m with you on this. I am willing to try anything to find out.”

Ajeet was visibly relaxed now and pulled Supriya over him. “So now that we have a plan for Saturday, how about we make ourselves a plan for today? A let’s-not-leave-the-bedroom plan? You game, baby?”

“I love the way your mind works, ‘baby’.”

Saturday was a lavish affair. Between them, Supriya and Ajeet knew more than a hundred people, so calling them all home was out of the question. Thursday was spent in the bedroom alright, but mostly making invitation and arrangement phone calls. Both of them got into “the plan” with a missionary zeal.

Supriya’s and Ajeet’s sisters were both studying engineering in Bangalore and were room-mates at the hostel there. Both were booked on the next flight into Delhi. Ajeet’s mother was wheeled in from Gurgaon. Between them, she was the only parent left. All were briefed about the plan. The bouquet had become quite a family joke, but underlying it all, everyone wanted to know the identity of the sender. So no one had to be asked twice to participate.

Supriya and Ajeet woke up to Saturday with a tense feeling in the pit of their stomach. There were some apologetic refusals, of course, due to the short notice, but since it was a weekend, most invitees did promise to attend. Just before the family was supposed to leave the house for the banquet hall, the doorbell rang and another bouquet appeared. Twenty-seven red carnations again. The card said:

“Happy Anniversary again!

Interesting plan. Let’s see if it works out for you.”

So stunned was the whole family that you could have killed someone in front of their eyes without anyone realizing who did it. When they came to themselves again, Supriya and Ajeet knew that the hope of discovering the identity of the sender at the party was very low. But anyway, there were a hundred people coming to the party and they were probably expecting the hosts to receive them.

The excitement of the party helped them relax a little. They did place the bouquet prominently, but, as expected, no one really paid any attention to it. When in the night they all reached home, sleep was on no one’s agenda. They sat discussing the whole thing till late in the night. Whoever the sender was, he seemed pretty clued into what was being spoken in the house. After all, no one except the five family members had known about the plan.

The next morning, Ajeet had to leave for Mumbai and the girls had to go back and join college. Supriya was a bit scared to be all alone in the house, so she asked Ma to stay back with her. On Sunday morning, after Ajeet left, Supriya went back to sleep. She woke up to the doorbell again. This time when she opened the door there was no bouquet—just an envelope, with her name on it. There was a letter inside:

“Supriya, I think the time has come for you to know. Meet me at Humayun’s Tomb at four today. You know what I would be holding to help you recognize me.”

“I don’t think you should go alone,” Ma said. “Who knows what kind of crazed psychopath he is.” But Supriya knew she had been chosen for this, and she had to go alone. Fortunately, Ma was a great believer of the you-know-best theory.

At exactly four that evening, Supriya was standing at the entrance to Humayun’s Tomb. After waiting there for five minutes, she went inside. At the arched gate of the tomb, there stood a small thin figure holding a bouquet of red carnations. On closer look, it was a woman, wearing a salwar-kameez. She looked about 40-45. She was no one Supriye knew.

“Hello, Supriya. Glad you could come.” Her voice was soft, with a lilt to it.

“Who are you? How do you know me? Why are you sending us flowers? What is this whole secrecy about?” All the questions in Supriya’s mind hurtled out in a spurt.

“I understand your anger. I just need you to hear me out once. You don’t know me, but I know you well. My name is Bharti Kapur. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I was once a known name in the Indian literary circles. My stories and novels were acclaimed critically, and even managed to sell to some extent. I had been commissioned to write a series of short stories on the new Indian couples and their relationships. Before I could get started on this project, my husband died. And, for all practical purposes, I died with him. For a long time, I couldn’t put pen to paper, let alone form stories. Then, about six months later, I decided to start moving out again. I soon put my marital house to sale, and moved into your apartment complex. A week after I shifted, your wedding happened in the community centre here. Anxious to get out of the house, I decided t attend the wedding. But since I had not been invited, I decided to remain at the fringes. But I did get you a bouquet. I quietly went and put it amongst the others. You didn’t know me, so I didn’t sign my name. There was no plan in my mind then. When I saw the two of you, on the threshold of life, something awoke in me and brought hope back into my life. But warped as my mind was back then, I decided to formulate a plan to watch your life closely, and maybe even use it as fodder for my stories. Once, when you both were away, I got a detective to plant bugs in your home. I know, I know, it was wrong. I have no way of justifying it. I did think of going in for therapy at one point, but you know how it is. There is such a stigma against it in your own mind. I soon became obsessed with your life. And the bouquets were my way of connecting with you.

