The Lizard

May was dead; everything else could be changed but this. She had been away for too long for much to change despite a death in the family, but it only made things worse that there was no well- demarcated grief for her. Just a vague fear of emotional ambiguity. May was her elder sister and the sum total of the word ‘family’. She stepped out the bus and walked in her usual brisk manner, looking up as seldom as she could, trying her best not to to be seen. She was an awfully shy person by nature; no amount of alcohol could change that.

She reached the house in a little less than five long minutes. There was none of the noise she had been expecting. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. She found her father at the dining table with, surprisingly to her, no laptop or other work- related material around. “Where is she?” she asked, to which he pointed at the little room adjoining the hall that had variously functioned as her study-room, a pooja-room, a store-room and finally, on that day, a body- storing room. She felt a sense of urgency wash her down but maintained her poise till she was at the room, in the presence of the body that had once been Manogna, the magnificent. She realized that she no longer wanted to be there. She left the room quickly. She had known that it was true, that May had met with an accident that split her skull and almost completely severed the right half of her body. It was most probably a truck that hit her that night. They didn’t expect to ever find out. The family only wanted to put everything behind them. It had been hard to put her body back together after the autopsy to make it look like anything that resembled her humanly form. And yet she, the little sister, wished she had been there, as she had failed to, pretty much all through May’s life.

She thought of May’s husband; he was nowhere to be seen, either. He hadn’t let her touch his car all through their five-year long marriage. She’d borne him no ill-will. But perhaps it was entirely his fault that she was out that night on her bike, with its poor protective ability against large trucks and their menacing mangling abilities. She realized that she couldn’t hold her tears too long, despite her overdosing on modafinil. She told her father she needed sleep as she was tired. Her predicament was met with compassionless silence. She took to the steps and went upstairs to her old room. Hardly anything had changed here. The deep blue walls, the impossibly cloudy long mirror, the maroon curtains that shut out nearly all light at all times of the day, just like May had left it five years ago. She lay on the floor, aching to be rejoined with her sister in the room downstairs, and knowing for sure that her sister was no more; it was just a corpse, a thing like any other, that offered no solace. There was no solace in anything, her ghastly family had reassembled to further distance themselves; their only unifying member was dead and she now wasted away in silent tears that she couldn’t let anyone hear.

Manogna had been only four years elder by age, but she had always been several decades older in terms of emotional maturity. They called her ‘May’, after the summer month of vacations perhaps, or the sound of the pet goat she had once been the proud owner of. She had undoubtedly been the prime caregiver in her little sister’s life. The girls had often found themselves alone at home and it was May’s responsibility to teach her what was acceptable and what was not, what was edible and what was not, and how one was expected to cover their tracks after crimes such as stealing sugar from the kitchen cabinets. May had decided to pursue a career in architecture, rejecting her father’s field of medical sciences while she, the younger, with no dreams of her own, attempted her luck in both fields, eventually earning a place in a prestigious interior designing college and only a mediocre medical college. It was thus decided that she would follow in her sister’s footsteps and one day, the two of them would work together in a firm of their own. Architect and Interior Designer. Together, they looked like someone’s terrible attempt at making the same thing twice. May was taller, more curvaceous, with an oval face and skin that had the strange sheen of copper and the color of coffee. Her hair was perhaps the evolutionary trophy, thick and wavy, and almost brown. The younger had a paler, unhealthful, gaunt face and an athlete’s body, the result of years of marathon running, her only honest form of self- expression. She was impatient with her hair, resulting in several styling errors that culminated in what was best described as a ‘curly bob’. She had quickly realized that looking at several options such as for wall paints and wooden work, was tiresome and gave her headaches. She made her decisions on such matters snappily and focused her energies on mathematical aspects of design and building materials. It was around this time that their father, who had long been suffering from the lack of leisure at his workplace, the corporate hospital, decided to take long vacations to Thailand on the pretext of conferences and seminars. She had moved away to live closer to college while May had married and moved away as well. Their mother had begun to obsess over imagined medical conditions, seeking several forms of alternative medicines at once. The doctor remarried without anyone noticing and lived a double-life, dividing his time between the corporate hospital and his new wife and child. Perhaps, he’d hoped that this time, he would strike jackpot and make a doctor out of his own flesh-and-blood.

Unfortunately, she was the first one to find out. Burdened by the truth, she stayed apart from both parents as much as she could. It was around this time that she started to lose touch with May, as she felt unwelcome in her home, with a brother-in-law who cared about his car more than he cared about his own wife. Tensions had grown, and she was more anxious than ever, to not be the cause of a separation. When May noticed that she visited less and less often, she questioned her repeatedly. Finally, having run out of excuses, she brought herself to say it and defend herself by picking a quote out of an interior designing magazine. “If it’s not beautiful and not useful, why keep it around?” “Because it’s family, not furniture.” “My point exactly; furniture doesn’t have a choice if it’s being a jerk.” They hadn’t spoken much following that argument. She continued to resent her brother-in-law for his frigid nature and blamed him for their rotting relationship. The word ‘family’ had never meant much to her and it was for this reason that she never understood why one put up with someone who was in any way unpleasant and not absolutely essential for life. It was around this time that their mother found out about the cheating doctor’s other wife and her own boyfriend broke up with her. She had wandered back into her sister’s life for respite from the unending melancholy and promised to make an effort to improve relationships with her husband. And then, just like that, May died.

