This must be one of the strangest conversations I’ve had. Gowri called to tell me that the virus has spread to a few people in India as well. A guy from Bangalore, where we lived, had tested positive too.
“Mark my words, this COVID-19 is going to be the start of a pandemic,” she said.
Now, Gowri tends to exaggerate. When we were in high school, every time we spoke on the phone, she would start with, “I’ve something really really urgent to tell you.”
I’m used to that by now. Still, I am scared. What if this does blow into a full-fledged pandemic?
I can feel myself beginning to get worked up, so I decide to forget this entire conversation and binge-watch CSI crime drama. TV shows are my go-to; they’ve gotten me through worse before, and I’m sure they would get me through this—whatever this is.
I sip the bitter coffee, relax on the ridiculously expensive ergonomic chair that I bought off Amazon, and press Play. My world, my safe space.
***
Gowri’s exaggeration may have come true, for the first time ever. My office has asked us to work from home for two months. Apparently, they’ll take a call after studying the situation then. Two months! They must be kidding me!
I wonder what my manager Vimal must be thinking now. He hates when his team works from home. Last year, when I sprained my foot during a late night at the Hard Rock Café, I had asked Vimal if I could work from home for a couple of days, and he looked aghast.
“Why don’t you take a holiday instead?” he had asked.
The sadist just likes to keep us all under his eyes when we work. Like we were kids who would otherwise run outside and play.
“No, moron, I don’t want to because I’m fit enough to work but I can’t walk to work,” is what I should have said.
But instead, I just smiled, took two days off and wrapped up an entire season of Black Mirror.
Now that the company has announced their work-from-home policy officially, Vimal must be a bundle of nerves, trying to figure out how to keep tabs on all of us. The thought made me laugh so much. Some cheap pleasures even in the middle of a pandemic.
***
Six more months from home, the company announced today. Looks like we’re stuck in this loop now.
Gowri has moved to Chennai to be with her parents. “If I’ve to work from home, I can as well do it from there,” she decided one day, packed her bags, and took an overnight bus.
I wish it were that easy for me. But appa is staying with my brother Gokul in New York at the moment. He was supposed to return to Chennai last month but postponed his tickets because of you-know-what. I think appa just needs an excuse to be with Gokul. He claims it’s to be closer to his grandkids, but I know Gokul has always been his favourite. He would never accept this, but I know it’s true. The only way I can conclusively prove this is by having grandkids first. But for that, I need to cross the first barrier of getting married first. At 35, that option is starting to look bleak.
If I were one of those Hollywood types, or actually these days, even Bollywood types, I could have stored my eggs for the future. But since I’m not, I’ve no way to prove to appa that he has always sided with Gokul more than me.
“You’ll be okay, right?” Gowri asked before leaving. We humans ask the stupidest questions.
***
I had an unexpected visitor today. Anshul was here just as I set the plate for dinner. I know that a man isn’t going to look the same after ten years, but he was nothing like the Anshul I once knew.
He looked pale and fidgety. Also, like he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair in ages. Maybe it’s the effect of you-know-what. But his sallow eyes caught my attention.
“Are you sick?” is the first thing I asked him.
“Of course, not!” he said, looking somewhat offended.
I don’t understand what upset him, though. Asking if he is sick only meant that I cared.
“How’s life then?” I tried again.
“Hmm…okay,” he said.
I was getting frustrated now. If he didn’t want to talk, then why come to meet me. But maybe I’m expecting too much. What do two people like us talk about?
Two people who had once childishly thought they were going to grow old together. Two people who had dreamt of nonsense things like waking up to each other’s stinky breath for the rest of their lives.
“This lockdown…,” he stammered. “I just wanted to see you.”
Anshul was staring at me with a strange intensity, making me uncomfortable.
“How’s the wife and kids?” I blurted out. He seemed disappointed.
“They’re all fine. The usual.” And then, he was gone.
***
In hindsight, I realize I should have been kinder to Anshul. Why did I have to be like this?
I guess I have never been particularly good at empathy. Or social skills. Especially when I’m uncomfortable, I tend to belt out mean quips that I spend hours regretting later.
That’s how Anshul and I broke up ten years back. After college, he got a job in Mumbai while I landed up in Bangalore. The long distance was not easy for me to adjust but Anshul seemed to settle into it in no time. It bothered me no end. It bothers me a bit even after all these years.
Once he didn’t call me for almost two weeks. I was in a fierce mood that day and accused him of many things, including not caring for me and having an affair with a colleague. A week after that, he broke up with me. Just like that. Simply said that he can’t go on with a suspicious monster.
So much for growing old together. We didn’t even cross the two-year mark!
I call Gowri to vent out and to tell her that Anshul had come. She doesn’t pick up and texts me instead: “In an office call, talk to you later.” I liked Gowri better when she was my roommate here. Ever since she left for Chennai, I feel like she’s been too busy to take my calls.
