by Sachin Garg
‘Hmm. Let’s just wait for tomorrow morning and see what happens,’ I said.
The next day would have been an important day in my life; when I would actually get to meet Navya after all these months. I went to her room and looked at her asleep. I wanted to lie down next to her, cuddle her, and envelop her inside my chest. My Navya was a gypsy, a wandering soul, looking for peace. She was a misfit in this world, a much misunderstood person who was born for a different purpose.
As The Silence Got Longer
The sound was sharp and loud, of metal hitting the floor from some height. It sounded like a steel plate or glass had fallen down in the kitchen. I looked at the bed in front of me, and Vandana was fast asleep on it. So who was in the kitchen?
I got up and rubbed my eyes to adjust to the dim light. And tiptoed out of the room. The kitchen light was switched on. I entered and saw Navya standing in front of me, with a glass of water in one hand and the bottle in the other. She was drinking and spilling water all over her.
Even though she had woken up in a foreign place, she was at ease, as if she did it often. Instead of running around, trying to get a hang of where she was and how she got there, she had coolly gone to the kitchen, picked a water bottle and clumsily started drinking water.
The next moment will be etched in my memory forever. Navya’s eyes fell on me. Would she recognize me? If she will, will she slap me and go away? Or will she cry and run towards me and hug me?
Her actual reaction was an anti-climax. She recognized me. But she didn’t react. It was as if we had met last evening and the fact that she was in my flat had nothing unusual about it. She seemed incapable of reacting. Much weirder things had happened with her and the best she could come up with was a five second blank stare. And then she looked away. And gulped down a bottle of water.
Once she was done with the bottle in her hand, she looked at me.
‘Hi Samar. How are you?’ she asked, plainly.
‘I am good. And I don’t think I need to ask how you are.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re a mess and it’s more than visible.’
She didn’t react or take offense. Instead, she looked around the flat.
How did I reach here? In fact, where is here? I mean, where am I?’
‘This is my place. I was there at your horrendous party yesterday. I couldn’t believe what I saw Navya. What have you done to yourself?’
‘Oh, you were at Ronnie’s too? You know him? Isn’t he a darling?’
Ronnie was anything but anybody’s darling. Perhaps he was sweeter to pretty girls who were sort of famous.
‘Yeah. I went to his party just to pick you.’
‘You mean to say you just walked into a Ronnie’s party, picked me and walked out?’
When she put it like that, it sounded hard to believe. I didn’t want to explain the whole episode to her. The last thing you want to tell a Meth addict is that you can cook Meth.
‘Did you like the party?’ she asked. I looked at her and I realized the enormity of the task at my hand. Party? Really? She was almost dying there. By what definition would that be a party? She had changed completely as a person. People having Meth and other drugs was nothing out of ordinary for her now. She expected me to walk into that necropolis and enjoy myself.
‘Shut up Navya! Those people were animals! May be worse.’
‘Relax Samar. It’s no big deal,’ she said, as she walked past me into her room. As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. She lost interest in talking to me the moment she got to know my views on that ‘party’.
I followed her into her room. This conversation was definitely not over. Out of all the terrible possibilities on seeing Navya, I hadn’t considered this one. That she would meet me and it would nothing major for her. And now, I was overwhelmed all over again.
I walked up to Navya, and held her by her arms. And I looked deep into her eyes. This was the only way I could get her attention. And with all the conviction in the whole of my body, I told her, ‘Meth is poison, Navya. Stop punishing and abusing your body.’
She looked at me, as if I had just slapped her or something.
‘What is wrong with you?’ she said. ‘Who the fuck are you to decide what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong?’
Every word coming out of her mouth was like a knife through my heart. If it was not three in the night, she would have been on her way out of house already. She belonged to a different world now.
Her comment wasn’t worthy of a response. As far as she was concerned, I was being a kid. I could see that she was absolutely and completely detached from everything around her. I looked into her unfocussed, disoriented eyes, and I knew what was happening: She was undergoing a drug craving.
She didn’t care about what was happening around her. Her thoughts were completely focussed on how to find the drug again, how to get back to it. I could see that we couldn’t have waited till the morning; she needed immediate attention.
So I took her back to my room, where she had slept. I made her sit down on the bed and looked at her in her eyes.
‘If you want to go back to that gutter, Navya, I won’t stop you. It’s your life and you have every right to decide how you want to spend it. But before you go, I want you to listen to me for half an hour. If you still want to go after that, I will drop you wherever you want me to. ‘
I maintained a serious face trying to deliver the seriousness in what I was saying. But Navya had a faint smile on her face, as she chewed on what I had said.
‘See Samar, there was a point, when if you would have told me to jump off the train with you, I would have done that at the blink of an eye. I was yours and I would have done anything for that extra second spent with you. But that moment is gone. That phase is over. You weren’t available to me then, and now, the ship has left the yard. I am not returning.’
So this was what it was about. Drugs were her rebound after whatever she felt for me in Goa.
