The Alternative – A short story

                                                    

I usually skip the ‘Entertainment’ section when I read my daily newspaper, but this morning, one of the articles accompanying a photo of a rather muscular man wearing only jeans grabbed my eye. As I scanned through the article, I was reminded of an old friend I had completely forgotten about.   

This was back when I was still in college, some ten years back. He was my flatmate for seven months only, but I knew everything there was to know about him in the span of those seven months, the reason being that whenever we communicated, it was always him talking and me listening. The day he moved in, he rang my doorbell, and when I opened the door, he had a look of utter disappointment on his face as he looked at me. But he shook my hand, and we introduced ourselves, and the flat, at least, didn’t seem to disappoint him too much.

We share the same first name – Prakash, but he went by the name of Pyro and insisted on calling me ‘Cash’. Every time he called me by this name, I would giggle and say, ‘My name is not Cash,’ but he always ignored my protests. He was very Americanized, though he told me he had never been anywhere abroad. He used words like ‘legit’ and ‘dough’ and ‘rehab’.

Speaking of rehab, that was one of the first things I learnt about him, that he had been there twice (in a rehabilitation centre, I mean). He said the first time was in 2007, when he had been diagnosed as an alcoholic. He said rehab was the best place he had ever been since high school.

‘I didn’t realize until after school was over how shitty life really was,’ he said. ‘And do you know why school was so great? Because we had to go there year after year and meet pretty much the same people. You made friends because you always saw one another. The minute you’re out, it’s every man to his own destination. No one bothers to keep in touch anymore. That’s why rehab was fucking awesome. I made friends because we were all together, we didn’t have a choice but to be. That’s why I went back.’

Pyro said that he relapsed deliberately in 2009. He was depressed and lonely at the time, and he took to drinking again because he wanted to be sent back to rehab.

‘It wasn’t that I liked those people so much. I just liked feeling as though I belonged somewhere, and feeling like I had made friends that actually wanted to see me, even if that wasn’t really the case. Now, they’re all in my phone. There isn’t a single fucking person among my so-called friends who makes the slightest effort to even hear my voice, let alone see me. The typed word is all we have to offer one another’.

I thought of explaining to him that it takes two to make a friendship work, but it seemed to me he had already made up his mind about the nature of people.

Pyro was an aspiring model, which wasn’t surprising by the looks of him. He towered over my puny 5 foot self and flaunted the proverbial six pack abs. He wore t-shirts and jeans that I only know how to describe as ‘tight’. He worked out at the gym every evening and then skipped dinner. He was a non-vegetarian, unlike me, and he ate a dozen eggs everyday, which was the only food he actually cooked at home. Everything else he ate, such as chapatis, raita, and meat dishes, he brought from the nearby restaurant. He also drank copious amounts of milk, which suited me fine because I no longer had to buy milk for my cat, Kali (whom he called Kylie).

Apparently, he had come to Pune to take a course on modelling to prepare him for an upcoming male pageant. He said he used to have a proper 9 to 5 desk job but he had to quit because of his alcoholism, and also because he hated being among ‘idiots’.

‘You may think that’s ironic, considering I entered the modelling world, but you’d be surprised. At least models aren’t trying to impress anyone with their educational degrees and their knowledge of the stock market and what not. They own the fact that they are stupid,’ he would say. I didn’t really understand what he meant by it.

He probably had a family but he never spoke about them. He once mentioned his grandmother but only to express his bizarre fear of photos of deceased people.

‘I see something in their eyes,’ he explained with a shudder, ‘If I see a picture of someone I know who is dead, it will haunt me for weeks. I once saw a picture of my grandmother who had passed away recently, and I kept thinking of where her soul could be because it has to be somewhere, doesn’t it? We can’t just disappear altogether. It freaked me out to think a person can go from living to non-living just like that. I know I’m scum but I would not like to be dead.’

The course he attended lasted three months, after which he re-applied and took the same course again. I didn’t exactly wonder what kinds of things he was being taught in ‘modelling school’, and it didn’t look as though he planned on telling me. He often practised his walking and posing in front of the floor length mirror in the hall. He also did some of his exercises in front of the mirror. I thought he was rather narcissistic at first, but there were times he seemed to be quite the opposite.

He seemed to have the notion that he had an ‘over-large misshapen’ head. No matter how big his muscles got, he thought he could never attain the amount of bulk he needed to disguise the fact that his head was too big for his body. Now, I may wear thick glasses but I could see very clearly that there was nothing wrong with his head, or the size thereof. In fact, he was certainly better looking than any one I had ever seen in person, females included. But he would spend hours looking at his head, placing his palms to either side as though he could squeeze it to the size he wanted it to be. Sometimes, he would experiment with different styles on his hair, and after what seemed like an eternity, say ‘Fuck’ under his breath and throw the comb down in frustration.

He said he never had regular dreams, only nightmares. I never saw him sleep because I went to bed before he did and he woke up before I did. We didn’t eat our meals together either because he thought his non-vegetarian food would offend me. I told him I didn’t mind at all, that I had even tasted a fish finger once (although that was because I was told that it was a potato patty), but he was rather insistent on it. Even though we didn’t actually do anything together, we did spend a lot of time talking. I suppose now that I think of it, I was his only real friend when he was here in Pune, at least for a while. If you went by appearances only, he seemed like the kind of person who flitted from one social circle to the next with his impressive physique and his trendy branded clothes. But he was a very lonely person. His harsh criticisms of everybody he knew belied his desire to have ‘bona fide comfortable friendships’ as he put it.  

After his course was over for the second time, he spent most of his time at home preparing for the competition. He read magazines and online articles, and practised walking and flexing in front of the mirror. I told him he ought to feel very confident since he had worked so hard. He replied, ‘I would, so long as the judges can look past this oversized head of mine.’

‘I don’t really give a crap about this pageant,’ he told me. ‘It’s just kind of a stepping stone to what I really want to do. You get a modelling contract, among other things, if you’re one of the winners. Once people start noticing you on ramps and fashion magazines, it’s just a matter of time until a film producer approaches you for a role. First you get the small ones because they don’t know how well you act. But then once they see that you’ve got some real talent, they sign you up for the big movies. I’ll be an actual Bollywood star, and then my vengeance will be complete.’

‘Vengeance?’ I asked timidly.

‘Well, in a manner of speaking. My whole life, I’ve been a fish out of water. There is no place I can go where I can feel I truly belong. And you might say it’s a shortcoming on my part, but I’m 25 years old now, and I have consistently received the same differential treatment everywhere. I’m going to have the last laugh over everyone who has ever been shit to me.’

The night before he left, he ordered pizza. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t like the taste of pizza since he took the trouble to order a vegetarian pizza especially for me. I had been neck deep in college assignments, and I was quite tired but I stayed up with him since it was his last night. Kali had long since retired to her corner in my bedroom.

‘You know, Cash, you’ve probably been the best roomie I’ve ever had. I’ll miss you,’ he said.

‘Same here,’ I replied, taking a tiny bite of pizza and washing it down with Pepsi.

He had already finished his packing since he was planning on taking an early cab to Mumbai the next day.

‘You pray for me ok,’ he said absently, flipping through one of his magazines. ‘You’re pretty religious right? So pray that I win this thing.’

‘I will. But you should pray too,’ I said smiling.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I mean, I believe in God, but I doubt He’ll give a shit about my prayers.’

He was such a strange person. On one hand, he seemed to think so highly of himself that people often fell short of what he expected from them. He was certainly self-centred enough to rate relationships based on how much they listened to him or how they treated him, the focus never being on his treatment of them. I knew that was why he liked my company.

On the other hand, it was as though he was aware of this very nature of his, which was why he had such a low opinion of himself. It didn’t seem to me that attaining fame and success would do him any good. I wished that I could help him but I didn’t know how.

Before I went to bed, we shook hands and I wished him the best of luck, and promised that I would watch the show. He laughed and said, ‘Don’t watch it. It’s just a dumb pageant.’

He was gone the next morning before I was up. It was only after he left that I realized we never exchanged phone numbers.

The article I saw in the newspaper this morning was about the same pageant that Pyro had participated in; they were announcing the audition dates for the year’s competition. I only realized then that I hadn’t bothered to check whether Pyro had succeeded in winning it the year he participated. I did a quick Google search on my phone but didn’t find his name in the list of winners. I then did a search of his name but nothing came up other than Facebook and LinkedIn pages of people who shared the same name. I was sure you could find anyone on the internet if you searched hard enough. Yet, Pyro was nowhere to be found.

It almost made me sad, but then I recalled a conversation we had one Sunday morning as I ate my breakfast and he was responding to some emails with Kali snuggled into a ball on his lap.

‘You know what I’d like, Pyro,’ he told me as he looked up from his computer. ‘I’d like either to become completely famous, or completely anonymous. This state of in-between that all of us are in, and I do mean all of us, this isn’t acceptable to me.’