***
I’ve been restless for the past week. Must be due to Anshul’s visit. Why did he have to come now and stir up all my emotions? He’s the one who decided to break up. But now, he gets to have a lovely family, while I am stuck in a pandemic on my own. Life isn’t fair.
I spend hours trying to distract myself with work. That makes me feel better, and in time, even hungry. I remember that the cook has made some rice and rajma for dinner, and I’m about to walk into the kitchen when the phone rings.
It’s amma on the other end.
“What?” I snap at her.
“Just felt like hearing your voice,” she says.
What’s with the you-know-what and everyone wanting to get in touch again.
“Okay, you heard it,” I say, unrelenting.
You may think I’m hard-hearted but really, I’m not. Amma had made the decision to leave us—appa, Gokul, and me—long back. Gokul was just a ten-year-old then and I must have been about five. We were completely lost, the three of us. Appa didn’t even know how to boil water. Gokul was going through a rebellious phase, probably the only time he tried a bad-boy image. And me? Well, I was too young to care.
The only thing I remember is the fear. The way small kids always seem to sense what’s going on around them, I knew something wasn’t right. I did ask for amma but not for too long. Gokul and appa took care of everything, including me. They were a team. Even today, they are.
In my ninth grade, amma visited me at school one day. At first, I couldn’t recognize her. When I realized who it was, I remember tears welling up in my eyes.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to keep visiting you at school whenever I can,” she promised me.
I had played this scene a million times in my head; if my mother ever came to visit me again, what I would say, what she would say; how I’d be angry with her for days and weeks and months and make her suffer just like she made me; how she’d beg me to forgive her.
But, when it came to it, I just hugged her and stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything. I could have stayed like that forever.
The next few times when she visited the school, she said sorry over and over. So at least that part of my fantasy came true.
One day, as I was scraping the last noodle from my lunch box, amma said suddenly, “Don’t tell this to appa, okay. He won’t like it.”
I was amused. Why would I talk about this with appa? I had never confided in appa, and I wasn’t going to start with something like this. Something this precious.
I’ll never forget those hours of amma and I spending time together under the banyan tree in the school grounds. For a while, I even stopped having lunch with Gowri. Gowri was furious at first because lunch hours were our gossip hours, but slowly she grew distant. And I didn’t mind.
I was now free to be with amma. I was going to make up for all the lost time over the years.
But it was not to be. I still don’t know how – maybe it was Gowri who blabbed, or maybe it was a teacher at school – but Appa found out about us one day, and everything fell apart. I had thought he would be angry at amma and me both, but he simply looked miserable.
“Am I not enough?” he kept repeating over the next few days.
Again, humans and their stupid questions.
Right then, I made a decision. The next day, I told amma about all the hoopla at home.
“I want to come with you, ma,” I said.
“You know that’s not possible,” she said with a rigidity I’ve never seen before in her. Maybe it’s the same rigidity that made her go away in the first place.
“Please…,” I pleaded. But amma didn’t budge.
“I’ll come visit you more often,” she said, offering a compromise.
It felt like a thousand needles pricking my heart. I turned away from her that day, choosing appa, Gokul, and Gowri over amma.
She’s tried to reach out to me a few times since then, but I’ve managed to keep my distance. Until now.
Amma is crying on the phone. “I miss you,” she says.
I start crying, too. It’s a miracle how tears can heal broken hearts more than smiles can.
“Will you call me again?” I ask amma before saying goodbye.
“Of course,” she says.
***
The next few days, I feel like I am floating. Amma’s call is the elixir I needed. Even Anshul’s visit, which bothered me initially, now makes me feel good. He still thinks about me…misses me…I think with satisfaction. If he comes home again, I will talk to him like a normal person would, I decide. Or maybe I’ll get bolder than that.
Somehow, I’m sure he’ll come. I saw it in his eyes.
Amma has called me many times since that first call. We have started to bond again, treading carefully on the unspeakables. This time, we are going to make it work.
***
I have started to attend online meditation classes. Before the you-know-what, Gowri and I used to attend yoga classes in the morning in our apartment clubhouse. I was never one for waking up early, but Gowri used to drag me along.
“It’s good to get all your chakras aligned,” she would say, sounding like a spiritual guru. I’m quite sure she didn’t know what a chakra was, but I never liked arguing with her, so I went along with whatever her plan was.
This time, too, it was Gowri who pushed me towards meditation. She whatsapped me a link along with the text: Be there or else.
Ha! It would be just like her to not bother about what I was doing for months, and then suddenly decide to take me into whatever crazy thing she was getting into next. That’s how I ended up attending calligraphy lessons once. And a baking workshop, another time.