She had been sleeping for a brief while, dreaming that May was being buried without adequate medical evidence to suggest that she was totally dead. “Some of her is alive,” she protested in her dream. But no one heeded. She had woken up to the sound of someone wailing theatrically, and she knew it could only be her mother. She dreaded going back downstairs, knowing that she would be stuck between the two worlds of the unfeeling doctor and the melodramatic math-teaching mother. Unsure of how she would react herself, she longed to escape. But there was no room in the house, and no place in the world, where the loss of May was any less agonizing, any less palpable, and any less unmistakable.

After several long moments, she had forced herself out of the room, the way she never would, had May been around to do it for her. She was greeted by the abysmal site of her mother clinging on to a framed picture of May and yowling while her father continued to sit at the dining table staring stonily into the wall ahead. She remembered randomly that the entire color scheme of the walls had been picked by May and was unfailingly complimented by the rare guests to the cheerless apartment. She tried to stay unaffected but they seemed hell-bent on making her feel more awkward and lonelier than ever.

The doctor decided to speak. “She was driving too fast. I always told her to be careful. She must have been trying to overtake the truck. She wasn’t even wearing a helmet.” The doctor didn’t seem to care that this only added to their anguish. He continued unasked, “She sustained huge fractures on her skull. She must have…not gone instantly.”

She tried her best to ignore her mother’s theatrical show of grief but what she heard next infuriated her beyond her capacity to contain it. “It will take me a long time to forget this,” said her mother, still clinging to the photo-frame. “A long, long time.”

She decided that her presence there was neither a necessity nor a formality. It was only a part of a performance. A cheap, scripted tragedy. For her, there was no question of ‘forgetting’ or even ‘getting over’. May’s death was an amputation. There was a before, where everyone involved could have prevented it, and an after, where they were condemned to suffering, and had no right to, and in her case, no will to, escape. She went back upstairs and wept wretchedly. In a few moments, she realized with some horror, that the crying brought relief, and that the process of acceptance was beginning, without her permission. Soon, May would become a mere memory, her entire life reduced to a few pictures on the phone. She wiped her tears furiously. Only the pain was hers now. It was the only way to keep May close. She took several deep breaths, as she often did, when she wished to stop herself from crying and searched her bag for the small strip of drugs that she credited for keeping her from tumbling down an emotional rabbit-hole. Even as she washed down a couple of modafinil tablets with a glass of water, she remembered how May had held her hand and led her to a psychotherapist two months ago and the full extent of what was permanently lost came back to her as a shiver down the spine.

There wasn’t much to do but hold on while time passed on its own. She found out that her brother-in-law was not in town and it would take him a while to get there. She used her presence to accelerate the funeral and leave as soon as she could. She didn’t hope that clearing away the body would grant her any peace of mind. On the contrary, all she wanted was to be on her own so she could focus her mind completely on whatever remained of May in there. Her parents had meanwhile gotten into a strange argument. The doctor expressed his desire to stay back and ‘look after things’, implying he would oversee the simple funeral and arrange lodgings for a few relatives. In truth, he wanted to stay there and go back to work as usual. He had realized that staying at a hotel as he had been forced to in his last few visits was a huge expense that could be spared. The mother did not appear to mind. All she wanted in return, was the promise that he wouldn’t leave to Thailand again.

She watched dumbstruck as the doctor made diplomatic statements promising that he would stay, without mentioning for how long, and her mother accepted without objection. She watched her mother’s version of grief astounded at how she was able to make even her favorite daughter’s death an occasion to bring her own plight into attention with the neighbors. The doctor, on the other hand, seemed to have recovered completely from the shock and would now spend the rest of his life dealing with the huge loss that was his major financial investment in May; May had still been only at the early stages of her career and had been saving up for higher studies. Maybe a car of her own, she thought, with more bitterness jabbing at her heart. The family had already decided against a clean divorce, agreeing that the financial gain from avoiding a divorce could help them buy a disjointed life instead. While the three women of the house deliberated, the doctor secretly began working on a second identity that unfortunately did not escape her attentions, and her attentions alone. She was quiet by nature, and did not foil his plans. But further alienated from the man who raised her to be a runner and nurture a scientific mind, she delved into senseless relationships and irrational drug use.

