Chapter 1: Incapacity
I often feel a thermodynamic urgency to turn into energy in order to truly be. To perish in the heat before I wither, rot and finally decompose in the ground. I want to go grand. But I also want to witness it. This is what I was thinking, I guess, that morning as I did not jump off a high cliff but instead set out to finish the five miles of running that justified my wakefulness in the dark early hours of the ungodly winter when I saw the man who had done it. He had gone with his eyes open as wide as the smile that betrayed none of the pain and indecision that might have preceded the fatal overdose that turned this nameless homeless hippie into a mere spectacle for walkers and an additional burden for the forensic pathologists in the nearby government hospital. Nothing had ever been about him. And dying didn’t change that.
The sun rose later than usual those days. It was just dark enough to be philosophical but it was also beginning to be just luminous enough to be silly.
I work at that place, the government hospital.
She was interning. It wasn’t hard to decide. For her, there was no question of living once the possibility of physical pleasure was swept off by age. It happens slowly. She’d decided to live well till forty, then start to smoke and drink, following which she would drop a few dope chemicals in a bottle of water and go for a swim. She’d die before she knew it. But death shouldn’t be like a sly thief at night. It should have to happen with acceptance. Maybe a note. She was slim and tidy at all times. She wouldn’t look too unpleasant. She was also short and with her prepubescent chest and close cropped hair, gave everyone the illusion of a little boy. There should be no tears. But, she shuddered. What if I want to come back?
There was an impermanence about the place. It was called the army area and for a few hours in the mornings and evenings, it was open to joggers and cyclists and people with dogs. Old buildings with new paint. Tamarind leaves and asphalt. It wasn’t dark enough to be mysterious. It was all that remained from a brief period of orderliness that was, to Aliya... “long ago man”, so it couldn’t matter very much. It might’ve belonged to the grey hornbills and palapittas, but presently, the army and the civilians had decided it was about them.
The run kept itself up. The brain rarely relies on the mind for survival. Which is fortunate. Where there is earth, there are potholes. At least, in India… she jumped over a few. Then she saw, extraordinarily, a little boy, no more than ten, trying to fill up a pothole. His grandfather followed suit, and in an hour, there would be about seventy people, filling up potholes with their bare hands. She heard a voice behind her. There was only one person on the planet who called her ‘thaatayya’. Grandfather.
“Good morning”, she said without stopping. Karthikeya, a sturdier, more feminine version of herself, would have to catch up.
“Oh thaatayya! You were right man!”, she was fighting for air, but it was less important to breathe. “I can’t…. it cannot be a co-incidence every single time! The girl had an attack of chicken- pox! Not any other exanthema but chicken- pox! And she’s twenty- five! She had it pretty bad. They shoved her in a ward for three weeks. And she’s called Gracy or Grace maybe, by the way. She’s kind of friendly..”
Yep, that’s something. There was a girl who’d run along the same path with them. Tall, stern, unattractive…Lot swifter than them. Stopped all of a sudden for a whole month. Aliya had said in passing, maybe she’s down with chickenpox! Karthikeya was the friendlier of the two. Aliya’s mind had left the dead man. Things she said in passing often turned out correct, as opposed to diagnoses she predicted with years of med school thinking behind them. Chickenpox doesn’t happen all that often in twenty-something old women.
“You make these things happen, man!”, Karthikeya said. They jumped over more potholes. The running carried on passively.
It was a relationship she’d walked into with the enthusiasm of entering a pay-and-use toilet. “I’m leaving you” he said. She’d been bent over a tiny laptop with her shockingly unruly curls demonically strangled into a clip at one end of her head. She looked up from her dispassionate numbers and stared for a couple of moments with her mouth half-opened before she said, ” No, you’re just standing there.”
It was his turn to stare. As she let the knowledge sink in, Bhavya made all the effort to appear unmoved. She was praying wordlessly as he guffawed and slammed the door. She had her headphones on but she was alert for the sounds of his footsteps fading away. She then released herself and opened the cabinet overhead. She squealed with joy. He’d forgotten to pack all his assorted cookies from Kuwait and they were hers now. She worried a little that he might remember them and come back. She decided to move them to her bookshelf. Maybe leave a few in the cabinet so he would assume nothing...
But! The numbers! She went back to the laptop to where the monophonic tone of the Harvard statistician doing his best to simplify SSPS was. She followed him for a whole of thirty seconds and jumped back to the numbers to try her luck. But they’re numbers. They don’t work like bodies, Bhavya. You don’t try random things and expect results. Like Jeet last night. He’d approached her labia minora like the examiner of a bundle of test papers. He could use more cheer. She’d said something about the numbers just then. Maybe that’s why he broke up. Maybe. The numbers continued to gnaw at her belly unsentimentally.