I wanted to give Gowri the royal ignore. She can’t just show up whenever she wants to. But then I had a sudden epiphany.
Six months since the arrival of you-know-what, I have met only two people: my cook and maid. The maid comes at seven in the morning, and I wake up to her bell. The cook comes an hour later and prepares breakfast and lunch. For dinner, I eat the leftovers. I order all my groceries and veggies online—so yes, there are some courier boys and food delivery guys I interact with.
Oh yes, and then Anshul. But that was just one day.
Why not join the session and see some new faces?
***
Yesterday, I went down to complain to the security that the light outside my door wasn’t working. That’s when I saw her, my neighbour. We had never spoken to each other, but we would always give a slight nod when our eyes meet. Sometimes, if we felt like, we would extend the courtesy a bit further with a tiny smile.
After my meditation session, I was in a good mood today and so I tried the nod-and-smile thing. But her vacant eyes didn’t even register my presence, and she walked right by me.
“What’s wrong with her? Why’d she snub me like this?” I wondered.
Only when I went to bed that night, I felt that maybe she didn’t mean to offend me. Maybe she was upset about something. Maybe she had had a fight with that husband of hers. I’ve never liked him. His face always looks like a growling lion that’s about to attack. I’ve heard their raucous fights through the walls many times.
I had a bad feeling about this. Her lifeless eyes kept appearing in my mind.
What if she makes a bad decision? What would happen to her little girl then? Who would take care of her?
I tossed and turned not knowing when I fell asleep eventually.
***
I woke up to terrible news.
A detective, dressed in a dry-cleaned black jacket, was at my door, enquiring about the neighbour woman. My worst fears had come true. She had killed herself last night.
I felt my hands grow cold and clammy. I could have done something. I could have stopped this.
A sense of déjà vu gripped me, as if I had stood in the same place, listening to the same news and having the same thought, but in another lifetime. I was shivering now, my body shaking uncontrollably.
After a while, once I could breathe again, I told the detective everything I knew, including the fights with her husband, but he seemed to dismiss that detail almost instantly.
Why wouldn’t he believe me?
As I stood with my front door half ajar, I saw the husband standing outside his house, watching us carefully. “Arrest that guy,” I wanted to scream.
But before I could, the detective left.
Did he just wink at the husband? Are they in cahoots?
I couldn’t stop thinking about this. Later that day, it occurred to me that I might have seen this detective somewhere else. Who was he? Have I seen him visit the neighbour earlier? Was he a friend of the husband?
I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
The maid and the cook came for work as usual. I was surprised that they didn’t seem troubled by all the chaos next door. What were these people made of? How could they remain so unaffected by a death at such close quarters?
I was hoping amma would call today so I could at least talk about this traumatic incident with her. But she didn’t. Instead, appa called me in the evening. He seemed to sense something was wrong with my monosyllabic answers, but I didn’t want to bring up the suicide to him. He would be nonchalant and ask me to be cool, just like he always does, whatever happens. Worse, he’ll judge me for being so sensitive.
“You’ve to be thick-skinned di,” appa would always say. “Life isn’t fair, but we need to move on.” That’s what he had told me when amma left, and I’m sure that’s what he would say now. I was in no mood for one of his profound “all-is-well” lectures.
***
3000 deaths – the news ticker blinked in front of me. I stared blankly at it. I was in no mood to do anything today. It was a Saturday, so there was no need to even login to the office network and pretend to work.
Why didn’t you turn up today?
I read Gowri’s message for the fifth time. I didn’t feel like replying to her. Why does she care? Is it enough that she finds some random online thing and then washes her hands off me? It’s not even like we get to interact during the session. She has just become a box on the screen.
I decide to watch something on the 55-inch smart TV. It was Gowri’s idea to buy this huge monstrosity that looks like a misfit in our small living room. Usually, I like to curl up in bed and watch shows on my laptop but today I decide to switch on that damn TV.
For half an hour, I just sit there, browsing the teasers, not able to pin down one of them. Finally, I default to watching CSI, munching on the jumbo burger and fries that I had ordered. The guy on the screen has a strange likeness to the detective I met earlier. Maybe all detectives look just the same with their jackets and goggles. It’s interesting that I have never thought about this before.
***
I didn’t think I would be this upset about the neighbour woman. It’s got my mind in tangles. Yesterday, it reached a point where I felt like I couldn’t breathe anymore, and then I started to worry that I would collapse on the floor. Maybe my maid will find me curled up on the floor in the morning. Or maybe amma will call, get worried about me not picking up, and rush here.
Who am I kidding?
I need a walk, that’s what I need. The apartment association has now started to allow senior citizens to go on walks. But I think I can sneak in a couple of rounds.