It has taken me seven years to completely recover. But by now it has become a habit to know what is happening in your life. However, I realized this year that this was beginning to affect you both a little too much. I decided it was time to end the charade.

I am sorry for what I have done. I have finally managed to finish the commissioned book, and you are the protagonist. Take this manuscript. Read it. I won’t give it to the publishers unless you agree to it. The bugs will go, of course. And, if you want, I will move out of the apartment complex. It’s all your decision now.”

When she stopped speaking, Supriya felt a generator had been switched off. She could do nothing but take the typewritten pages from Bharti and head back home. The top-most page had just one word written on it—Anniversary, with the lower case ‘a’ just a little higher than the rest.

****

Anniversary

By Bharti Kapur

Stallion Publications

Rs 345.

Acclaimed author Bharti Kapur has returned to the world of Indian literature after a long hiatus. The Anniversary, a compilation of short stories follows the life of Supriya, as she matures from a young college girl, just married, to a successful professional, married to her college sweetheart. The characters are real and very vividly sketched. But what lends this compilation depth is Bharti’s understanding of the language and nuances of relationships. This is her best work yet.

Sache Baba

Sachche Baba found dead

Monday, July 11, 2005: Mathura
Godman Satyendra Dev, also known to his followers as Sachche Baba, was found dead on Sunday morning in his room at his ashram located at the outskirts of Mathura. He was reportedly 39 years old, though no formal record of his birth could be found by the police. Initial investigation shows that he may have consumed poisoned food the previous night. The police are not ruling out foul play, though the shocked followers this reporter contacted all say that he was too gentle to provoke anyone’s ire to this degree.
Sachche Baba came into the limelight last year, with his discourses on truth. Some say he was a re-incarnation of Mahatma Gandhi, sent to the earth to finish his work. In the past year, he had gathered almost a cult following, and was seen very often on the different spiritual channels.

Sucheta Shankar

I can’t believe it! How could it be? And yet, he looks so similar to JD. But really, how could it be? How could this “God Man” (what is that anyway) be JD? JD, the guy every girl in college could kill for. The guy who couldn’t be found without a glass of premium Scotch at all parties, when the rest of us mortals would glug down beer from the bottle. The guy who, we were sure, had it made, with his father’s thriving auto parts manufacturing business silver spoon-fed to him. JD wore the best clothes, drove the best car and usually had the best girl (by some standards) at his arm. The quintessential spoilt brat. When he proposed to me in second year, I felt insulted. Here I was, developing this ‘intellectual’ image, and there he was, with his money-tinted glasses and bright red silk shirt, asking me, no, telling me that he wanted to take me out for coffee. I must have been the only girl to ever reject him. I heard later that it hit him pretty hard and he was seen moping around for a long time. I didn’t believe that for a minute.
Later, when I came to the US, I forgot all about JD and his silk shirts. When you are doing a PhD, you barely have time to remember yourself. But I did come to know that his father had finally died and left him the business and that he was even more obnoxious now than before. He had also got married a rich spoilt girl. Good, I thought. They belong together. Not that it mattered to me.
But really, Sachche Baba? I mean, the guy didn’t have a sachcha bone in his body. Re-incarnation of Gandhi? Please! But I suppose I shouldn’t think ill of the dead. Weird, to read about this.

Dhiman Mehta

Baba, why did you have to die? Did you die to save me? I have been following your Seven Paths to Truth everyday. I have even quit smoking for you? Why did you have to die? Who will I look up to now? Who will tell me in that soft, lilting voice “Dhiman, follow the truth and you will get a new life?” How will I live the rest of my life without your guidance? I wish I could bring you back. Or at least find out who killed you. It must be Chhote Mahantji. He was jealous of you, Baba. He would always stop me from going up to you. He would always pull out Joginder before me, because he would get separate chadhawa for Chhote Mahantji. Is this fair, Baba? How can someone get better darshan of you simply because they know how to do buttering? This Joginder is always troubling me, Baba. Even in my office. Just because he got promotion before me and has become Bade Babu, does not mean he can bully me. His missus has also become tip-top and looks at my missus like she is nothing. You remember I came to you with special chadhawa for promotion, but he got it. I never complained to you, Baba, because I know, you think best for me. I am your son. But they don’t let me go near your body. They don’t even let me see it. They say the police has done post mortem. I said, I am Baba’s special son, and Chhote Mahantji laughed. Laughed, Baba! You are dead one day ago and he is laughing! I am sure he has done it, Baba. I will tell the police. I will follow the truth, like you said, and police will have to follow too. But why did you have to die, Baba?