Aliya gets home. Aliya washes up. Aliya sits down to eat. Mommy has made sambar with vegetables in it. Nobody is as pleased as Aliya is, with plenty of vegetables red and green, floating and healthy. Little Aliya. She hasn’t troubled mommy a single day about the salt- less sambar or the idle idlis. They are the health she needs. She stole a quick glance at her mother. Just another person. She takes a bite. She’s going to die.
And all at once, Aliya realized that it had been a hoax. She wasn’t willing to die. She couldn’t take her life. It wasn’t a question of time. There never is a thing like time. If she was prepared to die, she could kill herself now. But she wasn’t. and she couldn’t be. There would always be thing to do, places to see, time to wait out till fun happened again. But that’s how it always is. She was afraid. But it was eight in the morning. The best thing about the tropics is that no season goes without blinding sunlight in your eyes. It was good. It did something about fear.
She stepped out. Her father was returning from somewhere. Milk, perhaps. What if he has a heart attack before I’m back. He plainly asked her if she wanted any milk to college. Yes, I do, of course. It was only because she could look at them a little longer.
***
He woke up. His eyes still unopened, he tried to force himself back to sleep. Daylight shone dramatically at the windows, begging to be let in. He needed to get freshened up. Which would follow with more sleep. Really?
Hafza, on the other hand, hadn’t slept for two whole years. She had other issues, diarrhea and heat intolerance. Gluten enteropathy, perhaps. She let her heavy frame continue rocking back and forth. She had the strange feeling of being someone’s dream. Mornings are queer.
Soon, it was dark again. I’m comfier than usual. They were in a car. The backseat. No one else around. They were kissing. Slowly, then more bravely. Monica’s braver than usual. This should’ve been her first clue. But they kept going at it. Monica’s fingers were in her pants now. She didn’t waste much time figuring out. She was there for something else, clearly. She started jabbing two fingers in. Out of rhythm, but going deeper each time. “Slow down, dude,” Anoya took a break from kissing. She looked at Monica, who was smiling knowingly. She tried to wrench herself free. But it was too late. Monica had her whole fist in her vagina. She’d grabbed her by the cervix and in a moment, her whole uterus, with its tubes and adnexa was all out in her lap. ONE DAY YOU’LL COME BACK TO ME..COME BACK TO ME..ONE DAY ONE DAY ONE DAYYY..
It was the alarm going off. Anoya wasn’t used to being woken up by the alarm. She’d usually be up a minute before the alarm went off, just in time to stop it. That was quite a dream. She was acutely aware of her heart racing. Imagine Monica making the first move. She hopped out of bed and lay down again. She repeated this several times till she thought she was ready to do it for the rest of the day.
She drove a billion thoughts away as she tried to focus on what she was getting done in the next six hours. She lived six hours in a go. She thought of Hafza and her asymmetrical smile returned. It was forty minutes to hospital. That was two audio lectures. And with that, she set sail into the ocean of other people that lay outside her bedroom door.
Aliya wasn’t recovering as she thought she was. Yes, she worked out. Yes, she ate well. Yes, she had a plan. But no, there would be more time than sanity could battle in the few moments before death. There was time for her. But there wasn’t for them.
They could die anytime. Her whole life was lived relative to them. They were highly intelligent and appreciative. She was going to become a scholar. What was the meaning of medicine if it didn’t make life live by her terms?
Stay sane little Aliya. Stay sane. She wouldn’t be the first person to miss the first clue that morning. Sane people don’t need to tell themselves they’re sane. Not every waking moment of the day. She had started to lose her grip only a whole year ago. Without anyone’s knowledge. Even her own. She bought a sphygmomanometer. Neither daddy Aliya nor mommy Aliya suspected anything wrong with the little one. Not when she started to check their blood pressure daily. Then thrice a day. Not when she started to get home in time. Not when she avoided all company to stay home with them on holidays. And certainly not when she pushed them for every preventative health measure on the market. Ate all her vegetables, fine girl she was. Though the nights were a torment. She took to sleeping in their room. They spoke of all manner of things. That helped her think of things besides the inevitable decision to die. They weren’t afraid of losing her. That wasn’t something they even considered; they came first and they’d die first.. it was she who would suffer loss and have to live with it. And she knew it was real because it was misery.