‘I’m sure you’ll become famous someday’, I replied, not getting his point. ‘You’re already very popular now, I can see that.’

‘No, what I mean is, if I can achieve real fame, not like the kind of self-manufactured fame that’s made possible nowadays, if I can obtain world-wide eminence, I’ll know that I have made it. The other option is that I disappear off the face of the earth, so to speak. No one knows where I am or what I’m doing and they have no way of finding out. That would be a great success too. The only way to fail for me is to carry on being like this.’

‘Like what?’ I asked stupidly.

‘Just another colourless individual trying to stand out,’ he said, typing away on his keyboard absently.

It occurs to me now that Pyro might have actually achieved one of his two major dreams. Maybe he was somewhere far from home, some obscure country where every person he met was equally out of place, where no one knew who he was, where he came from, or what he had done. Completely anonymous.

I may be wrong but perhaps he had been leaning towards the alternative all along.

A Box of Pastries – A short story

Hina adjusted the hem of her plaid skirt for what seemed like the tenth time that morning. She sat at the common room waiting, with fresh strawberry cream puffs from the bakery, her sister’s favourite. She had made sure to call the baker two days in advance to request him to have the cream puffs ready for her to pick up at 7:00 am.

‘Riko will be in shortly,’ said the woman wearing light pink scrubs and sporting a mushroom cut. Hina had met her the last time she had visited but could not recall her name. She nodded and began to say, ‘Thank you’, but the woman had already walked past the common room area and into the hallway.

Except for a middle aged woman staring blankly at the television set which was playing what seemed to be an old soap opera, there was no one else in the common room. Hina checked the time on the clock and saw that she had waited twenty minutes. Usually, she did not need to wait more than five.

She looked at her hands, and especially her ring finger. The 3 carat teardrop diamond ring that adorned her usually bare hands was not exactly what she had expected at first, but of late, she had been feeling more and more it was the perfect ring for her. She wondered how Riko would take the news of her engagement.

‘Is it my birthday again already?’

Hina looked up and saw her sister standing some feet away, wearing the same clothes she always did, a boxy grey pinafore over a white t-shirt that was several sizes too large for her. Her damp hair had been neatly combed and on her feet, she wore her old sports sneakers. With her right hand, she kneaded the skin on her left elbow, an affectation she had developed from early childhood.

Riko made her way towards her older sister and sat down beside her, eyeing the box on her lap.

‘No, I simply thought it had been a while since you had a treat,’ said Hina, handing Riko the box. ‘Don’t eat them right away. Let us talk first, then you can take this to your room and have it all to yourself.’

‘Sounds good’ said Riko, placing the box on her own lap. ‘That’s a nice skirt.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hina. ‘Where is the skirt I bought you in my last visit? Did it not fit you?’

Riko shrugged and said, ‘I like this one. I wear it on special occasions, like when you’re coming to visit. That’s why I took some time to come out because I didn’t know you were coming today so I had to take my bath early and Sayuri would not let me go before her she’s very stubborn. I couldn’t come out until I was proper and ready.’

‘Anyway, how are you? How is everything?’ asked Hina.

‘I’m fine. Everything is fine, but..’

‘That’s good. I’m glad you’re fine. You see, I don’t have all the time in the world, but I came to see you because I wanted to know how you were doing, and also because I have to tell you two things. Perhaps you might say one is good news and one is bad news..’

‘I’d like to hear the bad news first,’ said Riko, interrupting her sister mid-speech.

‘Very well,’ said Hina. ‘The bad news is that I won’t be able to come see you anymore because I am going to live in another city.’

‘Where?’

‘That does not matter. How do you feel about that?’

‘Will you never see me again, ever at all?’

‘I couldn’t say that for sure. Maybe I’ll come for a holiday and then visit you. Would you like that?’

‘Very much,’ said Riko, slightly cheered at this prospect. Her sister was the only person who ever came to visit her, and although her visits were short, and their discussions formal, she quite enjoyed having someone to talk to who did not belong to this place.

The middle aged woman sitting in the corner got up and switched off the TV. Evidently, her soap opera had finished. She stood in front of the TV, scratching her head, and then her upper back. She seemed completely oblivious to the presence of the other two in the room.

‘I can’t make any promises but I will try to visit you again,’ said Hina to Riko.

‘Will you bring me strawberry cream puffs again?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Hina, smiling slightly. ‘Should I tell you the good news as well?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I’m going to get married.’

Riko’s eyes shone, and her face lit up with a broad smile. ‘When?’

‘Soon. It does not matter when.’

‘I can’t believe you’re getting married! Oh I’m so happy. I’ll come, won’t I? You’ll ask for permission for me to attend your wedding..’

Hina watched the woman as she finished her scratching and left the room without a backward glance.

‘You know I can’t do that. And don’t make a fuss about it either because I don’t have the time.’

Riko shifted the box from her lap to the table in front of them. She took her sister’s hand in hers.

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, that I feel strange here, what I mean to say is, I feel as though I’m not like the others. Not that they are all the same, I don’t quite know how to put it, but I don’t feel as though I should be here.’

Hina looked at her sister impassively, squeezing her fingers as though to reassure her, but she didn’t respond.

‘Can’t I come home? Please?’

‘Don’t ask that of me, I’ve already told you not to.’

‘But I’m not ill.’

‘I never said you were. But surely you remember how you used to have a friend who followed you around who nobody else could see? And how you used to scream so loudly in your sleep mother had to put her hand over your mouth the whole night so that the neighbours wouldn’t be disturbed? Do you recall that after mother died, you put on her clothes and acted like her sometimes for days? I would be dismayed and ask you to stop, and you would look at me and ask “stop what?”.’

‘I don’t remember doing those things,’ said Riko, pinching her elbow again. ‘But I won’t do them again.’

‘I tried to call you last month on the phone, did they tell you? I asked to talk to you so that I could tell you of my engagement. And you know what they told me? They said that you had been impossible to talk to all day, that you refused to answer to your name, that you would shout at the other girls without provocation..’

‘It’s these medicines they give me, they put it in the milk to make me think I’m not taking any. They make me light-headed and sometimes I don’t remember what I say or do. I don’t remember shouting at anyone,’ answered Riko desperately. ‘If I come home, I will get well. It’s the milk.’

Hina changed the subject. She looked at the clock and said, ‘My husband-to-be is a news anchor, his program will be on in a few minutes. Would you like to see him?’

Riko nodded and said, ‘Ok.’

‘Where is the remote control?’ her sister asked.

‘I don’t know. She must have taken it with her.’

‘Who’s she?’

‘The woman who was just here. She likes to stare at the TV without actually watching the programs.’

‘Do you mean that you saw a woman in this room when you came in?’

‘But..surely you saw her too? You looked at her when she was leaving.’

‘Did I?’ said Hina, looking slightly sterner now than she did a minute ago. ‘Never mind. Here’s the remote.’

Hina switched on the TV but there was no signal, so Riko did not get the chance to see what her future brother-in-law looked like. She went to her room to stow the box of pastries safely under her bed, and then returned to the common room to say goodbye to her sister.

‘The next time you visit, if you do visit, you’ll bring him along, won’t you?’ she asked hopefully.

‘I’ll see if it’s possible. Meanwhile, try to get well. You aren’t going to come out of here until you get well. You realize that, don’t you?’

Riko nodded. ‘I won’t drink the milk anymore. You’ll see how perfectly fine I am soon enough, sister.’

They said their goodbyes and as always, Riko watched her sister drive off into the distance, along a road that she had only been once, years ago, when she had been driven here by Hina. What she always wondered about was the fact that, try as she might, she could never recall the start of that journey. Perhaps she had been asleep, and had only woken up in time to see the big, gloomy building in the distance which would be her home for who knew how much longer.

As she went back inside, she saw the old woman at the common room again. She went up to her and asked, ‘Weren’t you here already today, watching TV?’

The woman grimaced and blinked when Riko spoke to her, as though she was being blinded by a bright light.

‘You saw me come in and meet my sister, didn’t you?’ Riko asked again.

‘Wait until the plane lands,’ replied the woman after thinking about her answer for a while. ‘Then we’ll call your father, ok?’

Riko went back to her room and retrieved the box of strawberry cream puffs from under her bed. She felt grateful to her sister for bringing her the treats, and wished that she could see her again soon. She bit into one of the pastries and closed her eyes as she savoured the delicious sweetness of the cream.

‘No more milk from tomorrow,’ she said to herself resolutely, taking another bite.