Her attitude to her mother had always swung between sore and cold. Each held the other responsible for frigidity and dishonesty. The parents had often fought and left to themselves, May and her younger version built an imaginary land with only each other for comfort. May had a particular talent for the weaknesses of others. She’d explained to her all about love, and that their parents loved each other more than they loved the children and that it was natural for them to do so. May was a realist. She explained that their father was being sarcastic and not funny, that he used them to relieve himself of the hatred that spewed from not being good enough at his job and knowing it. It was extremely believable. She could remember days when the doctor knocked down things their mother put up to beautify the house, such as vases and plastic roses. He hated them because they were no more than a waste of his hard- earned money, as he put it. Their mother was often crying. They had become used to it. The only difference it made to them was that the food would be less than tolerable on such nights. May had also explained her theory of their mother’s inexplicable anger if the doctor was ever home late. She had told the younger girl about poor visibility and car accidents. It was only much later, with adult hindsight that she realized that May had fought desperately to protect her from the bitter truth of their mother’s insecurity stemming from the various scandals involving the unashamed doctor wherever he worked. When the cat was finally out of the bag, and she became the first member of the family to discover his double-life, she saw in her mind’s eye, the long past time when her mother had raised hell, threatening divorce and murder in the middle of the night. Some things were made to be broken and it seemed that the family was a perfect prototype. Only May, who had been old enough to remember her mother’s attempted suicide, the cause of their family’s frequent shifts and the scenes of domestic violence from the early years of that tumultuous marriage, was lovely. She was mature, wise, calm, sharp-tongued…

She remembered her father telling her about the strange habit of people attributing the best qualities to dead people. She realized that the longer she stayed, the lesser May could be herself. She waited for the funeral to be over and packed up. As she descended the stairs, she wondered if anyone would acknowledge her absence as they failed to acknowledge her presence. Out of old habit, she found herself incapable of expressing her emotions before the parents and stood like a rock waiting to be hauled at the stairway.

“Aren’t you going to stay for the week at least?” said her mother, out of the blue.

“Isn’t he staying?” she said, referring to the doctor.

“I will leave next month,” said the doctor.

“I’ll come down next month then. I have to go back to work…” she said nonchalantly. Inside, she was afraid of being caught. Of being caught with her emotional baggage. They had always mocked her sentimentality. Their own emotions predominantly centered around rage and self-pity. She was still secretly afraid that they knew she wasn’t thinking of work. Perhaps they knew that she spent most of her time alone in tears. She felt that she had been an embarrassment to them. They knew her dirty secret. That she was weak and weepy. That she had none of the scientific temperament they had tried to inculcate, she had no qualities that commanded any respect. That she was a loser in life, just like them. But, she thought, they probably knew that a long time ago. To ever catch them talking, or even thinking about her, would be an unrealistic dream. And so she left, small and insignificant to every remaining living person.

She was greeted at the bus-stop by Akki, a remote friend of her ex-boyfriend. He had met her randomly when she had just begun psychotherapy and fallen in love with her small child-like stature and near-total absence of self-confidence. She had just been broken up with and lived with the uncommon wisdom that the best cure to the poison from one relationship was another relationship. She allowed herself to be seduced by him, and now that May was dead, comforted by him. It was only a matter of time, she deduced, that his interest in her would begin to waver and she would hold no advantage over him and have to go hunting for someone to keep her incomplete being company again. She had initially shown some signs of mental stability, more for May’s sake than by any real improvement in thought content. Then, May died, and just when psychotherapy might have helped her metamorphose into an able human being, she quit and threw herself into the arms of a stranger.

Akki was a narcissistic, charismatic, over-confident, broad shouldered, gym-loving giant. He stood tall against her short, lean and flat-chested figure. He smiled well and had just finished his post- graduation in internal medicine. He was exactly her age, and that was the sum total of their similarities. She had just found employment at a new firm close to her college and could work without having to move. He was wrapping up senior residency at the nearby hospital, where her ex-boyfriend and forced best-friend worked as well. The three of them had gotten together on a few occasions. Eventually, Akki’s ego caught up with him and the meet-ups became a thing of the past. Her friendship with her ex-boyfriend dwindled but refused to die out, and Akki moved in with her.

May had never known Akki. Her approval had never been a strong point in relationships. May had herself been in a string of unsteady relationships. It had been a time when the younger sister lived in the shadows, struggling with a gender- identity crisis. She was uncomfortable with her breasts and after a few dreadful encounters with jeering, propositioning men as she went about running in her shorts, she cut off her hair completely, dressed like a boy, refused to shave and did not contest anyone who referred to her as a boy. She developed a slight hunch, in an effort to hide her small breasts. She also became anorexic in an attempt to suppress the increasing size of her breasts and menstruation. She also took to cutting her eyelashes, much to the confusion of those who remembered her days as a soft-spoken, girlish child. Isolated by peers, she excelled academically and became a promising marathon runner, winning several inter-school and inter-college competitions, but always shying away from professional sports as it did not appear to win the approval of her brain-worshipping parents.