He decided to wake up. But he lay there till it became a question of carrying out the internship or urinating in the bed. To his credit, he chose the former. Inevitably, his first thought was his aunt’s demise. He washed his face several times and pulled his box of contact lenses out. He was putting an end to all the journalism regarding his recent switch back to spectacles. It was also the only way to stop the steady stream of tears that waited for him to be alone all day long.
Bhavya dragged herself to the government hospital, half wishing she was a patient and not a junior doctor. The morning had been fruitless and the numbers were starting to make fun of her. She reminded herself that she was the daughter of a chess player and math tutor. And she pictured them both mocking her lack of technical skills in her mind’s eye. She breathed through her mouth for a couple of times and welcomed the first batch of groin infections for the day.
Meanwhile, the new intern was already at her post. Like Bhavya’s semi-conscious smile, Anoya was never embarrassed about arriving early.
“Namasthe Ma’am”, she said neatly.
“Uh- Namasthe!”, came the awkward reply. Bhavya was used to neither “Namasthe”, nor “Ma’am”. She realized that she had totally wiped the new girl’s name off her memory. Maybe she knows something about numbers. She casually asked if er- Kareddy?- knew anything about SPSS. Kareddy gaily replied that she was passed in statistics and community medicine with grace marks. Marks that were scornfully rather than gracefully bestowed upon someone who nearly failed to clear just the one subject. Bhavya had no choice but to forget the numbers and focus on details of the patients’ sex lives with a straight face.
I have come to see a huge flaw in my reasoning. I will stop trying to make you hate me. Rage cannot dissect grief from loss. And you will suffer them both. But you will suffer them even if I go on living. The difference now is that I won’t have to witness it. It was a pleasure.
Aliya composed her suicide note almost two decades in advance. She couldn’t think of what else there was to think about while mechanically catheterizing an unconscious patient’s bladder. The nights morphed into something of a Rorschach test. She had underestimated the role of the biological clock in emotional processing. And she was forced to live, pickled in realization. Daylight, on the other hand, mocked her emotions, deprived her of feelings, and turned her into an… alert, stray cat trying to survive-
EWWW!! CAAAATT!!!
Hafza Ma’am! Aliya bolted to the corridor and chased it away. She then looked at Hafza in awe.
“I hate cats”, said Hafza, trying to regain dignity. She was slapping herself inwardly for the major lapse in demureness. Aliya’s head was presently full of cat. They were both queerly quiet to those around them. Aliya could think of nothing else anymore. Maybe it was true. She had thought of a cat and a cat had appeared. It wasn’t highly usual.
Sleep- deprived, Hafza was still a pro at looking her best. She matched a purple immodest kurta with cool brown palazzos and office sandals, with a single blood-red stone pendant for jewelry. She turned her head slightly and found Anoya committing every single detail to memory.
“Bhavya Ma’am wanted me to go check if everything was okay. I’ll go tell her its fine,” Anoya smiled through her explanation. It was her curtain smile, hiding behind it the anticipatory asymmetrical smile that made her something to be alert around. Hafza resisted cautiousness. She tried to read her. There wasn’t enough of an age gap between them to grant her the benefit of mystification. Anoya clearly paid her more attention than she was expected to and understood that her attentions were unmistakably accepted and appreciated. She slowly walked back to her post, confident she was being watched.
It was only when Anoya saw the unintentionally kind face of Bhavya again that she realized that there had been a third person all along.
Aliya! Staring at the floor where absolutely nothing had been. Anoya sensed a fiery emotion swelling up inside her. She randomly imagined Hafza with nothing but a bra on. She stopped herself. Other people are not real. She went back to noting OP numbers. Welcome to my mind, Aliya.
Aliya waited a long time before she decided to make the call herself. Krishi showed up without spectacles. It’d been long since she saw him change anything about the way he looked. She told him that he looked agreeable and left it at that. What Krishi had to offer was not going to be found between the legs. It’s easy to love someone like that.
