Sorting Out Sid

by Lal, Yashodra

Sid stared at her blankly for about five seconds. He swallowed hard twice, and somehow managed to say, ‘Okay … and the good?’

  ‘Sid, I don’t think you understood me fully. I just told you that you’re going to die.’

  ‘I heard you, I heard you,’ replied Sid, even more nervous and agitated now. He pulled at his collar. He felt as if his shirt was choking him, and he noted that he was sweating. ‘Is it hot in here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. So yes, I heard you when you … what do you mean I’m going to die?’ He suddenly felt very annoyed. ‘We’re all going to die, right? What is “very soon” anyway?’

  ‘The cards say you’re going to die at the age of thirty-seven.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Sid, trying to digest this new information.

  ‘How old are you now, Sid?’ Cynthia’s voice was very kind and soft.

  It took Sid a while to answer, and he whispered, ‘Thirty-six.’ After a few seconds, he added, ‘And five months.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Cynthia, eyes widening with horror. ‘That gives us rather limited time, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You could say that, I suppose. Seven months is all I’ve got? Ha ha ha ha!’ Sid didn’t quite know why he was laughing. He was still trying to wrap his mind around what he had just heard.

  ‘Okay, now listen, young man.’ Cynthia’s voice became sterner. ‘I know this is a shock for you, but it is important to me that we don’t lose more time. And that you understand the seriousness of the situation you’re in.’ He listened to her, dumbstruck. ‘What the cards indicate is that you’re headed for a sudden and irreversible demise.’ What kind of demise is reversible, he thought. ‘But there is also the good news, and that’s the reason you have come to me today – fate has brought you here. There is a chance that you do not actually have to suffer an untimely death. So once we find the answer to why your destiny is like this, we can make some conscious choices that will help change it.’

  ‘You can change destiny?’ Sid whispered. He couldn’t believe he was having such a conversation. Just this afternoon, a short while before Aditi’s call, he had been debating with himself whether to get the cheese burst pizza from Dominos’ or the thin crust from Pizza Hut. How was it now that he was on the verge of death, and talking about changing his destiny?

  ‘You can change your destiny,’ said Cynthia, ‘with the right choices. Now, let me focus on what the Oracle cards are telling me.’

  Sid slumped back in his chair, his head spinning. He would never live to see forty? He had always been under the impression that he hadn’t even done half of the things that he wanted to in life. And now, this lady was telling him that it would be all over in seven months. Wow, that was one birthday party he wouldn’t be looking forward to, he thought bitterly.

  Cynthia took in a breath sharply, and he looked up. Her eyes were closed, face even paler than before. He swallowed his panic and waited for her to speak. After a minute, she opened her eyes and spoke slowly, ‘I just had a vision. I know the problem.’

  Sid didn’t speak, but continued to gaze mutely at her, and she said, ‘You, Sid, have been married to the same soul for the last three hundred years.’

  Sid felt a small twinge of hope at these words. ‘You mean, Mandira and I are like … soulmates? Destined to be together?’

  Cynthia gazed at him for a moment. ‘Well, in a way, except that in every single lifetime when you have chosen her as your mate, you have committed suicide at the age of thirty-seven. And so is it destined to be this time too, unless you choose to do something about the relationship.’

  ‘Okay … look … see,’ said Sid desperately, ‘of course … Mandira and I have our problems … we do, but killing myself? I’ve never even thought about it.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ asked Cynthia, her blue eyes now uncomfortably penetrating. ‘You haven’t ever thought about it? Never been so angry that you thought you might bang your car into a tree? Never thought of perhaps jumping off your balcony? Never…’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Sid, giving in to the urge to grip his head in his hands. He was breathing heavily as his mind raced. Yes, he did get angry while driving sometimes – who didn’t though? And sure, he did live on the eighth floor – and once he had been in a black mood after a particularly bad fight with Mandira. As he stood smoking on his balcony, he looked down and the thought had briefly flashed across his mind that it would serve her right to see his body splattered on the ground.