Running was perhaps the only activity that she had picked out for herself and stuck to without any need for approval from the parents. She had only been religiously carrying out orders from the coach at school when she realized that her capacity to keep going despite physical exhaustion was unique. Her habit of maladaptive daydreaming was finally paying off. May was silently proud of her, though she did call her an attention seeker when she announced her first gold medal at home, unasked. Her coaches mistook her anorexia and cropped hair for single minded focus and dedication and praised her profusely. Unused to such treatment, she did all she could to avoid attention, training alone and eluding the ‘cool’ kids. Over time, she mastered the art of escaping notice wherever she went. She was widely seen as non-threatening and extremely likable for simply being less known. Nobody resented her; she made no attempt to replace them. They were kings and queens and she, was just there.

Akki was a remote-controlled representative specimen of the times, who needed to know the price of the food in his very mouth before he concluding if his taste buds liked it or not. She herself thought of him as a gigantic moron who made a decent first impression and could be regarded a smart person before anything outside of the medical textbooks left his mouth. He had also become a supplier of ‘medicines’ for the various illnesses her ‘friends and family’ suffered from. These ranged from the harmless like terbutaline syrup for her niece’s cough; she had no niece but could get kicks out of the Olympic committee banned drug, to the potentially harmful dextromethorphan for more severe cough. Akki never suspected her of drug abuse; she was neither attention seeking nor mentally imbalanced, two things he associated with drug abuse. And so they came together, the needy and the megalomaniac, a disturbing saga of the inadequacies of love.

May had taken to cutting herself when she was eighteen. Her little sister followed suit. Cutting seemed like the appropriate accompaniment to anorexia, gender confusion and the general atmosphere of depression that came with May’s abandonment of their childish ways for more adolescent interests like sex and drinking. She didn’t know how to go about doing it. She initially picked a sharp-edged broken piece of ceramic tile and carried it around for a while. Then she held the sharper edge on her left arm and held her breath while she ran it a couple of times quickly on her skin. It made one respectable cut. She went up to a friend and reported her finding, “First white, then red.” They approved. After a few months, when it was no longer cool, she found herself in the grips of a habit that threatened to be her best friend through days of torment. She switched to blades heated for sterilization. She usually waited for a good reason, like exam- related stress or a fight with the mother. By the time realized what she gotten her sister into, she was herself deep enough to need professional help. She found herself unable to take the problem seriously enough. The parents often took the little one swimming and on these trips, discovered her obnoxious habit. The doctor mocked her and requested her to stop behaving like a clown for her own sake. She had no problems; she did not come from a broken home or a rough neighborhood. In short, someone with nothing to complain about did not have a right to self-harm. She got wiser and learned to cut her palms where the wounds healed without scarring. She figured that if someone were to discover those, her search for ‘ultimate happiness’ would be over.

May had grown out of cutting leaving her little sister behind, but finding her in a private mess was not something new. At the ripe old age of twenty- one though, cutting was ridiculous and outlandish even by her standards. Coupled with her obsession with self-medication, a gift of studying elementary biology, she was like a bomb waiting to be set off. May had already departed by early marriage to an overqualified and equally mature male humanoid money-maker. She did what she could, taking her to the psychotherapist. Then, she died.

She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when she had begun eating leaves and growing random species that she found mentioned in her biology textbook. But she had found her match. She spent much of time mentally, and now also physically sick. Pancratium bulbs gave her hallucinations while the seeds of Argemone Mexicana, Abrus precatorius and Castor made it into her diet in fortuitously smaller quantities. She tried smoking Leonotis as a substitute for marijuana as she lacked the strength in her social circle to acquire even the most accessible of abused substances. Her other specialties were teas made from leaves of Coleus and seeds of morning glory. Once her transition to interior designing was complete, she found a way to stay in touch with sickness through the doctor’s pharmacology textbooks. It was here that she discovered several cures for pimples and boredom. She was often marked by a ‘natural blush’ resulting from skin thinning due to overuse of tretinoin or adapalene or both. Yet, no one noticed the transition she made so obviously, from invisible to caustic. The only thing permanent about her personality was the feeling of worthlessness. She knew how little she deserved and how much she had been blessed with. Parents who stayed together and encouraged education above all, a beautiful home, financial security… and May. But May was dead, and it didn’t take long for everything that remained to fall apart.

It was indeed an unluckily beautiful home. The color scheme was professional and the choice of furniture unimposing and simple. There weren’t any vases or gaudy works of art around. It was the kind of house one felt okay to spill a drink at. It was an apartment with two floors connected by an appropriately simple stairway. There was just enough room for the four of them to pretend they were four random individuals living under the same roof by chance. Something had always been terribly wrong but in the vortex of denial, it was impossible to find the problem to acknowledge it and then also deal with it. And yet, it was hard to know with perfect certainty and yet do nothing about it.

