I was filled with so much of energy that I did not know what to do with it. Running around on my morning jogs, studying, devouring books, making huge amounts of detailed notes—I continued doing all of it with a burning frenzy. Nothing helped to expend it. My reserve was endless.
On many days I did not sleep at all. Thoughts raced around in my head like a colony of busy ants which had found a pile of food. I was filled with an almost coercive need to capture these thoughts somewhere. I bought a notebook and began writing in it. They were mostly poems. Wo rds flowed like never before. I filled page after page with poetry about various things. On the left side of the book, I made drawings to go with them. I would sit up night after night, writing poetry. I would write about ordinary things, I would write about fantasy, about love and longing, about angst, about smells and sounds, I would write about the rains in Bombay—in short, I would write about anything that caught my fancy. I would use clever puns and rhymes. Sometimes the poems wouldn't rhyme at all but they would capture the essence of what I was trying to say. I would manipulate words and come up with what I thought were brilliant analogies. I thought my poetry was beautiful, sensitive and clever. But later the psychiatrists would examine these too like the letter and would look for clues to a thought disorder and would call it ‘persistent disturbance to conscious thought, perhaps caused due to delusions’.
It would leave me sick to the pit of my stomach. Their conclusions and labelling would leave me so terrified and mentally scarred that it would be many years before I would be able to muster courage to even admit to anybody that I had written a poem. I would learn to stamp out any creativity and learn what ‘normal’ and ‘appropriate’ behaviour was. I would be filled with guilt and shake in fear if I wrote a poem. I would hide it like a criminal or tear it to bits, destroying evidence before I was discovered.
But I did not know any of that then and so I carried my little book with me everywhere I went and I wrote in it and drew to my heart's content whenever I felt like it.
It had been raining the whole morning that day and MM's class which was scheduled for the afternoon looked as drab as the muddy puddles that the rain had left outside.
“It is so boring! I really don't feel like attending,” said Chaya, voicing out what all of us felt.
“Let us bunk then and go for a movie,” I said.
“I checked. There is nothing good playing,” replied Uday.
“Let us go somewhere then. How about the beach?” I suggested.
“In this rain? Are you crazy or what?” chimed Chaya, Uday and Jigna in unison.
Only Joseph did not say anything.
“So what if it is raining a bit? I think the ocean looks beautiful in the rain,” I said, a little sulkily, annoyed that they could not appreciate my point of view.
“I agree,” said Joseph, much to my surprise. “Come on Anks, let us go. Does anyone else want to come?” he asked.
Nobody did and so Joseph and I made our way, out of the Institute.
“Shall we walk to Marine Drive or do you want to take a cab?” he asked.
“A ctually Jo, I have seen Marine drive so many times, but I have never been to Juhu beach.”
“What? Despite being here for so many months, you haven't been there. What a shame! Let's go” said Joseph as he hailed a cab.
“A re we taking a cab all the way? Oh my God, it will cost so much. Let us wait for the bus.”
“I am paying Anks, let me show you my city. Allow me, madam” he said, his voice filled with tenderness. When he looked at me, I was reminded of Abhi. I shuddered involuntarily. It was the same look that Abhi used to have when he looked at me.
In the cab, I sat in silence looking at Bombay in the rains. It was mesmerising. The monsoons lent everything a freshly washed look. Even the most common of city scenes seemed to have taken on a new beauty. A sense of longing and sadness washed over me. I fished out my notebook and without thinking began scribbling a poem. It was about nature weeping. Then I realised that Joseph was looking at me.
“A re you writing poetry?” he asked.
“Done now,” I smiled as I folded the book and put it away.
“Let me see Anks, I want to read it,” he said. He was whispering. He kept his left hand over my right hand which was resting on the seat of the cab. I made no attempt to move my hand away. We sat in silence, looking out. Then he held it and I turned towards him. He looked directly into my eyes. He raised my hand and kissed it. In that moment, for a fraction of a second, I saw Abhi instead of Joseph. Then the image was gone. I was filled with a longing and desperation of such intensity that I had never experienced before. My heart ached. My whole body ached. I could not stop tears from rolling down my cheeks.
Joseph was startled, “hey Anks, I am sorry! It is ok. You don't have to show me if you don't want to. I just asked. And I am so sorry I kissed your hand. I don't know what came over me. Sorry, sorry Anks.”
“No, you idiot. It's not that,” I said and I leaned towards him and kissed him on the lips, my tear soaked face, crushed against his. His stubble felt rough against my cheeks and I could smell his perfume which was a woody smell that I instantly liked. I inhaled deeply. I was kissing him for Abhi, I was kissing him as a repentance for never having admitted to Abhi that he did matter to me, I was kissing him because I could never kiss Abhi and I was hoping to fill that void that had been gnawing at my heart which I had managed to push aside every time. I felt no love for him, but I kissed him all the same, with a kind of fierceness and determination, as though to right the past, to bring back Abhi to life.
Joseph was abashed. But he looked very pleased too and suddenly very shy. The cab driver's eyes were popping out of his sockets as he got a clear view of what was happening in the passenger seat, in his rear view mirror.