  Cynthia was right. He was suicidal. He just hadn’t known it until she pointed it out. He looked up hopelessly at her. ‘What am I going to do?’ he whispered.

  Cynthia said to him gently, ‘Sid, there is only one thing to do. You have to fix your relationship, or end it. I’ve now seen a few of your previous lives and they all follow the same pattern. It is clear to me that before you and this person met … about … oh … three hundred and twelve years ago, you were a very successful individual in every life you had lived. But after you got involved with this soul, everything changed. There was one lifetime when you were a tribal prince and you married her, much against the wishes of your family. The marriage brought down the whole clan and you ended up poisoning yourself. In another lifetime, you were a wealthy merchant and the same thing happened – you hanged yourself from a tree. You know, you’ve been quite creative about the ways you’ve killed yourself – it’s been different every time around; you’ve shot yourself, stabbed yourself in the heart, jumped off a cliff, and once even cut off your own…’

  ‘Okay, listen, Cynthia,’ Sid cut in desperately, ‘this is really a little … um, overwhelming for me. I need to think about what I’m going to do. I don’t think there is any point now in carrying on further with this session.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to get into anything else in this session anyway, Sid,’ said Cynthia soothingly. ‘The other cards are all irrelevant, they are about what’s going to happen in the next few months before you…’ Her voice dropped low, prompting Sid to stare at her. She went on, ‘I think the most important issue for you at this point in time is to think how you’re going to save yourself. We can pick up the other sessions at another time – assuming of course that there is another time.’

  Sid felt his heart sink. He got up slowly from his chair and she suddenly said, ‘You know what you should do? You get your wife to come and visit me. I’m here till the fifteenth only and then back only after four months from my South-east Asia sojourn. I could do the Tarot reading for her and then give you some insight into what you could do.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Sid said. He had his doubts about Mandira listening to anything he said. Cynthia seemed to misinterpret the uncertainty in his voice as a lack of appreciation of the importance of her suggestion. She narrowed her eyes and said, ‘I’ll just tell you one more thing, Sid. This card, here?’ She indicated the card with the number three on it and the three people dancing around the fire, and said, ‘This card says three. You see? Three is a good number sometimes, but not always.’ She was giving him a very meaningful look. Sid nodded, but he was only pretending to understand.

  The number discussion reminded Sid … he had to pay her. Eight thousand bucks to be told that you’re going to die – wow! But then again, how did money matter any more, he told himself and counted out a bundle of five-hundred-rupee notes and placed them on the table, murmuring a half-hearted, ‘Thanks, Cynthia.’

  She inclined her head gracefully and said, ‘I appreciate your not asking for credit.’ She didn’t have to elaborate. This time he knew exactly what she meant. He turned to leave, but turned back and said, pointing to the cards on the table, ‘Just curious … what does that card with the water on it mean?’

  Cynthia gave him the most pained and expressive look of the whole evening. Sid swallowed hard again and said, ‘Okay, never mind.’

  He practically ran out the door, aware of her blue-eyed gaze following him. He made his way to the car and got in. He quickly turned the key in the ignition and zoomed out of the bush w
here he had parked. He honked loudly in the ear of the sleeping guard who woke up and cursed Sid as he drove away.

  Just the previous weekend, Sid had taken an entire season’s membership at the club.

  So much for my swimming, he thought bitterly.

  10

  End of the Road

  ‘Beta, usse pyaar ki zaroorat hai. Aur woh pyaar sirf aur sirf tum hi de sakte ho.’ The words reverberated in Sid’s head as he sat at the wheel of his parked car. He had had to get away from the advice and gentle chastising of his in-laws. They had arrived two days ago and the lecturing had gone on non-stop. He didn’t see any reason for listening to it tonight when Mandira hadn’t even bothered to come home from work on time. After all, they were her parents – he had only acquired them through marriage. Sure, he had been close to them. In fact, sometimes Sid felt closer to them than to his own parents. But for now, he couldn’t help but feel resentful about having to be the one to bear the brunt of their advice.