Sanjay Verma

Hah! What a laugh! My first TV appearance and the opposing view person dies. It has been six years, SIX YEARS since I became an active member of Raging Rationals, and now I get a chance to be on the TV channel, in a mock fight with Satyendra Dev on Rationals versus Faithfuls and he goes and dies. I mean, is there someone plotting up there? Ok, there is no one up there, but seriously, why did this stupid Godman have to go and die? Why couldn’t he have waited till after the program had been recorded? Now they are planning to replace that with a fight between Mahesh Bhatt and some women’s rights activist. I mean, what’s new about that? And the Raging Rationals are laughing at me. I know they are cracking jokes behind my back. What will I tell Jayanti? I asked her to tape the show. I’m not going to the RR meet till this blows off. Stupid, stupid Godman.

Sachchidanand Swami, aka, Chhote Mahant

It had to happen. I’m sure everyone thinks I did it. Can’t say I am devastated. He was getting to be a bit too overbearing. He had started to take this whole thing too seriously. I couldn’t believe it when he said, “We have a responsibility towards these people, Chhote. They are my followers.” He had actually started living this charade. We had gone into this as equal partners. It made good business sense. But this whole thing went to his head. It should have occurred to me earlier, when he set me up as Chhote Mahant. Why did I have to be Chhote? I paid half the rent for the room in Hardwar and then in Srinagar. Both of us studied those scriptures together, and we prepared the “ideology” together. We also did the first few discourses together. It wasn’t my fault that he had done a bit of theatre in college and so his discourses got louder claps than mine. I should have protested when he said, he should be the front end and I the back end, since I was so good at it. I was good at the organization, though, wasn’t I? It was fun setting up the Ashram. And convincing MLA Sharad Lal Dubey to give us prime property on the highway for free was pure genius on my part. I have literally given the Ashram my blood and sweat, and what do they call me? Chhote!! I am glad he is dead. At least I won’t be living in his shadow any more. I hope some by some quirk I don’t land up being the prime accused in the case. I mean, no one knows how I felt about him. Do they?

Kirti Dev

So, he is dead. How do I feel? Happy, because I can be free from the hatred that has been consuming my life. Relieved, because someone else did it. Sad, because I still long for the life we started together, till he decided to leave. But most of all tired. Because finally I can afford to relax and let the hurt of so many years run over me one last time, before I throw it out completely.
I was so naïve when he married me. So besotted with his looks, his mannerisms, his confidence and his popularity. He had gone around with so many, but I was the one he married. I was the prettiest, the smartest, and yes, the richest. We were so perfect together. I was much better than that chhipkali Sucheta. PK, Aman and the rest used to tell me he is still not over her, that I should be careful. But what did that wannabe social worker have that I didn’t. I was so confident that a week with me would make JD forget every girl he had ever gone out with.
Our first months together was blissful. We made love every night, and sometimes even in the day, on the couch in his office, in the meeting room, in Daddyji’s vacant office…he never seemed to get enough of me. And that’s why it was such a shock when, barely a year after we got married, he announced that he was going away to Hardwar for a few years. I tried everything to stop him from going. I even faked a pregnancy. But did that stop that son-of-a-bitch? No! He abandoned me. Me, the apple of my father’s eye! I even got Papa to track him and bring him back. But the slime-ball had his own set of goons that he set on Papa.
I laughed when I read that he had become Sachche Baba! The lying, cheating bastard! He wouldn’t know truth if it came and bit him in the face! I hope he rots in hell. How do I care, though? Aditya more than makes up for JD. So what if he looks a bit like JD? And so what if he irritates me with his syrupy Kiru darling?

Police hit dead end on Sachche Baba death

Saturday, July 16, 2005: Mathura
All roads lead to a theory of suicide in the Sachche Baba death investigation. However, even that doesn’t seem to be confirmed, since he apparently had no reason to kill himself. The source of the poison in his food has not been found. It wasn’t bought in Mathura. And the Godman used to cook his own food and shared it with his core group. Nobody in that group has reported any signs of discomfort since the incident.
“The investigations are still on,” says SP Nagendra Nath. “It is too early to jump to conclusions.” But an unnamed source in the police has said that the department has mostly given up on the murder angle.

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.

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.”