“Anks! Not in the cab!” Joseph exclaimed.
“Do you have another place in mind? If so we will go there.” I teased and he guffawed.
I handed him my poetry book then. He took it like it was a treasure. He was silent as he read them one by one. He stroked the pages lovingly, running his hand over the drawings and over my handwritten words.
I nudged him when I saw the ocean. The skies were a turbulent grey and the sea danced in wild abandon. The wind sang a melancholy song as nature unfolded her splendour, like a dancer who knows that she is the cynosure of all eyes.
I watched enchanted and exclaimed “Oh Joseph, just look at it!”
Joseph told the cab driver to stop the cab as we made our way in the drizzle, to a restaurant that faced the beach. It was isolated at this hour, the weather contributing to it.
“Ankita, I am sure you have heard it many times before, but I must tell you this, you are really beautiful,” said Joseph.
“Thanks Jo,” I said as I saw Abhi in him again.
We spoke for a very long time sipping tea in the sea side cafe that day. Joseph told me about his childhood, about his growing up, about his dreams and hopes. He asked me about mine.
Somehow I did not want to tell him about Cochin or about Abhi. Abhi was like a precious secret that I was hugging to my chest. In a bizarre way, I felt that as long as I did not speak about Abhi I would be safe. Though what I needed the safety for I couldn't tell. “I love you, Ankita,” said Joseph finally.
I heard Abhi's grandfather's voice in my head and I heard his nerve wracking sobs. The recollection of that sound still singed my soul. I remembered what he said about never belittling love. I was silent for a while.
Then I said, “I love you Joseph.”
But I did not mean it at all. I felt no love towards him. He was a nice guy, a great guy, a charming guy. But he was not for me. There was no way I was going to tell him that.
Later, I sat thinking in my room for a very long time. Thoughts spilled out, like an overstuffed sack of rice that had been punctured and the grains now scattered in all directions.
I loathed myself for lying to Joseph. I loathed myself for not having admitted the
truth to Abhi . And I loathed myself for not being able to tell the whole truth to Vaibhav. I despised myself for getting involved with three different men. I looked at my face in the mirror. I hated it. I felt if I was ugly then they would not have told me I was beautiful and pretty. Maybe if I was ugly Abhi would still be alive. Maybe I could chop off my hair and make myself ugly. Maybe I could mutilate my face too. I hated it so much now.
That night too I did not sleep. I kept pacing up and down in my room. Vaibhav, Abhi and Joseph—their faces kept going round and round. What kind of a girl was I? How could I kiss Joseph like that? And how could I lie to him saying that I loved him? The thoughts kept going round and round like a whirlwind. They were spiralling wildly. There were various images coming into my head now and gambolling around the thoughts in perfect crescendo. I shut my eyes, trying to block them out. They would not go away.
They intensified so much that I finally I could not bear it any longer; I took out my poetry book and wrote the following poem:
A stop gap relationship
She looks at him with misty eyes
They have made love
Or attempted to
He seems content and relaxed
Most importantly, satisfied.
Not noticing her silence
Or perhaps choosing to ignore it
Not knowing its cause.
He is talking about leaving now
His voice a monotonous drone
Over the din of the fan in the background
In the cramped two room apartment
Filled with the smell of their sweating bodies.
In her mind a thought crosses
That the only difference between her
And her sisters on the street
The so called whores
Is that they receive payment in cash
And she receives it through emotions,
In form of words,
Words that have ceased to have a meaning now
Empty words—“I love you.”
I read the poem I had just scribbled. The images I had just described in the poem had simply come into my head from nowhere.
The more I read the poem, the more I could relate to it. It made perfect sense to me.
Suddenly I realised why.
I felt a lot like the whore I had written about.
14
The day something died
It was now at least three weeks since I had slept properly. Even the times when I finally fell asleep, exhausted with all the myriad things I was involved in, it wasn't for more than a couple of hours. The thoughts raced around madly. I tried desperately to control them, to rein them in. They were like wild horses on a racing spree. The more I tried, the faster they seemed to gallop. At one point I was so exhausted I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to shout at the thoughts telling them to stop. I tried shutting them out mentally by closing my eyes tightly. I tried to calm myself by counting sheep as I lay on my bed, trying desperately to fall asleep. But the sheep I tried to count turned into phantasmagorical dragons and giant elves. They leapt across in the universe dotted with a million stars. They leapt over Jupiter and their hooves made a soothing musical sound that went around in my head. They were the most melodious notes of music I had ever heard. The creatures I saw were a million colours. They were magical, mesmerising and enchanting to look at. With a continuous, carnivsaleque atmosphere inside my head, falling asleep seemed like a remote dream. I was aware of course that it was not ‘real’ and it existed only in my thoughts but oh, it was so beautiful all the same! It was seductive. I was drawn to it and found myself getting sucked in deeper.