Willow – A short story

So it isn’t entirely true what they say about your whole life flashing in front of you when you’re on the verge of death. In any case, how would anyone know? If they lived to tell what the experience was like, their accounts wouldn’t have been valid. It’s ironic how I feel right now. It’s ironic because here, in this moment as I’m plunging to my death, is the first time I don’t feel fear.
The first thing coming to mind is this town, and how much I wanted to escape the first time I came here. I looked the same as everyone else, I spoke the same language, so why did I feel like an alien from some other galaxy. In the office, I would want to go home. At home, especially on weekends, I’d wish it was a work day again. At night, the geckos on the walls would disturb me with their incessant fighting. I’d throw a pillow at them but they’d flee in the same direction and continue their noisy fight in some other section of the wall. It was just me alone in bed always.
I tried to be like the others. I was a fish among arboreals attempting to climb the tree as well as they did. Here’s another irony. I’m beginning to realize only now that far from them judging me for my inability, they never cared one way or the other. But still, I was still the only one with useless gills.
A memory of the kid who hung himself. Even though there were a million words uttered that day, the only sentence I remember is the one spoken by his next door neighbour ‘Kids these days. They get into relationships and think it’s all they have to live for.’ The listener nodded their head in agreement, and so did I.
Another memory. Chris phoning me at what I thought was 2am but it was only 11pm and I had been asleep for hours. He didn’t need to say all that he did when the underlying question was always the same one. Why? I never knew how to answer him though I do now. It was because after my discontent wrung him clean of all he had, after he gave up everything he was just to make me happy, I was still empty. I shouldn’t have picked up the phone, but I always did eventually. I wanted to hear his voice, it was me being selfish again.
I also think of Frida from the office, who always reeked of perfume, I say reeked because the smell made me nauseous, but she was nice enough. We might have been friends. She looked at me with something like concern one afternoon and said ‘are you depressed?’ I replied that no one had ever asked me that question before. I wonder what gave me away. She kept looking at me as though waiting for a response. I said of course not, and to my disappointment, she smiled and accepted my answer. For one second there, I had felt hope. That I could talk to someone and they would listen. Why didn’t I just tell her the truth. It was the same old thing. Fear.
I wish to be ordinary, even now, though I am seconds away from being a dead body. I used to watch movies and find myself wanting to be those extras in the background of some scene, no characteristics, no back story, nothing worth noticing. What makes me think I’m not ordinary. I don’t know. I know an ordinary person might stand on the most precarious, highest ledge of an eight storey building, they might look down and think about how fragile life is that one misguided step could end it all, they might even sit and dangle their feet and thrust their torso forward to get a taste of danger. But an ordinary person wouldn’t jump off the ledge in the manner I just did.
I’ll be glad to be rid of the panic attacks. It was fine when they came in the night time even though they terrified me, because at least I was alone. But when it happened in public, like that one time I was buying vegetables at the market, I had to act like everything was fine while feeling as though I was face to face with the devil himself. Isn’t it the most unfortunate thing, to not believe in God but to have no doubt about the existence of the Evil One. I know the devil exists because he haunts me every day. But it’s ok because he isn’t going to be where I’m going.
Where I’m going is into oblivion. It’s safe there. I see Chris’ face again. I remember the day I fell in love with him. I remember the exact moment. I remember daydreaming about the rest of our lives together. That was a time when hope played a part in my life. We would have been married a number of years by now, had children, bought a house.
Now I’m face to face with that which gave me sleepless nights. I used to look out from my office window and wait for the breeze. When it blew, I’d watch the leaves dance. It was almost like I was willing them to move. Those were the only moments I did not think about death. Every other moment, regardless of what I did, or who I was with, was like another step towards this very moment. They say the best way to conquer your fears is to face them, so this is what I’m doing.
The very thought of dying used to render me unable to breathe properly, clenching my fists and punching the pillow, inflicting some sort of pain on myself so that the pain would distract me, running down the stairs and into the streets, frantically searching left and right, crying and screaming mutely, watching it all turn black.
Now, I’m no longer affected. I see what it must be like to wake up in the morning and feel glad that you haven’t run out of coffee, to feel your body getting stronger as you run your fifth mile, to relax after completing a long drawn work assignment, to buy groceries while planning what to make for dinner, to go to sleep knowing that the bed will support your weight, give you rest, until the next morning which precedes much of the same though no day is ever exactly as the other. This is the last time I will ever have thoughts again.
Three, in my falling form, is there some semblance of a person, a person worth loving and living for? Two, I come to the futile realization that human beings are all alike after all. One, I’ve made a terrible mistake.