It wasn’t the best I’ve ever felt. A small crack in the door let a faint tube of light enter my existence and persist there like a fly that should’ve fucked off ages ago but felt welcome in the sickly latrine of the void I called my bedroom. Despite a billion attempts in my ennui, only a small part of me, of us, agreed that living wasn’t worth it and bleeding was a good way to go. But each night the neocortex wandered off to possibility- land and came back to the lonely triangle of abundant, coarse, curly hair between the loose folds of skin and bowed to the wishes of the paleocortex in several brisk movements. To the sight, to the sound, to the thought; that was enough…her moans, her voluminous therapeutically treated hair, the pink flesh between her toes, her slightly open mouth… Then it was him; him with the chiseled teeth, uncut nails, unkempt hairs, the most likely host of a new microbe looking to colonize the unsuspecting human colonists’ genitalia… But definitely him, working a sleek body into the lonely, hairy triangle of distractions and finally, it ends. I can’t be sure of anything else but this; I wasn’t thinking of anything else when it happened. So it’s this? I haven’t lingered on that much. I often fall asleep from focusing on my breath for too long after I’ve come to. It’s quite a skill.
We were both involved in the mundane business of living. She looked like someone who could switch sides on a bed and all that. I was taken. Maybe we’re all ok with being miserable. As long as we can be miserable with someone else.
Ahhh the light. I shift away. Do you care what happens to the moon when you look away? The Copenhagen interpretation would support that what you aren’t measuring, you aren’t physically confirming… ceases to exist. If only this room were a true sensory deprivation tank, I could cease to exist too…but then again; where should I place my mind.
I roll over. I shut my eyes. I think of her again. And again. And again. And this is my mind masturbating. Masturbating to misery.
Monica walked in on the small company. She wasn’t late for anything. She sat next to Anoya who put her arm around her waist. They looked innocent enough. Krishi found himself completely lacking appetite. He was glad to be in company that didn’t demand his participation. Anoya kept the conversation going. There were other interns on the table. Anoya’s hand had crept up to Monica’s ear and presently, she was stroking it, utterly unaware that Monica was tickled and that several of the male spectators had gone silent. Anoya continued talking in her high pitched voice, animatedly, stopping several times to clean her teeth with brisk movements of her tongue.
“So, basically I don’t live but I’m not doing anything to stop it either. I’m hitting all the milestones of adulthood, resigning myself to nature hanging by invisible threads and ” to dos” ... are they even there or am I the one that wants to hang on by, you know, healthy living, informed career choices… I could eat chocolate three times a day but I don’t! And I used to wonder as a kid, why my parents didn’t…”
“Dheer, you should tell her about how life really should be, the shit that you and Sai had…that was the shit!”, Pankaj looked at Dheer invitingly.
Dheer leaned forward and began, “Well, so the other day, Sai and I decided to eat a whole chocolate cake with coffee… Except the bakery’s only got a white cake no chocolate and we don’t have a choice because its two in the morning. So we buy the white cake and two chocolate bars so we can put them together and make it a chocolate cake. So we take a bite each... him on his end, me on mine and then we’re putting chocolate in the cake and taking another bite. So we keep at it and here’s the shit that happens, an hour has passed and we still got the exact same quantity of cake that we started out with… the chocolate bars are done but we’re so full like we couldn’t have been if we finished just the quantity of chocolate bars... but the bloody cake is as it is. I swear! We were so buzzed I tell you.”
Nearly everyone pointed out that more than just one thing seemed to have gone wrong but Krishi found himself laughing uncontrollably. Anoya’s lop-sided smile returned but she noticed that the entire story had been addressed to her only for Monica’s attentions. Dheer looked on expectantly. She did him a favor and turned to Monica, asking her what she thought about it.
Not surprisingly, all she said was, “Interesting”. What made her so dreadfully boring was her response to everything with the phrase ” interesting”. Speech that irreversibly damaged otherwise irresistible looks. Aliya found herself distracted by Krishi’s loss of composure. She thought of Monica and how the oddball couple ended up together. Anoya, with the energy of a well- fed puppy and Monica, a portrait obsessed with interpreting itself.
Anoya caught herself thinking about Aliya more often than she wanted to. Aliya was clearly someone who didn’t live by others. She carried a universal indifference that was the culmination of the slowly acquired art of letting go… she only focused on what mattered to the moment. It was something Anoya only knew in theory. She reminded herself several times a day, that the reality of other persons was questionable. But she found more and more, that she needed others, to restore her sense of reality.
Her head full of numbers, Bhavya walked herself to the canteen. There, she realized that she had several notes and no coins and found herself worrying about having to make a bill large enough to pay with notes. I’ll just get some people to join me and pay for their coffees as well. She headed for the Ladies Room and found a dead or dying puppy on her way. She found an equally pitiable scene awaiting her in the Ladies Room.