I had always been meticulous about keeping my room tidy. But with so many activities like running, writing poems and studying, I was becoming less sensitive to my surroundings, especially my room. I simply could not be bothered to tidy up and put away stuff when there were a million more interesting things to do. There were piles of books strewn across. There were train tickets and bus tickets lying on the table. There were at least five uncleared, empty coffee mugs. I had no idea how many cups of coffee I had consumed, on the nights that I stayed up writing poetry. The bed was unmade and I could not be bothered to put away the footwear. At least three pairs lay strewn across the floor. There were a few uncleared plates too with residues of food on it, which I had shoved under the bed. My room was increasingly beginning to resemble the chaos that was going on inside my mind. It was a bedlam, a hotchpotch of a million different things that just existed side by side with no relation or connection to each other, very much like the thoughts racing around inside my head, refusing to stop.
I was becoming increasingly disregardful of my appearance too. I had lost a lot of weight. My already thin frame now looked positively haggard. My eyes took a haunted appearance. Ye t they glowed with a kind of energy. But these days I simply could not meet my own eyes in the mirror. As soon as I saw my reflection while brushing my teeth, I would look away hastily, averting my own glance. I hated looking at myself and so I managed with the bare minimum of personal grooming. I simply did not care anymore.
My parents would keep telling me to clean up my room and I would keep promising them that I would do it the next day. Finally my mother could stand it no more and decided to clean it herself, when I was in college.
When I came back one evening, my room was spotless. But there was an uneasy death like silence in the house. One look at my parents' face and I knew something was wrong. My dad's face was as black as storm clouds. My mother was glaring at me angrily, her eyes glowering with rage. I was quite sure that they were angry because I had procrastinated cleaning my room endlessly that they had been forced to do it. I was getting ready to apologise.
That was when I saw it. The letter that Abhi had written to me in blood was laid out on the centre table in the drawing room. Just a glance at it and I felt I had been jabbed hard in the stomach. I sucked in my breath, my heart beating at a furious pace. I swallowed and I opened my mouth and closed it. I did not know what to say. I was speechless. I was shocked that my parents had discovered it. I had never anticipated that. Earlier I had been careful about locking up my cupboard and carrying the key with me when I left home. But lately, I had become careless about that too. Getting a letter like this from a guy and then shamelessly holding on to it, was the ultimate sin a well brought up Indian girl could commit, in their books. To them, it was unforgivable that their daughter whom they trusted so much had done this. One part of me was terrified of their wrath. But another was also numb with the pain of seeing that letter again. It brought back all the memories of the time when I had seen the letter and first gone to his house. It reminded me of the afternoon that I had spent with him, in his house.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?” My dad thundered.
“Is this what we sent you to college for?” My mother added.
“Who is this fellow? And what is this writing in blood? Bloody mad bastard. How dare he?” My dad was so angry that he was choking on his own words. He was shaking with rage. He could hardly speak.
“And have you written back to him, you shameless hussy?” my mom berated me..
I did not know what to say. Rage was stirring somewhere in me slowly but there was also a huge wave of sadness brewing. How could my father address him that way? How dare they go though my personal stuff? How could they rob me of my privacy like this and then question me? I was not a child anymore. I was 21 and I could even marry now and they would not be able to stop me.
He is not a mad bastard, dad. He is dead. I wanted to say it but the words stuck somewhere in my throat and did not come out.
My mother looked at me and addressed my dad, “Look at her standing like that. Look at her insolence. She should hang her head in shame. Look at her attitude and her silence. Who the hell does she think she is?”
I still kept quiet. My silence aggravated her anger even more.
“Answer, you shameless whore,” she yelled as she shoved me hard. I stepped sidewa
ys by the impact of her push. “We did not bring you up for this. Where is this fellow? What is your relationship with him? Are you planning to get married?” she thundered.
My parents were both looking at me now, waiting for me to speak. How could I explain a thing like love to them? Their middle class values, their proper Indian upbringing and everything they stood for, had no place for trivialities like love and romance. If it happened, you pretended it didn't. You brushed it aside and moved on, as life was hard. You studied, you got a job and you got married to the person your parents chose for you. That is what they expected and that is what their way of life was. It was simple and direct. There was no way they would understand passion, love and emotions. There was simply no place for anything like that in their minds or lives.
“He is dead,” I finally managed to rasp.
“Very good if he is. He should rot,” she said. “Look at her talking back now after doing what she has. This is because you spoilt her and let her get away with everything. We should have been a bit more strict with her. Then we would not have to hear her talking back like this to her own parents,” she turned on my dad.
I did not have the courage to explain Abhi's death to them. My mother had presumed I was being discourteous and clammed up when I said that he was dead. I let her think so. It was easier than talking about it.
“Have you ever considered the consequences of keeping this letter?” asked my dad.
I was silent again, standing like a condemned prisoner.
“Is there anything more you have to tell us?” my mother asked.
“No,” I said.
“What about these letters then?” she said and that was when I noticed that they had all Vaibhav's letters as well. I had neatly filed them away date wise and the file was now on the sofa in my living room.
I cringed. I was certain they would have read them all as well.
Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny Page 10