Death by Miscellaneous – A short story

A colleague of mine, who I happen to dislike very much by the way, made this observation about me the other day- that nothing ever seems to happen to me. By it he meant that I never got sick, nor had relatives that got sick, or died, I had never gotten into unfortunate mishaps, never had any reason to be devastated about anything. He meant to point out how lucky I was that my life was so uneventful. Congratulations on your boring life, Hiram. Thanks very much.
It isn’t true that nothing extraordinary has ever happened to me, but perhaps what I consider extraordinary might be something truly unremarkable to someone else. In any case, I’ll tell you about it, because the story will be over before you realize what it’s about.
Her name was Janis, and she was beautiful enough for me to be sure that she would never have anything to do with me. The first two years of uni, all I ever did in respect to her was stare. I was a shameless starer when it came to pretty girls, and she was something else. I’d stare at her from a safe distance and she’d never notice and life was perfect.
In the third year, for some inexplicable reason, Janis joined the editorial board for our student newspaper, and she was assigned as co-writer for the fortnightly column which I had been writing since the very beginning. That first meeting, we were introduced to each other. We shook hands, and I hoped that she did not recognize the creep who’d been ogling her for the past two years. That was the first time I saw her up close, I noticed everything-her eyes that were slightly far apart, the beauty spot on her forehead, the shimmer of her pink lips, her perfectly unruly curls.
She had been the one who suggested that we get together to discuss the next story for the column, which mostly featured write-ups about real-life mysteries and criminal cases. She came to my flat just outside campus and settled down on the arm chair as though we had known each other forever. I poured us both some wine and we chatted for a while. I found it strange how, considering the fact that I was incredibly attracted to her, I didn’t have any difficulty in talking to her. I told her about the story that I had hand-picked for next Saturday’s column. It was about a woman who had committed suicide some years ago. She had been found dead in her bed by her teenage daughter late one night, and the papers had run stories about the ensuing police investigation, as well as accounts on how the woman had been rumoured to be mentally unstable, drug dependent and was having an affair with a prominent married man.
As I switched on my computer to start a search, Janis placed a hand on my arm. She told me not to bother with Google as she knew the story as well as the inside story on it. She had a rather self-satisfied smile as she said this, and so we had many more glasses of wine, and we nibbled on cheese crackers as I listened to her.
The woman, to whom I shall assign the pseudonym Jane, was a high school teacher whose husband had left her a year or so before her death quite out of the blue. She was a friendly enough person but she didn’t socialize much, preferring to spend her free time with her daughter. They were a close mother-daughter pair and it was clear Jane doted on her daughter, even taking her along for her weekly therapy sessions.
In the months leading to her suicide, there had been whispers that she was having an affair with let’s call him K, a wealthy businessman with a wife and four children, after he had been spotted a number of times entering Jane’s house during the late night hours. Soon after, this man stopped visiting, and another man, L, was seen, walking up to her front porch in that same furtive manner, entering the house and only leaving the next day. You could tell with one look at this second man, that he was very young, and so there was even more gossiping.
Two days before her death, she had been spotted at a marketplace chatting with her paramour, her hand on his arm. It was as though she was impervious to the nasty things that were being said of her. She looked healthy and happy, as a woman in love would be. And then, one night, she had poisoned herself (the post mortem results had revealed she had ingested a lethal combination of a variety of drugs which included heroin and fentanyl) left a suicide note for her daughter, the contents of which were read only by the daughter and the investigating officials.
There was no indication that it had been anything other than a suicide, but the police did their bit to ascertain the cause, and took in both her rumoured lovers for questioning. Both denied having had anything other than a close friendship with her. They had airtight alibis that were well corroborated, and there wasn’t a single piece of physical evidence that suggested any involvement of foul play. The case did not live up to the expectations of people and it was soon forgotten.
I told Janis that the story might not make for a very interesting read seeing as most of what was known about the case had been pieced together from hearsay and conjecture. Janis told me she had told me only the story and not the inside story. I noticed as she said this that she had left the first button of her blouse open, and that even though no cleavage was revealed, it left me feeling optimistic and as though all hope might not be lost for me.
We didn’t get any work done on that first meeting. She stayed for dinner and left just a little before midnight. I didn’t expect her to kiss me and she didn’t, but she did give me a light tap on my cheek with her hand, and I was hopelessly in love with her by then.
The next day, she sent me a text message asking whether I would like to go to the movies with her. The day after that, we drove around town. Then we went for dinner in a nice restaurant. She held my hand whenever she pleased. She gave me a haircut at my house. On Thursday, which happened to be my birthday, she brought a giant cake with ‘Happy Birthday, Hiram’ written on it which she said she might have baked, depending on whether I liked how it tasted or not. I said it was the best thing I had ever tasted, and she gave me a kiss that almost touched my lips.
Now all this felt like I was in a dream, because I’ll be quite honest with you, I did not score so high in the looks department, and neither did my brain make up for my lack of good looks. I was ugly, poor, boring and I sure as heck wasn’t a nice person. Even though she didn’t act as though she wanted anything more than friendship, it was still surprising that she sought it from me.
One afternoon in the following week, I had just gotten home after having sat through four consecutive tedious classes which had left me with a throbbing headache. For me, the only effective way of getting rid of such migraines was a good long nap, so I took off my shirt and jeans and got into my untidy but comfortable bed. Just as I did so, I heard a soft knock, and I knew it was her. I told her to come right in because my head hurt quite badly and I couldn’t bring myself to get up. She had come to work on our story but when she saw that I wasn’t well, she called me a poor thing, removed her shoes and got right into bed with me. That night, after we had dinner, she said since she’d already slept on my bed, she might as well spend the night, and she did.
It was exactly like we were lovers but we didn’t say anything to each other about how we felt. On my part, the only reason I didn’t tell her I loved her was because despite her affectionate behaviour, and the fact that she certainly seemed to enjoy my company, there was always something in her demeanour that suggested that I should not make any eager assumptions.
The two weeks passed in a flash, and it was only when my alarm went off on Friday morning that I realized I hadn’t so much as started on the story for my column. I made myself a cup of coffee and opened my notebook, which was literally a notebook made out of paper. The only way I could write creatively was with a pen. I worked on the story for about an hour or so, putting in unnecessary details here and there, and just as I finished it, Janis walked into my apartment wearing a dress and sunglasses, which she took off as she flashed a smile at me. She looked exquisite, and I decided then that I would just say the words and get it over with. The worst that could happen was that she would say she didn’t feel the same way and that we should never see each other again, and I would go back to being the content loner I had always been. The worst case scenario was the only one I could picture, but I was determined to do it anyway.
As she walked in in her pretty dress, I told her I had something to tell her. She told me it could wait because we had to finish our story. I told her I had already finished it, and handed her the notebook. She closed it without looking at it and told me to sit down because she was going to tell me the real story.
In January of the year that Jane died, she received a phone call from her friend and neighbour, who said that some very malicious things were being said about her, rumours which she doubted were true but upon hearing which she thought she must tell Jane to be very careful. Jane hung up the phone and headed to the kitchen. Her daughter was drinking orange juice and studying. She looked up as her mother entered the kitchen.
‘Darling, I’ll make some sandwiches’ said Jane, kissing the top of her daughter’s head. She replied that she didn’t want any, and went up to her room. Jane sighed. The pressure of school work seemed to be causing her daughter a great deal of stress lately. She had become more reticent than usual, and was always burying her head in her text books.
Around mid April, the same friend and neighbour warned Jane about the tattletales that were lurking in every corner, saying things that she was sure weren’t true. Jane was far from bothered. Even though L was taking the precaution of visiting her only in the late hours of the night, as had her previous lover, K , to her, all this was highly exciting. She had had boyfriends before. In fact, her first tryst had been just two weeks after her husband left her. But it had always been she who ventured out, sometimes during school hours, sometimes in the early hours of the morning in the middle of her morning walk. Nobody ever suspected a thing. It was only when the men started to visit her that people took notice. For her, having a man sneak out of his house to visit her, taking him up to her bedroom, watching him leave with an expression of regret, knowing that he had wilfully tread on dangerous waters, gave her a feeling of power, and she decided then that her days of rendezvous in the woods, in the backseat of a car, in hotel rooms, was over; her lovers would come to her.
L was the first ‘boy’ she had been involved with. He was young enough to be her son, and yet he seemed to be the most intelligent among all her past lovers, this being so despite the fact that he was an unemployed college dropout. He often visited her during the daytime on weekends, and he was the first one that Jane introduced properly to her daughter.
It had been early one morning, when L was putting his clothes on and preparing to leave when Jane professed her love for him. He said he loved her too, and that it did not matter to him what people thought of the two of them together.
Jane came home from work that evening, deliriously happy. She cooked a delicious dinner, and then she and her daughter watched their favourite talk show on TV. After her daughter went to bed, she took a shower, put on the new lingerie that she had bought the previous day, and then lay in bed eagerly keeping an ear out for the soft tap on her bedroom door.
L was slightly late that night, owing to the fact that there had been some necessary errands to run. Nevertheless, he arrived at House no.59 a little after 1am and he let himself in with the spare key that he owned, making sure to tip toe as lightly as possible so as not to wake Jane’s daughter up. He did not knock on the bedroom door as he usually did, and opened the door in a feverish hurry.
At first he thought she was asleep, but knowing that she was a light sleeper, he quickly understood something was wrong when she didn’t wake up after he nudged her. Her pill bottle lay on the floor, he picked it up and saw that it was empty. On the label, ‘Miscellaneous’ had been written with a permanent marker pen. Not knowing what else to do, he went to the daughter’s room to wake her up. He found that she was already awake. He told her that something had happened to her mother and that he couldn’t wake her up. They went to the bedroom together. Jane’s daughter put her head gently on her mother’s chest. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat. She quietly pulled the blanket so that it covered her mother’s chest. Then she went to the phone on her mother’s bedside table and called the police.
L escaped in time, and even though the police took him in for questioning a number of times, they couldn’t find evidence substantial enough to book him. It was his great luck that none of the nosey neighbours had seen him on that particular night.
I told Janis that it was certainly an interesting story, that is, for a real life incident, but it did not shed any light on why the mother killed herself.
Janis said that during the time that Jane lay in bed waiting for her lover to arrive, she had heard a sound from her daughter’s room and went to check on her. When she opened her daughter’s room she saw that a chair had been placed in the centre of the room, and her daughter was standing on it, and tugging at a piece of cloth she had hung on the ceiling fan. Jane was horrified and immediately ran to her daughter.
‘You promised’ she cried. ‘You promised you wouldn’t try that anymore.’
She sat on the chair and held her daughter, who said softly ‘Don’t cry, mom.’
After a minute, she said ‘I don’t like that you sleep with men in our house. The kids in school are calling you a slut, and they think I’m like you. Yesterday, a boy followed me into the girls’ bathroom and told me to take off my bra and give it to him or else he’d break my nose right then and there. I’ve been getting bullied worse and worse, and I won’t take it anymore.’
Jane listened to her daughter, the tears falling uncontrollably from her eyes. She said ‘I’m sorry’ over again, feeling as though her heart would break into pieces.
‘Remember our pact?’ her daughter said, looking at her mother. ‘It’s either none of us or both of us.’
Her mother nodded, but as she began to understand what her daughter meant this time in saying those words, her tears stopped abruptly. She had been the reason that the person she loved the most in the world had suffered. She did not deserve to be alive. They held each other for a while and then, holding hands, they went to Jane’s bedroom. Jane emptied the contents of her ‘Miscellaneous’ pill bottle into her hand and then swallowed them all with a large gulp of whisky. Her daughter tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. Then she went to her room and placed the chair next to her table. She sat on her bed and waited.
I should have asked Janis at this point to continue with the story. It was clear that both mother and daughter were mentally unstable, and that the daughter had attempted suicide earlier, on which occasion her mother had made her promise not to do it again or else she would do the same. ‘It’s either none of us or both of us’. I had no doubt now that this was going to be the most interesting and talked about piece I had ever written, but there were still many unanswered questions, especially with regard to the daughter’s intentions.
However, as Janis paused and I was about to ask her one of the many burning questions in my mind, she slipped one of her dress sleeves off her shoulders, and then the other, and all at once, my mind went blank.
The next day, Janis was gone. I was told she had dropped out owing to a personal matter, the details of which I could not succeed in obtaining despite every effort I made in doing so.
Needless to say, I was wretched. I could have contacted her if I wanted to, there were a number of ways I could have obtained her number, or her email address even, but I was unable. I had been deserted for no fault of mine and it rendered me catatonic. I had no urge to get out of bed, let alone the flat.
Of course, real life isn’t like the movies, and one can’t simply go into hiding for months just for being scorned by a lover. There were a million tests that I had to study for, and so on I went, filling my time with studying and trying my best not to think of her.
A few months later, I found myself attending the editorial board meetings again and writing again, and seeing as I was running out of stories to write, I thought I would finish what I had worked on with Janis. I searched for the relevant articles online, there were only three, and clicked on the one that seemed to be from the most legitimate source.
And there she was, my Janis, just as I had expected. Her hair wasn’t curly and her breasts hadn’t developed as yet, but it was definitely her. It was a very grainy picture, considering the fact that it had only been taken a few years ago. She was holding her mother’s hand and looking directly at the camera with an expression that I could only describe as ‘bored’. Her mother was even more beautiful than she was. She had curly hair.
So in any case, the point of my story, which you might have gotten by now, is that yes, I am boring and commonplace and have neither seen nor experienced great things, but I have made love to a woman who, when she was just a teenager, wilfully caused her mother to take her own life. A murderess, practically. And that counts for something.