Something like five, six girls surrounding one weeping girl. There was an empty chair diametrically opposite to the fountain- face. Bhavya occupied it pessimistically. She expected no one to leave this pantomime for a cup of coffee at the predominantly plague- themed canteen. Meanwhile, RomiRamyaorRumballs, depending on who was asked, wailed about the harassment she faced from the man who called himself her boyfriend but didn’t accompany her to the door when he dropped her home, hung up when she yelled at him because she’d been stressed and made no effort to get to know her conservative family. She loved him, she cooked for him, she shopped for him, she dressed up for him, she surprised him. And all that without his even asking for it. Poor guy. If you haven’t paid for it, it’s not a gift; it’s a loan. Love and pain are the raw materials of hate. Replace every microgram of that agony with hatred and you’ll have enough power to run the metro rail in the city. Bhavya noted that Hafza was in the group. Not consoling, not abusing, not hugging but with a pure expression of mockery. They smiled at each other and it struck her that Hafza wouldn’t refuse to accompany her out of politeness. But she was clearly enjoying this.
Bhavya straightened herself and said, “Dekh idhar, Ramya”. Look here. Then, plain and simple, she slapped her. The sting of a slap is quite unlike any other pain known to mankind. It carries the humiliation of knowing that couldn’t, that you didn’t, protect yourself while your perpetrator looked you in the eye and rejected that possibility. Plain and simple, she got up and having made the decision to order egg puffs for a larger bill, she coolly marched towards the canteen. The puppy was missing.
“Yo! Wait up!”, that was Hafza! She made no effort to conceal her emotions. She was laughing uninhibitedly.
Bhavya was glad for her company. Together, they walked past the rows of light beams, dustbins and the exenterated contents of the dustbins to the cellar and seated themselves. Hafza asked her what it was all about. Bhavya honestly replied that she was only translating her feelings to actions. Those are harder to misinterpret and impossible to forget. Hafza reported running into Jeet on a date. Was it a formal date? Bhavya told her why it didn’t matter. They’d broken up and she was avoiding his calls because of the cookies from Dubai or whatever.
“That’s a good reason,” Hafza wasn’t mocking her. Was she looking for someone new?
“We have Case Presentations starting next week and exams in two months,” said Bhavya. No further explanation was warranted. “What about you?”
She couldn’t believe Hafza was single. Not because she was pretty, curvy, exotic or smart. But because she was so bold. That was exactly the kind of trap overzealous chivalrous men fell for before they realized they needed to be needed and walked away, feeling emasculated. Increasing masculinity becomes feminine the way that black sometimes gets so black it’s hard to tell from white. Eh, pointless. Man or woman, everyone turns out to be, more or less, the same thing.
“You think I’d trade off my senses for pleasure?”
“You did tell Dileep that you love him one time,” it was Bhavya’s turn to mock.
“How does that blot out the fact that I lie? And sometimes you have to pretend to be in love to have respectable sex.”
“You know how, to go on living, we tell ourselves one lie after another. You just do the same, again and again, with another person. Why, suddenly, do you think you’re better off this way?”
“Oh please, there’s no argument to be won here. You’re trying to fight a cyclone with fists.”
“You’ve been thinking a lot these days?”
“Insomnia.”
“Liver failure for sure,” Bhavya laughed. Hafza’s controlled- mocking smile broke up once more.
Krishi was posted at the ophthalmology department. Which spitefully left him too much time to himself. He was joined by Mohun from the TB Unit at lunchtime. He felt a weakness in his limbs, an inability, a cripple? But something he couldn’t… It’s pathetic to watch yourself fall, pick yourself up and then have to lie to yourself too… and all of this while knowing thoroughly well that you know not what for.
Mohun saw that something had changed. Bespectacled, analytical and patient, he took his time to understand without jumping into action. But it pained him to know that someone was suffering and he wasn’t doing anything to stop it. Like watching a man die without calling an ambulance. Krishi was unaware of what he ate, drank or did. All he knew was that he didn’t want to. He felt the need to connect to something or someone. But even that took a good measure of joy. And he had none to give and none to take. This is how a cut- off tail must feel. He sat at the lunch- table where conversation hovered about exams, chics, politics, vacations and damn VACATIONS like that was the shit man! They were taking trips to Goa, Gokarna, Hampi, Kodaikanal, Kasaul.. they’d get stoned, laid, drunk, life would happen then. Meanwhile, they were distressed by the exams. They lost hair and sleep and regretted wasting time and resented weekend mock- tests. What mattered, was that they emoted. That’s where they lost him.