When Akki met her at the bus-stop, he felt the need to show that he was a knight whose shoulders she could cry on. But she was unemotional and preferred to cry when alone. He drove her back to her familiar world where everything reminded her of things that May hadn’t seen and never would. All she wanted in that moment was to hold her hand and the thought that she had once possessed a privilege so precious killed her soul. She attended to what remained of her life like a slain soldier. She tried to think of a good ambition for starts. She had never seen happiness in the concept of marriage or children. She saw it as an ailment of the society… People going on having children when what they actually want is an excuse to stay together or perhaps just go on living. Growing up, there were only two kinds of things to do: the kind that made pleased the doctor, and the kind that didn’t. Once she had been cured of that goal, she latched on to May; May promised that one day they would open a firm of their own, perhaps specializing in hospital designing and sustainable architecture, her two most favorite things. She had lived for that dream, even accepting lower wages to work at a firm that dealt with those very subjects that May had lived for. Now that May was dead, she realized that her own interest in the subject was little. But the more she was forced to consider the question, the more grew the realization that there was nothing on the planet that interested her at all. That left to herself, she didn’t think that life was worth living. And yet, since it had been forced upon her, she would have preferred to sit at a park or a similar location all day long and feed on strange drugs and daydream. It made no sense to invest all her energies on a world she cared little for. She had broken up with religion and other elite hobbies like philosophy and politics a long time ago. It had pleased the doctor, a staunch atheist who mistook her for a reasonable person; in fact, she had only been dodging emotional strain from yet another source. She remembered a few useful takeaways from her two sessions with the therapist. She tried to practice mindfulness but it only seemed to bring more tears, as focusing on anything, anything at all, connected it to May in one way or the other. Ultimately, she decided that she would need to set an arbitrary goal, and that would be May’s goal, only she would do it all by herself. And so, with plagiarized dreams, she worked up the courage to live one day after another. She had passed several days without looking at the sun or even the moon, for that matter. These things didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

She allowed herself to be seduced by Akki’s promise of normalcy. He bought her a pretty thing every now and then. She painstakingly accepted his affection. There was nothing about them to suggest permanence, and that would eventually prove to be the key to a lengthier relationship than warranted by the total lack of concern they shared for one another. Akki had found the task of getting to know her family too effortful. She had discovered several months ago, that no one would love out of sympathy. She was afraid to give the impression of someone ‘making a big deal out of nothing’, something the parents had often credited her with. The net result was her inability to share honestly anything that transpired at home.

“I want you so badly I feel a power outside of us controlling my biology,” she said humbly in bed.

“I feel golden.”

It took a few months before she found herself in the dreadful situation of coming to terms with May’s demise. She had hoped that it would kill her. Much like, in her childhood, when she had learned that the beating heart kept life going, she had tried to apply willpower to stop it. But misery killed in a different way; not suddenly, not kindly. She learned to exist in it, and it grew around her, in her hair, her eyes, in the things she saw, in the clothes she wore, in her designs and eventually, in her friendships. Her relationship with Akki had come to resemble friendship as they ate together, drank together, slept together and watched serials together. Despite her woes, she was a good talker. She relied on her excellent recollection of names and dates to bring about topics of conversation. She seemed, to many, attentive and poised. In truth, she hid behind the facts to conceal the reality of her own hollowness. Sometimes, she closely watched people in an attempt to discover their ‘inner lives’, imagining the conversations they shared with their spouses, their secrets phone calls, their adventures in the shower… so empty was her own existence, that she relied on the buoyancy of others to stay afloat. She started to care less and less about her looks, and it turned out that acne, much like relationships, required perpetual maintenance. She passed through life doing the routines and lived for most part, in her own head. It was at times like these Akki disturbed the flow of her thoughts and she found herself replying to him with words she had heard from somewhere herself. The strings that held them together had always been weak; now, they were also tensed.

“I feel like eating something meaty.”

“I don’t.”

“Look, I’m paying for it.”

“Which is why I don’t get to choose, ever.”

“Why are you always moping about something or the other?!”

“I don’t wanna eat, it’s ok…”

“This is exactly what I don’t like.”

“What makes you think I care?”

“C’mon babe…”

She had no appetite. She resented every morsel that kept the engines running and the curse of being alive. She turned away from everything. It was merely out of habit that she failed to communicate correctly her hunger for love, and the plates before her turned cold at each meal, unfailingly preserving the undead remains of hostility.

It was again out of habit that they reconciled each morning from the regular quarrels that marked the bedtimes. Akki recovered quickly, and in the mess that awaited him each day at the hospital, forgot all about the disease of dependence that their relationship had begun to resemble. She continued to go on living without putting up a fight, night after night. Grief embittered her. She resented Akki’s independent joy and the pleasure he took in indulging in her body. She tried to forget him as she left home for work each morning. It wasn’t hard. Her job demanded less of her time, but more of her attention. As she dreaded going through options concerning various miscellanies such as wall colors and plywood patterns, she made these decisions quickly, a unique quality for a novice in the field. This was mistaken for decisiveness and was much appreciated by her peers. She did her work as earnestly as she could bring herself to, with a vacant mind. What she lacked in originality, she made up for in hard work and almost unnatural conscientiousness. It was well known among her co-workers that her sister, a budding architect, had been killed in an accident not long ago. They were impressed by what they saw as her emotional stability and diligence, for she returned to work in no more than a week’s time and displayed no sentiment. She made no fresh attempts at friendship, leaving it to Akki to provide all the ordinary comforts of companionship. She hid herself as much as she could, afraid that they would be repelled by her if they ever read her mind. And yet, she was not without needs. She longed for emotional solidarity. She often caught herself daydreaming about being in their company. About being the teller of witty things, the life of the party, the center of attention. But it took no more than a glance to see that they were cheerful, happy and indulgent, and without any need for her. She couldn’t bear to exist where she wasn’t needed. Those others were complete all by themselves; it was she who needed them others to put herself together.