My wardrobe is in a mess, and it takes me a while to find my track pants, which is buried under layers of clothes that I never seem to wear anymore. I put on my sneakers as well and I’m already feeling a bit more cheerful.
My legs feel like they’ve forgotten how to stretch after only being used to take micro steps within the 1200 sq. ft. apartment for ten months. As they relearn, I try to observe the little things—the trees, flowers, birds. But even they look gloomy as though sensing the doom all around.
It’s the people that catch my eye though. I can count the number of people on my fingers, which is creepy because there are more than 1000 families in this apartment community. With the masks on, it’s difficult to identify who is who, but even without the mask, I wouldn’t know anyone. Gowri was the one with all the social skills. I had always just been the tag-along.
I can see the fear in everyone’s eyes. It’s as though they’re worried that someone will strike a conversation and they’ve to then take the risk of talking to them, and they could catch the you-know-what. I’m reminded of cats with their stealthy and silent walks, and complete disinterest in others.
And then I spot him. It’s the husband. He is walking ahead of me with another woman. It’s not even a week since his wife died and he has already moved on?
I decide to follow them. I need to warn her about him. He is a dangerous murderer. He may not kill with a knife, but he can definitely kill with his words.
The two of them have started to jog now, and I’m finding it impossible to keep up with them. I haven’t run since I was a child. As they turn around a corner, I realize I’ve lost them.
Exhausted and panting for breath, I return home.
It was a bad idea to go for a walk. Walks are useless—that’s what they are.
***
My body jerks involuntarily on hearing the knock on the door.
Who’s here now at 8pm?
I was used to knocks only at familiar hours, so this one, well into the evening,unnerves me.
Well, it could be Anshul, I suppose. But I find my guts along with my carefully laid plans melting away at the very thought. I don’t want to face him. I would say something stupid and drive him away. This time, whenever he comes, I don’t want to let him go.
Heart still racing, I ease the door open. Gowri is outside, lugging on a knapsack.
“Hi!” she beams. She walks in like she owns the place.
“What’re you doing here?” I ask, almost dumbly.
“Just wanted to surprise you. My parents had to travel to Bangalore to meet some relatives. I decided to come along,” she says.
“I didn’t know you could travel inter-state at this time.”
“We had to just show the Covid negative report at the border.”
This annoys me instantly. If it had been that simple, why didn’t she come earlier? Even now, she has come, not to see me, but to accompany her parents. All my pent-up resentment wells up again, ready to come to the surface.
But I am tongue-tied. I want to yell at her, but the words just won’t come out.
“Why aren’t you picking up my calls?” she asks with an assertiveness that I can never manage to bring in my voice.
“I’ve been busy,” I say.
“With what? Running behind neighbours?” she counters.
How did Gowri get to know this?!
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Mithila called me, di, saying you freaked her out by chasing her and her husband all around.”
That makes no sense. How can Mithila call if she isn’t alive? Gowri must be confused.
I’m feeling dizzy now.
Gowri is watching me with concern. “Are you okay, di?” she asks.
“Anshul came to see me,” I say, desperate to change the subject.
“Which Anshul?”
“How many Anshul’s do you know exactly? My Anshul. The one who got away.”
“What?” She looks uncertain. “I thought he was in Canada.”
“Not anymore.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing much…he looked upset. I think he misses me.”
Gowri doesn’t seem happy to hear this. She has never been a fan of the Anshul-and-me chapter. She seems distracted with her phone now.
“You don’t like Anshul…,” I say, measuring my words.
“It’s not that. It’s been years…and I think you need to move on,” she says.
If I had a penny for every time someone said, “move on” …
Amma is the only one who understands me as I am.
“I don’t want to move on, Gowri,” I say a little louder than I intend to.
I feel her eyes heavy on me.
“And you know what? Amma agrees,” I say with satisfaction.
“Who?”
I’m getting frustrated.
“My amma, who else. She’s been calling me regularly.”
Gowri comes closer and holds my hands.
“We’ve spoken about this many times, haven’t we? You shouldn’t be talking to her,” she says.
Easy for her to say, to take the moral high ground, living with her parents every day. I start tuning her out.
“Amma died many years ago, remember?”
“Hm…,” her voice barely registers now.
“You don’t need her. I’m here for you,” she says, softly.
“I do need her,” I reply, calmly, with conviction. “She listens.”
Gowri’s face inches closer to mine and she raises her voice a little now. “You can’t keep doing this. You have to move on from what happened to amma, and you have to move on from Anshul. Who is in Canada, by the way,” she says desperately, thrusting her phone on my face.
Anshul’s photos flash in front of me, flushed and happy, twirling his kids in some snow-filled paradise.
I’m not convinced. I know what happened.
“I think you should leave now, Gowri,” I say.
I am done letting someone else decide what’s real and what’s not.
Illustration : Prapti Roy