Treehouse Treats – A short story

“Mind the third step, I already told you it’s loose. If you fall, it won’t be my fault”.
Teresa rolled her eyes. Her younger sister had always been a slow learner, but she couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for her to just follow her instructions.
Carefully, she climbed the stepladder and made her way into the treehouse that her father had built for her. Teresa had been five years old when her father built her the treehouse. At the time, Angela was only two and didn’t care much about anything other than her little baby toys. But after Angela turned three and learned to walk and talk and run about, she started to follow her big sister around everywhere she went, and wanted to do everything her big sister did. Inevitably, Angela expressed interest in the treehouse.
The first time Teresa heard Angela’s request, she had her answer all ready. “You’re too little” she had said, “it’s too high up for you.” Teresa knew the treehouse wasn’t that high, because her father had ensured that it would be placed at a height safe enough for her to be on her own. But she thought perhaps Angela could be persuaded against trying to climb the tree. She had also told Angela that there were all sorts of bugs and creepy crawlies everywhere, which, again was not at all true.
Her mother had helped decorate the treehouse after her father had finished building it. She had placed a cozy mattress on the floor, on which Teresa put some of her favourite dolls and teddy bears. There was a little table and chair on one side which Teresa called her ‘office’ and on which she made tons of drawings with the colour pencils and sketch pens her mother had bought for her specially to put in the treehouse. Her favourite part of the treehouse, however, was the box on one corner labelled ‘Treehouse Treats’. Every time her parents or a relative or friends of their parents gave her any kind of chocolates or candy, she’d run to her treehouse and save them in the box. Her collection of treats got bigger and bigger and she loved looking at the colourful assortment of delicious looking sweets. Sometimes, she’d sit at the treehouse with her best friends, Mosey and Hannah, and let them empty out the contents of the box just to admire the sweets. She wouldn’t let them eat the sweets, of course, but if the occasion was special, like if it was someone’s birthday, she’d feel extra generous and let them each pick their desired candy. Then they’d lie on the mattress and enjoy the tasty treats. It was for this reason, Teresa knew, that everyone wanted to be her friend.
Angela was always barred from the treehouse and Teresa’s parents would tell her time and again to let her little sister into the treehouse, but Teresa would always find some rationale or the other as to why Angela’s inclusion in the treehouse was a bad idea.
The real reason, however, that Teresa wanted to keep Angela away, apart from the fact that she found her highly annoying, was the fact that Angela loved sweets. Whenever the two sisters were given something sweet, Teresa would quietly put them in her pocket, while Angela finished whatever it was in a matter of seconds. Then, she’d start bawling because she knew Teresa still had hers in her pocket. Teresa knew that the minute she let Angela into her treehouse, she would go straight for the box and cry and cry until Teresa would have no choice but to let her have some.
Teresa hated the fact that her little sister always used tears as her weapon. Every time Teresa wanted to do something on her own, Angela would want to tag along, and if Teresa didn’t let her, she’d start crying. And then, Teresa would always have to let Angela have her way in the end. She couldn’t understand why Angela wanted to spend all her time with her. Didn’t she understand that she was a big girl now and couldn’t keep hanging around with babies? Like last week, when Teresa wanted to go cycling down the street on her own, Angela made a huge fuss about going with her. Teresa got so annoyed that she stepped on the pedals as hard as she could and cycled away and away until she couldn’t hear her sister’s whimpering anymore.
Now, as she made her way into the treehouse, she berated Angela again. “If you’re going on the mattress, you’re going to have to take your shoes off.” She sighed and eyed her box at the corner, knowing she was going to have to relinquish them soon. She had saved some of the sweets for so long that she was sure they would not taste so good anymore. In fact, as she emptied the contents of the box on the mattress, she suddenly realized that she no longer had any desire to eat the sweets. She held up a candy bar with a glossy red wrapper and said “Here, you might as well start with this.”
After a while, the family sat down to dinner. Teresa’s mother asked her where she had been, even though Teresa was sure she already knew the answer. “We were at the treehouse” Teresa told her parents.
“Oh, did your friends come over?” her mother asked.
“No, I meant me and Angela” replied Teresa. “I offered her some candy but she didn’t want any.” Then she let go of her spoon and raised both her hands to cover her ears. She could see that her mother was wiping her eyes, and that her father was saying something, but she did not want to listen.
Later, when it was bedtime, her mother came to kiss her goodnight. After she did so, her mother went over to Angela’s bed and sat there for a while. Teresa and her mother looked at each other but neither one said anything. When it was her father’s turn to say goodnight, Teresa showed him the box that she had retrieved from her treehouse. Her father was surprised to see that she had saved up so many sweets.
“I wanted to fill it up, that’s why. It’s almost full now” she said. She closed the box and put it on her bedside table. “I should have given them to Angela a long time ago.”
Teresa wished that she could rewind the time to when she was three years old, and her parents had come home from the hospital, her mother carrying a little white bundle in her arms. When Teresa peered into the little face, she had told her mother “She looks just like me, but with much much smaller eyes”. Her mother had laughed and asked her “What shall we name her?” Teresa had been delighted when she found out that the little baby was a girl, and she had spent the rest of the day thinking up suitable names with her father. Eventually, they had decided on ‘Angela’ because it had three syllables just like ‘Teresa’, and because it suited the little baby very well. When Teresa saw Angela’s eyes open for the first time, she had waved at her and introduced herself, and then asked her mother whether she would start talking soon, so she could teach her to say her own name. The first few months after Angela came home, Teresa had always made sure to give her a kiss goodnight on her forehead, just like her mother and father kissed her every night before she went to sleep.
Or if she could not rewind that far back, she wished she could at least go back to the previous week, when Angela had asked to sit on the backseat of her cycle. Teresa had planned on spending the evening at her treehouse to prepare a drawing to give to Mosey for her upcoming birthday. But her sister had followed her to the oak tree, attempting to tail her all the way up to the treehouse. Thus, Teresa had to forego the initial plan, and instead took out her bike. Even then, Angela would not leave her alone. So she had cycled away as fast as she could, around the entire block, and even stopped for a few minutes at one of her friends’ house when her friend’s mother offered her a glass of pineapple juice. When she cycled back home, she saw that a large crowd had gathered on the street. It was only much later that she found out that Angela had been involved in an accident. That night in bed, Teresa had seen Angela look wistfully out her window, staring at the sky and then settling into her own bed.
“If I had let her ride with me, she would have never been run over by that car” said Teresa to her father.
“What happened was an accident, and not your fault in any way” her father said to her. He sat at the edge of her bed and stayed with her till she fell asleep.
The next morning, Teresa and her parents went to visit Angela’s grave. Teresa held her father’s hand with one hand, and the box of treehouse treats in the other. She placed the box next to the bouquet her mother had laid by the smooth rectangular stone on which Angela’s name was written. They didn’t stay for long, because her mother had to go to the doctor. In the recent months, she had been going to the doctor every now and then as her belly had been growing bigger like it had done before Angela had appeared in their lives. As they made their way back to the car, Teresa turned to look at Angela’s grave one last time. Her little sister was sitting cross-legged on the ground, with Teresa’s box in her lap. Teresa watched as Angela opened the box with glee, took out the candy bar with the red wrapper, and tore the wrapper cheerfully. She bit off a large chunk of the candy bar and waved goodbye happily at her sister.
Teresa smiled and waved back and got into the car, realizing fully for the first time, as the car sped away, that she would never be seeing Angela again. She sobbed quietly, resting her head on her mother’s arm. She laid a hand on her mother’s belly and felt a movement right in the middle of her palm. She looked up at her mother and saw that she was smiling. Teresa suddenly felt much much better.