Her habits, that had earlier developed as a source of learning and quickly metamorphosed into an addiction, now served as a source of distraction. She used her evenings to read banned texts authored decades ago by ethnobotanists with hopes to redeem mankind. She tended poisonous plants in little pots at her small flat, which gave the impression of one in touch with nature. Most of these plants were lesser known psychedelics that aroused no suspicions, not even among the well-read neighbors and Akki himself. She poisoned herself on a regular basis with herbal teas and blunts made to smoke dried and microwaved leaves of Datura. It was convenient for Akki to believe that her frequent bouts of fever and sickness were psychosomatic in nature. She soon developed a tolerance for many stimulants and considered seeking Akki’s help in gaining access to some of the commonly used anesthetics at the hospital. She stopped herself at the last minute, realizing how much she could lose in the bargain; Akki might throw out her precious potted plants, try to inform her parents or worse, take her back to the psychotherapist. She had never returned to the therapist, having decided that there was no point to well-being for it could not bring May back. She mulishly fought the restlessness resulting from being forced to into biochemical coherence. The months began to pass. Slowly, and then less noticeably. Time, killer of one and all, failed her, obstinately refusing to recognize her agony as it painfully passed her by. Twenty-four months passed this way. Life became something of a blur.

It was a morning like every other. They kissed, secretly wishing the other dead but putting up together for unknown reasons. As Akki showered, she fried eggs and melted butter with sugar to go along with bread. Akki dressed quickly, failing to notice that she mixed leaves of Salvinia in the butter melting over the stove. He sat at the breakfast table while she served him coffee. It was the part of the day he loved the most; watching her tenderly serve his coffee with cream, bringing his crispy eggs in neatly folded paper napkins while wearing a strangely sexy apron wet from clumsily washing utensils. He had the mad vision of introducing her to his family someday, a fever easily cured by evening, when it was his turn to cook, followed by sex that might have been an expression of revenge and angst. That morning, as she took off her apron slowly and sensuously, Akki would’ve sworn that she was the love of his life. She smiled at him unconsciously in her usual way, apologetically and sat facing him as she spread the molten butter on slightly burnt toast, worried that the latter would reduce the absorption of alkaloids once inside her gut, and that she would end up too sober to function. They made redundant conversation, with Akki enthusiastically talking about an upcoming conference, and she patiently memorizing the dates and names associated with the event. She finished first, exhausted already by Akki’s loquaciousness, and proceeded to wash her hands in the basin at the bathroom. It was her habit to kick the doors open so as to avoid touching door handles, and she did it with some force, as if to vent her pent-up frustration. Hence, as was usual, she kicked the bathroom door open, but something unusual happened next; a lizard that had been lying about unnoticed on the bathroom’s wall just above her head lost its grip and fell on the back of her head, just touching it as she barged in. She felt the hair stand up on the nape of her neck and chest, as she shrieked mindlessly and turned about to face the creature, both running in opposite directions now. Akki dropped his cutlery and dashed to the bathroom, expecting to find her injured or unconscious. She was still screaming when he got there, finding her animated and delirious, and standing upon of the commode. She seemed to be trying to tell him something. He made out the word ‘lizard’ and followed her pointing finger to the kitchen. It took some searching, but he was able to locate it and chase it out with a broomstick, all the while yelling at her to stop screaming. She was relentless, and at the verge of tears. He desperately tried to calm her down but stopped when he finally made out what she was saying. He wasn’t to blame for the delay in understanding, for the name could be variously heard as ‘mai’, the Hindi word for ‘me’. He felt an inexplicable shiver down his spine, and for a fleeting moment, considered bringing out his bag and sedating her. He quickly returned to his senses; he was a doctor after all. He pulled her out and spoke authoritatively and clearly. He even slapped her and shook her, going against his principles. And yet, for several minutes, he couldn’t stop her from screaming at the top of her voice, “MAYYY! GET OUT OF HERE… LIZZAARRDD!!! DON’T COME HERE, MAYYYY!!”