Aliya left the lunch- group earlier. They never thought her impolite. A little quiet, less polite, but not impolite. She wandered into the corridor and started towards the Ladies Room and nearly stepped on what was, a dying but definitely alive, puppy. She tried to pick it up but it was hostile. It was also mute and badly injured. She switched to her unmindful mode, risked the scratches, picked it up and ran for her car.
Here I am and the inner monologue shall end now. From here, everything is a version of the same thing- Act Normal Act Normal Actu Normallu…
I have blundered into college like the rest of the place that blundered into existence in an attempt to validate more lives. The hospital was an institute where the sick and dying saved the living from the questions they couldn’t answer. I was one of them. But I ended up on the wrong side. She, on the wrong planet altogether. She wasn’t trying to turn into something else. She was already there. Perfectly there, to me. I’m just one step from turning in. Aaaand there.
We cut to the part where she’s waiting at the lunch table. Crisis after crisis. I excuse myself and walk to the washroom where I picture myself stabbing an unsuspecting young man repeatedly, remorselessly. I feel sick. It’s a rare moment of my life where sex is no substitute to the horrors of living without any desire to do so. She is at the table, I tell myself. I stop waiting for her and drag myself back to the threads of reality. We finish eating in silence. A silence interrupted by the noise of my own cries for help. In further silence, we slither back to the washroom where neither of us knows what chemistry has in store for us. Molecule after molecule is telling me to back off. But I keep pushing away the fight. Its worthless effort, like trying to wrestle the air. It’s just too magnanimous to fight back. Several moments later, we’re liplocked in the stuffy atmosphere of an afternoon lunchtime. So the line is crossed, a wall undone? Quite the contrary. The wall rebuilds itself. We say our good- byes. I return to the mental list of men; she, to her mental list of the mysteries that make her. I touch my lips. Nothing has been taken. She touches her closed eyes. She forgets the feeling. Most of it. The awkwardness of the whole incident persists like the sound of an undying cricket long after the whole forest has been set aflame. Is this the lesson, God? Life persists?
She was shaken out of her head by the sight of Aliya running towards her own car with a DEAD PUPPY?! in her arms. Monica was the kind of person to do that, but it wasn’t expected from Aliya… animals died all the time here. It’s a hospital, you guys! Anoya fathomed she could get herself entangled in a philosophical debate with herself if she let Aliya die in her flight- mode and wasted no time in catching up with her and volunteering to drive her to the veterinary hospital nearby.
As she drove, she thought of all those babies, premature and underweight, in the Neonatal ICU. She never felt anything for them. She reasoned that they wouldn’t remember much of this pain, if they lived. And if they died, they hadn’t made any friendships and connections or even self- realization that would be missed. She’d read somewhere that self- consciousness only developed when the kid was about eighteen months old. She held particular respect for neonatologists and animal right activists; they seemed to appreciate life before it appreciates itself.
Monica’s love for animals, on the other hand, was also about herself. Anoya thought of that kind of “love” as no more than an externalization of her own perceived miseries. She was drawn to sad, helpless- looking stray dogs and took pleasure in pitying them. The same way she managed to pity herself when her polycystic ovaries hit back, or a group of classmates took a separate table from her. Anoya shook off these thoughts and looked at Aliya. She was undistracted from the present. In a way that I can never be. She was pissed with herself again.
They reached the animal hospital in five minutes but it had no emergency department. It was a hospital with an operation theatre and all that but only one doctor to treat cows, pigs, parrots, pigeons, dogs, cats, goats and all in the same room. They waited their turn and confused the doctor with a lack of history and multiple theories of their own. He injected the pup with steroids and directed them to the dressing room.
The man in the dressing room had been jobless all day and wished they were less gloomy. He cleaned it and reported his findings- there were no external injuries to dress. This would take an exploratory open surgery and certainly need a couple of units of cross- matched blood. Anoya stood in the background unaware of the impact she made on Aliya, who presently suggested an overdose of morphine.
“Paisa lagta madam,” he said confidently. It will cost you.
Sure, let’s skip the formalities. Here’s four hundred rupees.
“Aapku body chahiye madam? Nahi bole toh, hum loga idhar ich dispose kar lete..” Did madam want the body? Or else, he could dispose of it himself…
Sure, dispose.
She looked at Anoya and shook her head to say they were done. Anoya walked swiftly to get to the car first and get in position to leave before Aliya got in. That way, Aliya would save time. She was unaware of the fact that Aliya was thinking about her; that she had become her daylight. That she was the only thing that kept her together.
Anoya wasn’t altogether unmoved. But she lacked the means necessary to understand that herself. Grief is so personal and so universal... it just keeps us from blending into one another.