The Two Lucys – A short story

After having taken a long, leisurely walk from her house, Lucy finally came to the children’s park she had frequented in her childhood. The park was completely empty, and Lucy headed straight for the swings. She sat down on one of them, making sure to swing very lightly or else she would get nauseous again. A warm breeze was blowing, and Lucy took a number of deep breaths, one after the other.
An ice-cream vendor passed by, looking hopefully in her direction. He was probably on his way home. Lucy wanted to buy a cone, and then realized she hadn’t brought any money with her.
‘No thanks’ she said to the vendor, but he stopped anyway. For a hopeful second, she thought he was about to offer her a free ice-cream cone. He looked like a kind enough man, and she wondered if he had a family to support with what he made from selling ice creams.
‘Two, please’ said a voice behind her. Lucy turned, and saw a girl approach. She handed the vendor the exact price of the ice cream cones and chose vanilla and strawberry. After the transaction was over, the vendor closed his cart and went on his way.
‘My name is Lucy. Which one do you want, vanilla or strawberry?’ the girl said to Lucy, as she approached her.
‘Er..you pick’ Lucy replied.
‘Nah. Go ahead, before they melt’.
‘Ok, vanilla then’ replied Lucy, taking the ice cream cone gratefully. ‘Thanks a lot.’
The girl sat down on the swing next to hers, licking her ice cream with relish.
‘My name is Lucy too, by the way’ said Lucy. She stopped her swing, as the girl started hers.
‘Really? Cool. How old are you?’
‘I’ll be twenty-one in July. You?’
‘I just turned eleven. Just two years till I’m a teenager. I cannot wait.’
Lucy smiled. She remembered how impatient she used to be as a child to become an adult soon. Even though she was going to be a legal adult soon, she still felt no older than a high school girl.
‘I know everyone says life is better when you’re a kid, but I think it’s because they don’t remember the parts where it’s really crappy. No-one takes you seriously, you know. And they expect all kids to be the same, have the same mind, enjoy the same things, like we’re just a bunch of clones. That’s why I can’t wait till I’m a teenager so that at least, I won’t be treated like a baby anymore.’
‘There are crappy parts to being old too, though’ replied Lucy.
‘Well yeah, that’s true. But I don’t think I’ll miss being a kid.’
‘You will’ said Lucy, amused.
The girl slowed down her swinging, taking the first bite of the wafer cone. She was looking at Lucy with an almost apologetic expression on her face.
‘I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but I didn’t notice that until just now.’
She was pointing at Lucy’s stomach. Lucy looked down and involuntarily placed her free hand on her belly.
‘Not at all’ Lucy replied. ‘You wouldn’t have missed it if I had been standing though.’
‘My aunt’s pregnant too, but she’s huge, and she can barely walk. You look very tiny for a pregnant lady.’
Lucy laughed. ‘Well, I’m going to get bigger. Soon enough, I might be as big as your aunt, and have as much difficulty in walking.’
‘I don’t think so’ said young Lucy kindly. ‘Is it your first kid?’
‘Yes’ said Lucy. She had already finished her ice cream and wondered if the vendor had gone far. She could really use a second, or a third cone.
‘Is it your first child? Are you excited?’
Lucy didn’t answer immediately, even though she didn’t need to ponder on it. She was surprised to find that she felt glad when young Lucy asked her the question.
‘Yes, she’s the first, and no’ said Lucy, ‘I’m far from excited. I’m..’
‘Scared?’ offered young Lucy.
‘Scared is a mild word. I haven’t slept properly in months. Every morning, I look at myself in the mirror, and I see less and less of myself. I have another human being growing inside of me, and sometimes when I’m lying in my bed at night, I think about this fact and I have near panic attacks.’
Young Lucy was listening attentively and nodding her head sympathetically. Lucy immediately regretted having said what she had.
‘Sorry. You should know that I’m crazy. Normal people don’t talk like this.’
‘Nah, you’re not crazy. It’s normal to be scared. My mom said that when she was pregnant for the first time with my older brother, she cried all the time, and even after having him, she was still sad for a really long time, but it went away after a while.’
In her head, Lucy said ‘but the thing is, I don’t know if I want to keep this child’, and wondered whether she should say it out loud. She was afraid that her words might leave a lasting negative impression on the girl. She had probably already done some damage in that respect.
‘And’ continued young Lucy, ‘one of my friends from school, Lydia has a cousin who got pregnant in her teens. She was only seventeen, and she had the baby but it didn’t stop her from going to college or anything. Lydia says she just does everything with her baby.’
‘People are so brave’ remarked Lucy. ‘I’m not brave.’
‘It’s not that they’re brave. It’s just that they became moms. A lot of people are moms.’
Young Lucy shrugged as she said this, and she really looked as though she didn’t think much of it.
‘I don’t feel I’ll ever be ready. It’s strange for me to think of myself in that role. I thought of getting an abortion, but couldn’t do it. Now, I’m thinking of giving her up for adoption. I know it’s wrong of me to want to do that but really, she will be much better off being raised by good, loving parents, and not me.’
‘Well, it’s up to you, but maybe you should decide after the baby comes along. Then you might change your mind. Besides, you seem like a nice person. You’ll be a good mom.’
Lucy smiled in spite of herself. She had never thought of herself as a good anything. She hadn’t been a good daughter, a good friend, or a good girlfriend, and yet she thought she would have still done better in those roles than in the one that she might need to take on soon. She shook her head to hinder any more unpleasant thoughts from arising.
She looked at young Lucy, who was now looking ahead, closing her eyes as the breeze blew her hair away from her face. How strange it was that of all the people in the world, a girl with the same name as her would show up on this particular evening. She had chosen a Monday evening because the school children usually went home early on Mondays, and the park was mostly empty at this time. She had come to spend some time by herself to think about her situation calmly. At home, she found that she was always plagued with a number of unpleasant feelings like guilt or fear or stress or anger. She wanted to come to a quiet place and see if her plan to give up the baby still seemed like the right one.
Young Lucy had said to wait to decide after the baby came along. But she had already thought of that too. She knew that once she laid eyes on the baby, she would not want to give her up. She would hold her, look at her tiny hands, and she would smile, and it wouldn’t matter anymore whether she was a good person or not. She would want, more than anything else, to be a mother.
‘I wouldn’t be a good mom’ said Lucy finally. She looked down at her belly and thought she felt the baby move.
‘You can’t know that if you’ve never been a mom before’ replied young Lucy. ‘Hey, how come you know it’s gonna be a girl?’
‘I don’t.’
‘But you keep saying ‘she’ so I thought maybe you knew.’
Lucy blinked. In a matter of seconds, she felt her eyes well up with tears. She had cried so many times in the past few months- in her bathroom, in her bed, on the phone. But this time, the feelings that accompanied the tears were entirely different.
‘Sorry’ said young Lucy, immediately stopping her swing and looking at Lucy with concern. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to..’
‘No. It’s ok’ replied Lucy, wiping her eyes with her scarf. ‘I’m not crying because of what you said. I’m crying because I’m happy.’
Lucy made to get up from her swing, and young Lucy offered her arm in support. The evening breeze continued to blow, and as Lucy stood up, the younger Lucy remarked ‘your kid’s going to be lucky. She isn’t even born yet and you’re already taking her to the park for ice-cream.’
The two Lucys said goodbye to each other and went on their separate ways, the younger one skipping happily, completely oblivious to the impact her words had had on the older Lucy. Lucy went home, went straight to her room and looked at the mirror. The words formed in her mind ‘I was afraid of you because you came at a time when I hated myself. I thought ‘the world does not need another me’. But I’ve come to realize that you have come into existence not to make things worse for me but so that I could have a new purpose. Maybe I was not good for much ever, but I will be good to you. I’ll make sure as you grow older that you have some reason or other to smile every day.’
She ate her dinner, took a shower, brushed her teeth and got ready for bed, and for the first time in many months, she fell asleep within minutes of her head touching the pillow.

Thank You for the Tea – a short story

It was the summer of 98, exams were over and done with, and the holidays were in full swing. We spent the summer holidays swimming, reading Tinkle comics, eating mangoes that we plucked ourselves from the trees in our backyard, and preparing bottles and bottles of Rasna squash, our favourite flavour of which was, again, mango. We would put these bottles of juice in the fridge and empty one of the bottles on an ice tray so that we could enjoy mango ice cubes later in the day. In the evenings, we would go to the park right across the street, and we would play on this particular tree which had long, low-hanging intertwining branches. We would pretend that this was our space-ship, and that we were travelling across the galaxy to save the universe.

My sisters and I would go swimming at the club every alternate morning, waking up early so we could enjoy the pool when it was not yet crowded. One morning, when we were returning home after swimming, we met a girl on the road. She was wearing a yellow salwar-kameez, and her hair was neatly plaited, and I saw that the tip of her plait reached her waist. She wore glasses and carried a sling bag, but she carried it as one carries books, holding the bag close to her chest, as though she was afraid she would lose it. I also noticed that she had a unibrow.

The girl approached us, and spoke to my mother. I didn’t hear what she said because I was walking a little ways behind my mother and my youngest sister, but I saw that the girl started to walk alongside my mother.

“Who do you think she is?” I asked one of my sisters.

“Probably a saleswoman” she replied. My sisters and I bantered back and forth about different topics and didn’t pay much attention to the saleswoman.

We reached home, and I was surprised to see that the saleswoman was following my mother as she entered our house. For a brief moment, the saleswoman turned to smile at us. I didn’t like her, because I knew she was trying to sell my mother something we most likely did not need.

My mother asked the maid to prepare some tea for our ‘guest’, and I went to take a bath, fully intending to scold my mother after the saleswoman had left. As I shampooed my hair, I thought “I’ll tell her that it isn’t just us children who shouldn’t talk to strangers, that she ought to be careful too, and what if the saleswoman was a criminal, because women could be criminals too.” After I finished my bath, towelled myself and put a shirt and shorts on, I went to the living room. The saleswoman was just leaving and I heard her say to my mother ‘thank you for the tea’. After she left, my mother cleared away the teacups.