Akki was late to work. There were still several authorities he was answerable to. But he was credible and had no trouble explaining that his ‘sister’ had a ‘small accident’ and had to be looked after. The senior doctor was kind and even offered to let him leave earlier that evening. Akki thanked him but insisted that it wouldn’t be necessary. In truth, he had no doubt that it would be the right thing to do, but he was too put off by her show of hysteria that morning. He found it deeply disturbing that she was still affected by the death of her sister two years ago. Over time, his image of her as a mentally stable and quiet person had been hauled over on several occasions, but this was a whole new level. The image of her as even remotely normal had been outrageously uprooted and as he went about reviewing his patients’ drug regimens and their progress charts, he questioned his own relevance in her life. It seemed that he had contributed very little to her recovery. She had chosen to go back to work barely a week after the great tragedy and on her own terms, never mentioned it again. She had accepted his proposal to move in together a month later, but it was evident that she hadn’t been looking forward to it. And now, on her own terms again, she had decided to go completely nuts in a matter of moments. Between them, there had been no emotions; just experiences. He had always known; but it bothered him only now. He went about the day apathetically, unsuccessfully seeking escape from his own mind. When it was time to leave, he caught up with some of his colleagues, surprising them as he usually left for home straight after work. They looked at him sympathetically and one of them asked, “Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” said Akki, noticing for the first time that the person who put forward the question, was attractive and affable. “She fell in the bathroom and sprained her foot. She’s alright.”

The female colleague smiled kindly and said, “We’re going for drinks… Why don’t you join us and take something back home for her?”

“Sure…” said Akki. The company was elated to have him around. He had helped many of them get through tough times with his general liveliness and loud humor. They saw this as an opportunity to give back, having felt sympathetically towards him for a long time now. Unnoticed by himself, he’d become quite serious and cheerless over the last several months. The girl who had made the offer was informally called ‘Thop’, a word that stood for ‘cannon’ in Hindi and was used to describe an impressive person of high standards. Her actual name was Vandana, a name too long for the small medical community that loved acronyms and short-forms. She was a tall girl, imposing and broad shouldered, with saffron- flavored skin and an irresistible smile that occasionally surprised her otherwise solemn expression. She had traditional long hair that tossed about playfully at her hips with a life of her own. She had prominent cheek-bones and an aquiline nose, which together with her small, sharp eyes, gave her look of a predatory creature on heat. Presently, she was smiling at Akki, who could barely keep his mask on, so taken aback was he by her obvious interest in him. At a nearby lounge, they never took their eyes off each other, and soon enough, Akki lost count of his drinks. When the clock struck eleven, he hurriedly took his phone out and to his surprise, there were no missed calls or messages. He let his eyes close and pictured his pathetic relationship, wishing everything would change. He opened his eyes and watched as Thop carelessly untied her hair, giving her sharp face the appearance of a ravishing gypsy. He stood up abruptly, thanked everyone and left. He knew that he had taken one too many drinks but decided to drive himself back anyway, totally forgetting about having some food parceled for dinner. He reached the apartment close to dinnertime, wondering if they would have to order food, and would if he could manage to avoid a squabble that night.

She’d never fainted. Several times over in her own head she had; but it never showed itself to others. It was private, as suffering can be. She started as she heard a noise at the door. It was Akki opening the door with his spare key. In a few moments, he stood before her with the expression of a school-kid expecting questions.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s alright.”

“Should we order something for dinner?”

“Sure…” Akki realized that his worst day was turning out to be the best he’d had in a while. The hours passed. She lay on his arm as he lazed about reading journals on his phone. She soon fell asleep and he carried her to bed. He stood staring at her limp body for several minutes. He shook her till she was slightly awake and she automatically clung to him. He knew her ways better than she did herself. He thought she responded like a plant. She existed a bit like one. Tired, he tried not to think of Thop and fell asleep himself. He dreamed of a hostel with several children. He was in charge of conducting their meals. This is a hard job, he thought as he mentally calculated how much pea soup each child merited and if it would suffice… All of a sudden, he felt his ear drum split open by an unearthly scream. He woke with a start, nearly falling off the bed to find her screaming and kicking, and still in deep sleep. Petrified, he placed his hand over her mouth and nose till she woke up, her eyes wide open, staring into something in the distance, something horrendous like a man being lynched for a crime he hadn’t committed.

“I had a nightmare…” she said an eternity later.

“What about?”

“I saw a lizard…”

“What can a lizard do?”

“It just… I’ve always hated them.”

“They’re completely harmless, man!”

“Please come back to bed.”

Akki felt goose-pimples on the back of his neck. There was something about her tone that he had never perceived before. It was dependence. It felt strange and unbefitting. She looked at him imploringly. He knew their relationship was over. Something played at his mind, disturbed him; he was unsure if their relationship had ever been at all. Presently, he went back to bed and she clung to him again. He found himself unable to enjoy it. That night, he failed to get any sleep at all. He stayed awake, as she talked in her sleep all night. Most of it was gobbledygook that he utterly failed to understand. But he was sure of having heard one word, unmistakably and repeatedly. He felt haunted. He stared at her shadow upon his arm, trying to make out if she made any reference to him at all. Again and again, she said, “May, May, May…”

The following morning, Akki was up before her. He sat on a nearby chair, looking dreadfully hungover and sleepy. However, he dragged himself to the bathroom. She woke up abruptly, as was her habit, but immediately sensed something sinister in the atmosphere. It took a few moments for her brain to access the events of the past day and night. She was too scared to go into the kitchen but she just about managed, and fortunately, did not run into more lizards. She made breakfast for Akki in her usual way, forgetting to cook for herself, so tormented was she by the sight of his mawkish face that morning. She served him his breakfast and prepared to go to work herself.