I could feel my nerves pulsating at the side of my forehead. So was it my fault again? After this, I didn’t have strength left myself to give her strength. I asked her to go to sleep for now, with a baseless confidence that she would be there when we woke up.
I looked around, in her room, in her washroom, out in the balcony, but she had left. I looked for a note but there was none. Vandana woke up soon after. She didn’t know about my conversation last night with Navya but she figured out that Navya had left by the look on my face, even without looking around.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Such a gush of mixed emotions sprung up. With every step that I took towards the door, my thoughts kept flipping. It could be her, it was not her.
And it was her. As she stood there, she had no idea how scared we had got when she was not there in her room. She had bought a loaf of bread and a butter bar.
‘You guys don’t eat bread?’ she said, as she walked in. And when she said, you guys don’t get bread, she had not just said that. She had said a lot of things. She had said that she was going to stay with us. I believe it was a game for her, which she wanted to play. I didn’t know whether she wanted to quit drugs or not. And even though she didn’t mean a lot of things she had said last night, I had a feeling she didn’t see what was wrong with drugs yet. But just the fact that she had agreed to stay was a mini victory. It meant there was a lot of work ahead of us but at least we will get a chance.
I had had a restless night but she was there now. I exchanged a congratulatory look with Vandana but she wasn’t there last night. Vandana didn’t know how scared I had got after talking to Navya.
Navya nonchalantly walked into the kitchen and started making tea.
‘She’s wonderful,’ Vandana whispered to me softly. She wasn’t wonderful last night, I felt like telling her but abstained.
‘All she needs a good bath,’ Vandana added. After making the tea, Navya came and sat on the table and had a few slices with butter, as we l
ooked on. Once she was done, I went to my room, leaving Vandana and Navya alone.
The bath had done her a lot of good. It had seemed like a thorough bath and finally, I could see that out of all the marks on her body and face, which ones were more permanent than the others. Her hair had lost its lustre. But she smelled much better after the shower.
It was the eleventh of July. In twenty days’ time, I had to go back to college. Vandana’s cough and pain were worsening with time. And Navya needed the smallest of triggers to go back to how she was. If there was one thing we didn’t have, it was time. I wanted to sit with Navya and talk to her about drugs.
I sat with her in my room. I had collected some stuff on my laptop that I wanted to make her watch. I started with showing her how people look after a few years of Meth consumption. How their skin gets patchy, their hair becomes skimpy and their teeth rot away. They become skinny in an unhealthy way and begin to an abusive, restless and crazy in the head after a while. I showed her how it makes people get into crime for money, and do all sort of heinous acts. She listened to me attentively even though I wasn’t convinced that I was getting through to her. But as I went on, I made sure I maintained eye contact with her to make her realize the seriousness of this.
Once I was done, it was time for her verdict, that whether she was convinced or not. She didn’t seem in deep thought which suggested she had made up her mind.
It seemed as if she was toying with me and mentally laughing at the seriousness with which I was taking it.
As the silence got longer and so did the smile on her face, I waited for the next words to come out of her mouth. With the naughtiest smile I had seen on her, she said just one word.
‘Relax.’
Waiting For Death
In A Flat, Alone
Navya and I were standing in the balcony, watching the sun go down over the buildings in front of us. She hadn’t seen this flat before but had heard tens of stories about it the last time we had met. As the sunlight began to fade, Navya’s initial resolve seemed to be wavering. Her voice wasn’t as unwavering as it was in the morning and her body movements were a bit jumbled up. I knew what was happening. Her craving for drug was coming back, little by little. And I couldn’t really blame her because an urge for drugs is something physiological. When someone has been using drugs for so long, their urge for it almost becomes out of their own control.
She was transiting between becoming extremely quiet to extremely agitated without any trigger. Her conversations were a bit abstract too now.
‘What did you think the first time you saw me?’ she asked.
‘I thought you were the kind of person I should never get to know.’
‘Then why did you get to know me?’
‘Why do you ask?’ I said.
‘Because sometimes I wish it would have been so much better if you had gone by that gut and had not known me.’
‘Why are you so hard on yourself?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m such a mess.’
‘But I love your mess.’
‘You know what I thought when I saw you the first time? I thought you were the kind of guy anybody could fall in love with. Which was enough for me to hate you.’
‘And then what happened?’ I asked.
‘In a few weeks, I saw you again. And you know what I thought this time? Look at that boy, the boy with whom anybody can fall in love. I’m becoming a part of that anybody.’
I told her about Vandana. I wanted to tell her quickly before she misconstrues anything in her head. I didn’t want Navya to make the mistake I had made of mistaking Vandana for somebody she was not.
‘So what are you doing to collect the money?’ Navya asked.
I told her about the website savevandana.com. We walked to my room and checked the numbers. One thousand, one hundred and seventy three rupees. Far from what I could use.
‘I think it’s time we thought of something else,’ I said.
‘Like what?’ asked Navya, perplexed.
‘If only I knew what,’ I replied, dismayed.