“So what was she trying to sell you?” I asked, as I followed her into the kitchen where our maid, Juhi was making puris for breakfast.

My mother laughed and said she wasn’t trying to sell her anything.

“So who was she and what did she want?” I asked, intrigued. My sisters were now watching TV in the living room, they couldn’t have cared less about our visitor.

“She said her name was Amil and that she had run away from home. She didn’t tell me where she lived but I suspect she hasn’t wandered far.”

“She ran away from home?” I asked, confused. I was only ten at the time, and I classed people under two groups only – children and adults. The girl had looked to be a bit older than the oldest girls in our school, so she was definitely an adult. I had been under the impression that adults could do whatever they wanted; it seemed incredible to me that a grown-up would want to run away from home when they didn’t have anyone to tell them to do their homework or eat their vegetables or to wake up early. “Why did she do that?”

“Well” my mother said as she seated herself down on one of the dining chairs. “Sometimes parents tend not to be very supportive of certain decisions their children make. When you’re young, we can scold you and try to influence you in a good way to the best of our capabilities. Then you grow older and you become more and more set in your ways, and then the parents are no longer able to exercise that influence anymore.”

I blinked, not understanding what she was trying to say.

“I’ll give you an example. You love to play basketball, right? Now, I can tell you that you can only play until a certain time of day, and then you have to get inside and do your homework. But suppose this love for basketball continues till you’re say, twenty, and I tell you to concentrate on your studies, but your only dream is to become a national level basketball player, so now there’s just a couple of adults arguing about what is right for whom. And I, as your parent, in my earnest desire to have you spend your college years well so that you can have a good future, pester you all day about your lack of interest in anything other than that sport, and thereby miss a very important point, which is that basketball makes you happy, and in attempting to take away the very thing that makes you happy, I contribute to your increased state of dejection, albeit unknowingly.”

“So she was unhappy because her parents didn’t allow her to do something that she wanted to do?”

“It wasn’t so much not allowing her as it was not affording their acceptance, and it wasn’t so much her wanting to do something as it was her wanting to be someone.”

I nodded, though I still didn’t fully understand.

“I told her” my mother continued, “that I could only convey to her what a parent might feel on learning that their child has run away. That, perhaps, we fail to realize the hurt that we cause our children but that everything we do is out of love, and that if she could somehow find a way to talk to her parents, she might find that there are a great many things they would be willing to give up rather than their daughter.”

“And what did she say?”

My mother sighed. “She didn’t say very much. But I hope she goes back home.”

Later in the evening, my sisters and I were in our backyard playing pretend that we were the Famous Five, our cat Pizzazz reluctantly and uninterestedly playing the part of Timmy. My father had just gotten back from the office and he and my mother were sitting on the verandah, talking and watching us play.

I went inside the house and into the kitchen to have a glass of water and as I was on my way back out, I heard my parents talking.

My father was saying “Yes, they spoke on the phone, but for tonight, and perhaps for the next few days, she’ll be staying with their relatives.”

“That’s a relief” my mother replied. “Not that I was worried about her. She seemed capable enough of taking care of herself. But I wanted her to realize that she needed to talk to her parents the way she spoke with me, a complete stranger she had just met. Maybe it wouldn’t have solved all her problems but it would have been a start.”

“By the way, what did she say when she approached you?” my father asked.

“She asked me the time, and I knew she was lonely because I could see her wristwatch peeping out from under her sleeve.”

And I had thought she was just some woman trying to sell my mother cheap cosmetics. I had noticed not only her unibrow, but also the pit stains on her tunic, and the gaudy bright pink elastic band she had used to tie the end of her plait. Suppose she had asked someone other than my mother the time, and suppose that person had noticed only the things I did, and not the fact that she was broken-hearted and lost, she might have gone wandering further until nobody knew where she was anymore.

Like I said, I was only ten at the time. I couldn’t understand what it was that a person could want so badly that it would drive them away from their family. If my parents didn’t allow me to play basketball, I would’ve sulked for a few days, but I certainly wouldn’t have even considered leaving my sisters or my parents.

I did think about Amil a lot though. Days later, I’d ask my father whether he had made any phone calls to enquire about the girl, and he’d tell me that yes, she had gone back home and the rest was no longer our business. I’d sit on my area on the spaceship tree and wonder whether she eventually spoke to her parents about what made her so sad, whatever it was, and whether her parents were good enough to not argue about it anymore. I’d wonder if she was finally happy, and found myself hoping against hope that she was.

The Giant on the Balcony – A short story

 

Dear Earl,

I know you said not to write until after some months, but Mamma said at dinner last night that any of us could drop dead any second because no-one knows how long we’ll live, and I think it was leading up to the usual stuff about Heaven and Hell, but it got me to thinking well what if you suddenly drop dead and I never ended up telling you about the giant in the balcony, so I thought that even though you did tell me I should only write after it’s been a while or else the other kids would make fun of you for receiving a letter from home too early that I should definitely write to you and if the other kids do make fun of you, you can just tell them it’s cos we can’t decide when we’re gonna die.

Last week, I got real sick again, so sick that I had to be taken to the hospital, and I had to spend four nights in Room 101 on the third floor until I got well. Mamma stayed those nights with me, and I always fell asleep before she did and woke up before she did.

So the first morning, when I woke up pretty early, I opened the curtain just a little bit so I could look outside. You know how there’s an apartment building across the street and you can see the people that live there through their windows like as though you’re looking at dolls living in a doll-house? Well, I was looking straight across once, and I saw a man on the balcony, and I immediately got scared because he didn’t look doll-sized or anything. I mean, I don’t understand physics as well as you do, but I was sure if he was that size in that distance, then he had to be some kind of giant. The giant came out to the balcony and sat there reading the papers and drinking from a cup. I watched him the entire time he sat and read and drank and then he went back inside.

When mamma woke up, I told her about it and she said ‘uh-huh’ like how she says ‘uh-huh’ when she’s busy with something else and isn’t listening to a word you’re saying. Instead she told me to take my medicines so I could get well again. I kept looking out the window so that I could show mamma the giant but he didn’t appear again until about maybe 4 in the afternoon which was when mamma had gone down to buy some juice for me. He stretched out his big hairy arms and yawned and simply stood there leaning on the rail for a while. He caught me staring at him and he waved at me, and I didn’t want to be rude but I looked away as soon as he noticed me. I kept looking at the door and then back to the giant hoping mamma would come in just in time to see him but he went back inside and mamma missed him again. I told her so, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than making me drink the juice and take my medicines. In any case, the juice tasted even worse than the medicine, and drinking it almost made me throw up.

The next day, he came out to the balcony again, and this time, after he finished reading the papers and drinking his tea, he bent down to pick up something and then he put the thing on top of the rail, and the thing turned out to be one of those hairy dogs whose eyes you can barely see, I’m sure you’d know what they’re called if you saw it, Earl. It was white and grey and the giant combed his hair just like how Joanie combs her Barbie doll’s hair, and by the time he was done, the dog’s hair was all straight and not shaggy like he was when I first saw him, and he looked real happy, especially since the giant kept feeding him treats, and later the giant got a beach ball which he placed on the dog’s nose and the dog balanced it for a full minute. I told momma about it but when I mentioned how the giant’s brushing of his dog’s hair was similar to Joanie with her Barbies, she suddenly remembered that she had almost forgotten to ask Uncle Eric to pick her up from school and she didn’t pay any more attention to what I was saying.

You know those drawings I used to make in kindergarten of the sun coming out from the mountains and birds shaped like ‘V’s’ in the sky? Well the giant made a painting almost exactly like that on the third day, except his birds didn’t look like V’s at all, even from afar, and his sun wasn’t yellow but more like orange-red, but I think he did a much better job than me. In the afternoon, I was crying because I felt dizzy and I really wanted to go home, but the giant hung a dart board on the wall next to the door that was as big as his head and I swear to God, he hit the Bullseye every single time, and I was so amazed, and I asked mamma later if we could get a dart board and she said it’d be the first thing we did when we got home!

On my last day at the hospital, I saw him again, and this time he was wearing a vest so I could see that he had muscles just like He-man’s. When he stood at the door, he bent down and lifted a barbell, you know, like the ones Uncle Eric has but these ones were bigger. After lifting about ten times or so, he put the barbell down, took a step forward and picked up a barbell that was even bigger than the first one, and it didn’t look at all like it was any effort for him. After this, he took another step forward, bent down and picked up an even much much bigger one. And at that time, mamma came in saying the doctor said it was ok for us to go home, and I said ‘mamma, come look!’ and she looked out the window just as the giant bent down probably to pick up a fourth barbell, but mamma didn’t have enough patience to look out the window for more than two seconds, and she immediately started packing my things and helping me get dressed to go home.