Akki sent her pictures of lizards from work, in hopes of ‘conditioning’ her to their presence. Reluctantly, she agreed to the idea. It was an advice from a colleague at the psychiatry department, who also offered undertaking therapy. Akki promised to consider it and immediately forgot all about it. The hours passed and they found themselves in the exact same situation as the previous night. That is, with Akki wide awake and unable to fall back asleep, and she screaming unstoppably beneath several layers of sleep. The next night, Akki begged her to go to bed without him and slept in the hall. Her squeals reached his ears unswervingly and he cursed the builders of the house who’d made the walls paper-thin and perfectly suited to opera singing just for this curse to fall upon him when he committed adultery in his heart. It was true that he thought of Thop more and more. But four days had gone by without any opportunity for sleep and he finally decided to stay over at his colleague’s. At the colleague’s residence, he felt as though he’d just gained freedom from a parasite. He slept soundly, and on the next morning, he thought of Thop as he masturbated. Only just before he came, his mind plunged back to his still-girlfriend, and the image of her child-like body flashed before his eyes. He lay still, reminded of the situation he’d encountered numerous times before, with other girls. He knew for sure that his heart would protest, but that would have to be overcome. Pity is not love in any sense of the word, he told himself.

She was in the bedroom, lying between several sheets. Several lizards lay between the sheets. They had been still until then, but now they all moved simultaneously. She screamed and screamed, till it woke her up but the nightmare continued as she couldn’t move a muscle. She was perfectly still, wondering if some strange twist of fate had rendered her quadriplegic. She breathed heavily and screamed for help. No one answered. No one was at home. It was a long time before she could move again but this time, the lizards were crawling all over her. She woke up with a thud as she fell off the bed, her throat dry and achy. She reached for the bottle of water lying nearby. She’d left the lights on. She knew perfectly well that there were no lizards among the sheets. But she was still repulsed by them. She was panting, her heart beat two times a minute and her palms were cold and clammy. There was sweat on her forehead and her toes wiggled with a life of their own. She had long given up hopes that someone would show up. They never did, life had taught her. Not when the tiers of her cycle had gotten punctured several kilometers from home that rainy evening when she was fifteen. Not when she had run into the streets and lost her way in an unknown locality after she had caught her first boyfriend cheating on her. Not when she had been stung by a nettle-slug caterpillar when playing in the sand when she was six…Not ever. In that little world of horror, time was mercilessly slow-paced. The next morning, she heard Akki at the door. He walked in looking like a changed person. Evidently, he hadn’t felt an aching need for her in those last two nights.

“Why are you back?” she asked despondently. It was exactly what Akki had been dreading.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said, almost inaudibly. She then saw what was happening. The familiar fear of the unknown gripped her. She lost her senses. It turned out he was well prepared. He’d been at the house on the day before, while she was at work. He’d packed his belongings and she hadn’t even noticed. He picked up his bags, ignoring her cries as he’d been instructing himself all morning. He’d almost made it to the door when she broke into a fight, physically pulling him back. She snatched his bags and threw them aside.

“Don’t do this, please… I can’t sleep…”

Akki was shocked speechless by her display of violence. He found himself forced to use more strength then he ever would have consented to. He found his bags again and tried to talk sensibly.

“We haven’t been working out for a long time, you know that,” he said just loudly enough to be heard.

“NO, NO! DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE HERE! I CAN’T SLEEP!”

“You need professional help then, I’ll put someone on your case…”

“NO, DON’T GO!”

“Let’s not do it this way, please. And stop screaming for God’s sake! The neighbors will think something’s up…” He fought his way out. She lunged at him violently, almost smashing his skull against the wall. He realized she was no longer in charge of herself; the devil had taken hold of her. Her long years of athletic training had made her a lot stronger than she looked. He was unprepared for it. The result was an unplanned defensive move which ended with her being flung back into the apartment. He violently shut the door after him and ran down the stairs with his bags. His hands were shaking too much to let him drive. The watchman brought him a stool where he sat and collected his thoughts. It was after several moments that he realized that she could have followed him to the parking lot but she hadn’t. Haunted by what he might have left behind, he left his bags to the watchman and went back upstairs. He hesitantly tried the door, which was unlocked, only to find her pathetically curled figure weeping on the floor.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I have to…” he said sincerely.

“Please don’t go…I can’t go on without you…” she said in a voice he had never heard before. Despite his best intentions, he was annoyed.

“It’s not fair on me, damn it! Does it make any sense to you that I should have to put up with this so you can sleep? Sleep?!”

She made a last effort. “I love you…” she said venomously. He shook his head.

“Get over it…” he said and departed.