  Usse pyaar ki zaroorat hai. Hah! They had always overindulged her as a kid, their ‘Mandu darling’, believing that she deserved to be treated like a little queen. Everything madam ever did was always right; she was never to blame. No wonder she turned out so opinionated, believing it was always someone else’s fault. Mandira was simply unable to accept things that didn’t go exactly the way she wanted. Anyway, he may not have treated her like a queen, but he didn’t think that he had been short on providing her with love – or had he?

  He felt annoyed that she was involving her parents in their problems. Mandira had told them that they were no longer on talking terms because Sid was too selfish to have a child, and that she was now getting too old and would end up being childless forever. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that having a kid would just add to their troubles. Sid remembered how completely berserk Aditi had been during her pregnancy as well as after her delivery. He also knew that not only did he not have Krish’s ability to handle half-crazed women, his relationship with Mandira was nowhere as strong as the one between Krish and Aditi. So having a baby right now would be disastrous. But what was the point of worrying her parents with all this? They were old, and hardly in the best of health, like his own. Sid realized that his concern about their health bothered him more than the fact that he had been made the villain of the piece. Sid could take being the villain, he was used to being made to feel like that.

  He had tried to shut his ears when Mummy was coaching him on what a woman really wanted from a man in terms of love, care and attention. He was mortally afraid that Mummy might eventually work her way into elaborating on the best sexual positions for impregnation. So he had escaped midway through her impassioned speech, citing an emergency.

  ‘Kya emergency hai, beta Sid?’ Mummy had called out to his retreating back.

  ‘Maggi khatam ho gayi hai, Mummy … I’ll be right back.’ It was all he could think of on the spur of the moment. Sid had almost run out of the house, clutching his car keys.

  He now sat in the parked car, unsure of what to do and where to go. Then he noticed a car pulling into their second parking space a few spots ahead. At least Mandira was home now. Good, she could keep her parents company.

  He wondered where he could escape to tonight. He didn’t really feel like being with anyone. He tapped the steering wheel, weighing his options. His mind flitted back to the issue he had been trying to put out of his head the entire last week.

  ‘Fix it, or end it, or else DIE!’ In his head, Cynthia’s proclamation had taken on the dramatic feel of a witch’s prophesy and he imagined her pale figure looming above his head, mournfully reminding him that the end was near.

  Sid had always known that Mandira wouldn’t even consider Cynthia’s suggestion about visiting her. He had tried to bring it up during dinner the same night after his visit to Cynthia. He didn’t give her too many details – he just said that he met someone interesting who had done a reading for him and that Mandira should go for it too.

  ‘What exactly did she tell you?’ Mandira had asked sharply.

  ‘I can’t really tell you that.’

  ‘What bullshit is this, Sid?’

  ‘I’m serious,’ he insisted. ‘She was really good. I think there really is something to this…’

  ‘Who told you about this woman in the first place?’ Mandira demanded.

  ‘Er … Aditi and her friend … Neha.’

  ‘And “Aaadu” and some “Neha” character now know about our problems?’

  ‘No, no,’ Sid interjected swiftly. ‘I mean, hardly anything, really. You know I don’t talk about these things with other people.’

  Mandira was silent for a while and then got up abruptly from the table. ‘You know what, Sid? You can go ahead and fuck around with your little girlfriends and their psychos—’

  ‘Psychics,’ Sid corrected automatically, smarting from her use of the F-word. Didn’t sound good coming from Queen Mandu-Darling’s regal lips.

  ‘Whatever!’ she snapped as she picked up her plate. ‘Let me make one thing very clear … You don’t tell me what to do. I don’t have to listen to anything you say. So just drop all this mumbo-jumbo crap with me.’ She turned around and walked off towards the kitchen. Sid took his last spoonful and watched her with a feeling of growing malevolence, trying to control the urge to hurl his plate at the back of her head.

  ‘Aur wo pyaar sirf aur sirf tum hi de sakte ho,’ Mandira’s mother had said. Only he could give her that love.

  Sid leaned his tired, buzzing head against the steering wheel for a while. Where could he possibly go now? He had to admit – he could only think of Vikas and Sunny.