Vandana entered the room with a tea tray in her hands and a smile on her face. Just as she kept the tray on the bed, she broke into a fit of cough. She went rushing to the washroom, probably to spit out the blood she had coughed up. She didn’t have much time and I knew we could soon reach a stage when no treatment will be good enough for her. It was a warm July evening and somehow, sitting with Navya and Vandana in one room, in spite of the dreary circumstances, I felt calm. It was like sitting with my family.
I thought of all three of us. Each of us was going through myriad dimensions of our struggles.
On one corner of the triangle, there was me, who had started his journey trying to get over the loss of the girl I loved. And in the process, found a completely new meaning of life.
On the second corner, there was Navya, a puppet whose master had been drugs, who, in trying to forget her bad memories had lost herself.
On the other corner, there was Vandana, the bravest of all of us, fighting for her life, with a smile on her face. ‘You want to come to the temple?’ Vandana asked Navya. She shook her head. I knew she wasn’t the temple type. Neither was I, but Vandana didn’t give me a choice. She ordered me to come with her. Also, I didn’t have Navya’s excuse, of being too unstable to go out.
So Vandana and I decided to go on our own.
‘So what do you think?’ I asked her.
‘She is in a pretty bad shape. You have your work cut out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She is totally consumed by Meth. Her body is dependent on it. She needs some distraction, which will take her mind away from it. But it’s not going to be easy with the condition she is in.’
I looked at Vandana as she prayed on. And then we started our return journey.
The main door was ajar when we came back. But the door of my room was locked. Perhaps Navya was sleeping or something, I thought. So we went to my room. I was reading the newspaper when my eyes fell on the cupboard in front of me. It was open, even though I remembered clearly that it was closed when we had gone. My heart skipped a beat because I had kept the remaining Meth that I had produced in the lab in that cupboard. I got up quickly and checked and my biggest fears had come true. Navya had taken a dose from the cupboard.
I ran to my room and started knocking profusely. Navya opened the door and she was visibly high. She had a naughty, annoying smile on her face. She thought it was funny. I knew there was no point shouting at her. In fact, I felt so guilty for being so stupid. I should have disposed the remaining Meth there and then.
Navya had become extremely energetic due to the drug. She was almost jumping around in excitement. She wanted to go out but we didn’t let her. Now all we could do was wait for the morning till the effect of the drug would wear off.
‘I think there is only one way out,’ Vandana said.
‘Which is?’
‘She needs a change of environment. Just like you did when you went to Rishikesh. Take her out of town, where she can be happier. Where she has things to do and doesn’t feel out of place.’
I looked at her. And I said, ‘I know exactly what you are talking about.’
‘Obviously you two have to leave for Goa at the soonest!’ Vandana shouted.
‘Are you serious? You really think I will leave you here in this condition?’
‘And you seriously think I will let you not go to Goa because of me?’ Vandana shouted louder.
‘But you have to!’ I shouted too this time. Vandana was taken aback. Her contour changed and she took a deep breath.
‘Samar, listen to me. Through whatever threads we are bound to each other, our goals are different. We are born alone and then we take a trip through this world, where we meet amazing people, spend time with them and the part ways for death,’ she said.
‘Stop sermonising! I’m not going to let you wait for death in this flat, alone! ‘
‘I haven’t asked anything
from you till date. All your efforts, Swamiji’s hopes and my contributions will be a waste if you don’t further this plan. I want to spend time in this flat alone. It’ll do me good. I am in not as bad a shape as you think I am in, Samar,’ Vandana reasoned.
We kept arguing for pretty long.
‘There are only two scenarios in which I will leave for Goa. You will have to either get admitted into a hospital.’
‘You’re out of your mind, Samar.’
‘Or you go back to Rishikesh.’
We kept arguing late into the night. And Vandana finally gave in. She agreed to go back to Rishikesh, which wasn’t much consolation because nobody in Rishikesh knew about her illness. On top of that, Rishikesh wasn’t really famous for its hospitals.
I booked two train tickets for Goa for two days later. And another one for Rishikesh, which was for Vandana. I needed a day in Delhi to wrap up a few things I wanted to. I would have to go to Goa with Navya, to Woodstock Village, where we had first met, and re-live all those days. Take her there and love her more than she thinks I was capable of. That’s what every Meth addict needs: pure unadulterated, unconditional love.
As we sat together on the final evening, the mood in the house was sombre. Navya was her usual irritable self. She was having a real tough time managing herself without the Meth. It had been two days now and this was the longest she had spent without using in a long time.
But I could see she was trying. She was being a sport about this, as she understood that this day was about Vandana and not about her. She got the gravity of the situation and decided to put her pain on the backseat.
‘Samar,’ Vandana said, breaking the silence which had engulfed the apartment all evening, ‘I like your apartment. I think it’s a good place to spend my last few days while you will be in Goa.’
‘Nothing will happen to you. And you’re not spending any more days in this house.’
‘Not saying will not change the truth, Samar. You have a beautiful life ahead of you. There is no greater blessing than being young.’