Just as we were about to leave, I saw the giant lean on the balcony rail. He was patting his dog with one hand, and waving at me with the other, and this time I made sure not to be rude and I waved back at him and he smiled happily at me, and I smiled too, and I thought he seemed like a nice person after all and not scary at all.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that much, I’ll write a longer letter next time. I’ve been playing darts these days and I thought it’d be easy but it sure isn’t. You gotta write back and tell me what boarding school’s like, I’m sure it beats being home-schooled anyhow. But mamma said I might come join you in some time if everything goes well. She’s gonna take me and Joanie to the circus this weekend, they’re in town for a month and Joanie wanted to go see the elephants, and I told mamma circus is for small kids and that I didn’t wanna go but she’s taking me any way and I’ll write all about it in the next letter, but only after you send me a reply for this one.

 

Love,

your brother Peter.

 

Moonch – A short story

“You see that man over there selling pani-puri? He’s been sitting there for hours and he hasn’t had a single customer.”

Seven year old Rohini sat next to her dog, Bittu on the steps of the verandah as she watched the man across the road sitting idly on the pavement next to his pani-puri stand.  She ran a brush over Bittu’s long coat, and said to him “Maybe his pani-puris aren’t so tasty.”

Bittu yawned and rested his head on Rohini’s lap. He didn’t care much for pani-puris.

A little later, Rohini was getting ready to go cycling to the  park. She opened the gate, pushing the cycle along by its handles. Bittu followed excitedly. The pani-puri vendor hadn’t moved an inch. His stall held a wooden box, three pots covered with lids, and a large bowl stacked with puris which he had covered with a transparent plastic sheet. She felt sorry for him, and reached into her pocket for the ten rupees she had been saving to buy ice-cream for herself and Bittu later.

“Five rupees worth, please” she said to the man. He stood up, and she saw that his shirt had a number of holes in it, and that his shoes looked as though they would fall apart any moment.

The man smiled without saying a word, and began to prepare the first pani-puri. He crushed a puri with his left thumb and almost at the same time, put the filling of potatoes, sprouts and onions that he had prepared beforehand. He then added a spoonful of tamarind chutney in the puri, immersing it in a small bowl filled with flavoured spicy water and handed it to Rohini. As soon as he did this, he started preparing a second one with equal speed.

Rohini took the puri and broke a bit of it to taste it.

“No, no” said the man, looking at her and shaking his head. “Not like that. You eat it whole. Go on.”

Rohini did as he said. It was the most delicious pani-puri she had ever tasted.

The man prepared four more pani-puris, which Rohini devoured. She handed him the ten rupees; he smiled and opened the lid of the wooden box on his stand, placed the ten rupee note in the box, and took out a shiny five rupee coin, which he handed to Rohini.

“Thank you” said Rohini.

“You’re welcome. Have a nice day” replied the man. He sat down again on the pavement, wiping his forehead with a red rag that he had hung on the side of his stall.

Rohini said “Let’s go, Bittu” and as she turned around, she saw a strange, dark man across the street, standing next to their gate. She stared at him because he had the longest and blackest moustache that she had ever seen. It looked almost as though the moustache didn’t really belong on his face.

A second later, she heard a loud bang, and the man fell to the ground. She turned around and saw the pani-puri vendor aiming a revolver in the direction where the man had stood.  He deposited the weapon somewhere in his dhoti and ran across the street towards where the man lay on the ground.

Just as he bent down to examine the man, a white van stopped in front of the gate, blocking Rohini’s view of the two men, and a few seconds later, the van sped away. The fallen man was no longer on the ground.

The pani-puri vendor walked to where Rohini stood, frozen, Bittu by her side. He knelt down and said to her “Rohini, what were you about to do this evening as you came out the gate?”

“I was going for a walk with Bittu till the park.” She didn’t ask him how he knew her name.

“And what did you do?”

“I bought five rupees worth of pani-puris from you.”

“And what else?”

“And..”

The pani-puri vendor smiled at her kindly. He had big brown eyes that reminded her a bit of her own father, who was presently at his office, and would come home at 6pm as always, asking Rohini’s mother for a nice, hot cup of tea.

“And then I went to the park” she said. “Come on, Bittu.”

She walked along with Bittu and looked back only once to see the pani-puri vendor pack up his things. She wondered where he hid the revolver now, and then realized that must have been what the wooden box was really for.

Rohini had a feeling she would never see the pani-puri vendor ever again.

Come Fly With Me – A short story

The alarm on the bedside table rang and Ezra switched it off, having already been awake for the past few minutes or so. He yawned and stretched, feeling completely well-rested, even though it was 5:30 in the morning, and half the town were still probably asleep in their beds.

He turned on his side and wrapped his arm around May, taking in the smell of her hair, and then kissing her on the back of her head. She stirred, and murmured ‘Good morning sunshine.’ Ezra smiled. He would never ever get tired of hearing the sound of her sleepy, husky voice the very first thing in the morning.

They got dressed, he in his usual t-shirt, Bermuda shorts and sneakers, and she in a comfortable salmon-coloured hoodie and short shorts, and they set out on their bicycles at 6am.

As they cycled together on the promenade, it seemed as though they were the only two people on the planet. They would talk to each other at times, and sometimes they would just enjoy riding together in silence. They came to the pier, which was deserted at this time of the morning, parked their cycles, and walked hand in hand all the way to the edge, where they sat down with their legs dangling.

May opened the mini-basket she had packed before leaving the house, and took out a sandwich which she handed to Ezra.

“Tuna for you, and a PB & J for me” she said, smiling. She poured coffee from a flask into two polka-dotted paper cups. “Here you go, sweetie.”

They ate their breakfast, watching the sun rise on the horizon, and a few gulls flying freely across the water. They chatted and laughed as though they were a couple on their first date. It seemed as though they would never run out of stories to tell each other.

Since it was a Saturday, they had the rest of the day to spend together. She helped him wash his car, and he helped her do some gardening. They drove to the market to buy the things they needed, and when they came back home, cooked lunch together.

In the afternoon, they took a walk through the woods and came to a stop at the waterfall. They took off their clothes and dove from the highest rock into the glistening blue lake. The water was always the perfect temperature, and one could swim for ages and ages in this serene, isolated setting.

By the time they got back to their house, it was already evening and the sun was setting. They ordered Chinese food for dinner, and had a hot shower while they waited for the food to arrive.

They set their dinner out on the table on their front porch, and after they were done eating, they played Sinatra on Ezra’s late grandfather’s gramophone, which still worked like it was brand new. ‘Come fly with me, let’s take off in the blue’ the song played, and they slow-danced on the porch by the light of the full moon.

As they danced, with May’s head resting on his shoulder, Ezra thought that this had been a perfect day, spent with the perfect woman. He thought of the past, which had always been riddled with so much chaos and anger and muddled thoughts. And now, he was here, in the most beautiful place in the world with May, the one person he never thought he could ever deserve. This was the peace he had dreamed about all his life, the peace that had been so elusive once upon a time..

“Ezra. Wake up, Ezra.”

He recognized the voice at once. It only took him two seconds to register that he was in Room 31 again, and that the voice belonged to Nurse Celine.

He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was the bleak, beige ceiling of his room. Nurse Celine had entered, chewing gum noisily and making notes on her clipboard.

“I wasn’t asleep” he said to the nurse.

“These are your morning pills. Make sure you have the red one before you eat anything else, the rest you can have after breakfast. You’re both scheduled for an appointment with Dr. Chan so make sure you’re at his clinic on the fourth floor after breakfast. Understood?”

She did not look at him as she spoke to him.

“Yes” Ezra replied, getting up and taking the pills from Nurse Celine. His back hurt, but he did not say so to the nurse. He put the big red pill in his mouth and swallowed it without washing it down with water.

“Nurse. Will there be any visitors coming later?” he asked.

Nurse Celine shook her head without looking up from her clipboard. Ezra saw that she rolled her eyes when he asked this question.

She left, and Ezra looked to the other side of the room, where Mitch lay on his bed, his mouth agape, as it usually was.

“Do you know if they got rid of those roaches?” Mitch asked him. “Those roaches were all over the place. I ain’t getting out of bed until they kill every last one of those things.”

“Yes. They’ve killed them. They’re all gone now, it’s safe” replied Ezra.

Mitch looked at Ezra incredulously. He broke into a huge grin.

“That’s great news!” he said, getting out of bed. “Let’s go for breakfast then, shall we? We won’t get any if we’re late.”

“Go ahead, Mitch. I’ll be right with you” said Ezra.

After Mitch left the room, Ezra made his bed and looked out the window through the iron bars, not at the immediate view beneath, but at the great expanse of the sky above. He looked at the birds flying in the distance and closed his eyes. A vision was already forming in his head, and as the picture became more and more vivid, Ezra began to smile.

“I’ve got the best date planned for us tonight, May” he said to himself. He then put on his jacket and slippers and left his room, whistling a happy tune.