  He called Vikas’s number, but it just kept ringing. He checked to see if he had Sunny’s number saved. Yes, he did. So he called her. She answered after just two rings with a warm, ‘Hi, Sid, how are you?’

  ‘Good, GOOD … actually, I am thinking of coming over but I can’t reach Vikas … is he home?’

  ‘Sid, he is spending the night at the farmhouse. He’s got an important presentation tomorrow and said he needed peace and quiet … he certainly doesn’t get it at home, Rohan and Ishan bouncing all over the place.’ Sunny laughed lightly.

  ‘Oh, okay, at the farm, huh?’ Sid felt an involuntary twinge of nostalgia as he thought about the old days – partying at the luxurious cottage-home in Sainik Farms. Ah yes …Vikas had mentioned that his parents were spending a few months in the States. But there went his plan for going over. Now what was he going to do?

  ‘Yes, he’s been using the farmhouse a lot these last few weeks, I think it’s working well for him.’

  ‘Oh, good. I guess I’ll see you guys another time, Sunny.’

  ‘Bye, Sid.’

  He was still staring at his phone when a message popped up. It was Mandira.

  Heading out for an office party. It’s a farewell, can’t miss it. Get home quick. Mum and Dad waiting.

  He stared at his phone blankly for a long time. Then he felt a sense of seething resentment. This was ridiculous. Why the hell did she think it was okay to go out when her parents were in town, and why should he be the one babysitting them?

  The Hyundai revved up, startling Sid. She was back in the car already? Clearly she still hadn’t noticed him. What was her rush today? She would have barely had time to say two words to her parents. What was with these bloody office parties anyway?

  Several thoughts flashed through his head simultaneously, and whirled around in an obstinate manner despite his effort to force them out. He shut his eyes tight and leaned his head against the steering wheel again. He did not want to think about this. But there it was – not just Cynthia’s prophecy, but what she had said about three being a crowd – how long could he ignore it?

  Finally, Sid snapped his head up with an air of steely resolve. He watched through narrowed eyes as Mandira sped off. He decided it was time to take action – to be the man! It was his very own moment of resolution. The moment would have possibly
been a lot more poignant had he not accidentally hit the horn and startled himself. He took a deep breath to compose himself.

  And then he started the car.

  Mandira had a head start on him, but Sid knew he had a good chance of finding her since the traffic signal some distance away from their gate was likely to slow her down. Sure enough, he soon spotted the distinct red Verna a few cars ahead of him. He kept his distance, fairly certain she wouldn’t see him.

  Fix it. Or end it.

  For the next thirty minutes, Sid concentrated only on driving. He had never tailed anyone before, but found it strangely easy. The route she was taking wasn’t familiar to him, but he felt as though he could have found the destination in his sleep. In fact, he felt as if he was asleep. Everything appeared to be moving in slow motion even though he was following her at a carelessly speedy fifty-five kilometres per hour, practically supersonic by his usual standard. And by the time he lost her, it didn’t matter any more – Sid knew where she was heading. Maybe he had known even before they started.

  In another ten minutes he had reached and parked his car some distance from the large, imposing gate. Her car wasn’t around. He waited for a long time, listlessly tapping his fingers against the wheel, thinking about his next move. Finally, Sid fished out his cell phone from his pocket and wearily dialled Mandira’s number.

  The phone rang about ten times, but he waited patiently, still tapping his fingers on the wheel. Finally, Mandira picked up, sounding slightly breathless and more than a little annoyed. ‘Ya, Sid? What is it?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘You enjoying the party?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she answered curtly. ‘How are Mummy and Daddy?’

  ‘Oh, we’re all missing you very much. Hey, how come I don’t hear any music at the party?’

  ‘I’ve stepped out to talk to you in the hall. So why are you calling?’

  ‘Nothing, yaar, I just thought I’d tell you, I was getting a little bored, so I’m going to see Vikas tonight. Sunny told me he’s working on a presentation at the farm. Remember the farm? I guess you wouldn’t, we went there together to a party only once … years ago. So, anyway, I thought I’d surprise him there, maybe have a beer with him.’