by Vish Dhamija
Nice legs.
‘Anita shall see you in a few minutes, sir,’ she politely said.
Great voice too.
‘Thanks… err…’ He hung on for a wee bit longer, expectantly looking at her till she was discomforted enough to blurt out her name.
‘Manavi.’
‘Hi Manavi, I am Jay.’ Before he could utter anything else, the phone on her desk buzzed.
He could smell her hair, some L’Oréal scent. God she was well worth it!
‘You can go in now, Mr Jay Singh.’
Is she not getting the hint or is she avoiding me?
***
Before Jay had fixed the appointment with Anita, he had done some digging on her. She saw far less clients/patients in a year than her competitors, but her reputation was unparalleled. She believed in curative therapy, and her record was a near hundred in mitigating, if not remedying mild psychotic disorders. Some of her interviews and press articles summarised that she robustly believed that a majority of such disorders were rooted deep in the past, inadvertently entrenched in the personality. To get to the past, she unashamedly outlined in one of the interviews, she used various techniques: from interviewing the clients, their close friends and family members to gathering information on them from a multitude of sources, all to help the client. That had bothered Jay for a long time: what all would she ask him? And what all would she dig up?
But he was here now.
Anita was much younger than Jay had expected or imagined. She must be in her early thirties. She had quick eyes, trained to discern more than a normal person, possibly even more than he could at first glance. Skilled and thorough, added to a comely face, and that made her smart and sexually attractive. And in shape.
Wow! Everyone here seemed young and fit.
‘Welcome, Mr Singh.’ She got up from her desk and walked towards him to shake hands.
‘Jay.’
‘Nice to see you.’
Jay didn’t respond. It would be a blatant lie to say that he was happy to be here or to see her. Unsurprisingly, Jay wasn’t amused. Psychiatry — wasn’t it the branch of medical science that dealt with mental disorders? It wasn’t back pain that he was sent to consult a doctor for? It’s different when someone realises that some part of the body needs attention, but when that part happens to be your brain it implied you need attention. Ironically, despite all the love songs written about the heart, it is the brain that all humans most relate to. To say Jay wasn’t happy would be an understatement. He had decided to make it difficult for the flipping shrink; he’d be sarcastic, he’d be evasive, he’d be annoying. Maybe, she’d just pack him off with a clean chit.
A few niceties about the weather, and she called Manavi to bring in two coffees.
‘So, Jay,’ Anita began, once the coffees had arrived and they both settled in: he on the sofa and she on the armchair next to him, her notebook in hands. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘Nothing?’
‘What part of “nothing” is hard to follow, Doctor? Let’s get this over and done with, please.’
‘So you aren’t interested in curative therapy, you simply want to pay and get away?’
‘Oh please, I’m in no mood for lectures.’
‘What do you do, Jay?’ she segued into banal stuff. Perhaps she gathered she had taken a wrong approach with him. She would have known well that he was caught in a near inebriated state, and that he couldn’t have lied to the judge. If she expected him to accept that she had grossly underestimated the challenge. Her doing. Jay couldn’t care anymore than a butcher cares for the lamb.
‘I am a defence advocate.’
‘Do you like what you do?’
‘Now, what kind of question is that? I am an advocate, criminal defence advocate. I don’t care if the world sees this as my greed to make money, but this isn’t just another job for me. I love what I do, this is my calling and it is the very quintessence of my being. I defend the innocents.’
‘Who decides that?’
‘The judge, of course. I merely present the facts.’
‘You support capital punishment then?’
‘What’s not to support? You kill, you pay.’
‘Don’t you think life is sacred, that humans have no right to decide who lives and who dies irrespective of whether you’re on the right side of the law or otherwise. I’m sure you know capital punishment is banned in Europe.’
‘So people can kill and live happily ever after?’ Jay made a face.
‘I didn’t say they should not be penalised or corrected. Only God has the right to decide about life and death…’
‘Who?’
‘God.’
‘I heard that. God who?’
‘You need a smoke?’
‘Do I get to see God if I smoke?’
‘I asked because you looked annoyed.’
‘Is smoking a doctor’s prescription to calm people then?’
She didn’t say anything, just beheld him.
‘For the record, I do not smoke.’ Jay was civil again.
‘I think we should come to the point, Jay. You have been referred to me by a doctor; a psychiatrist, no less. All I’m trying to do here is to figure out a way to help you.’
‘I have no problems or issues as you might think. I was poor once but poverty does not qualify as illness.’ He could fathom that sarcasm in his voice wasn›t wasted on her. ‘However, I get a feeling that this discussion doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.›
‘How do you know before getting there, and’ — she raised her palm to gesture him to be silent as his lips twitched to speak — ‘if you keep cutting me off mid-sentence every time, this conversation isn’t really going anywhere, just as you said.’
Silence.
‘Your silence wouldn’t help, Mr Singh.’
‘I thought this was the Republic of India and we all had a right of speech or silence.’
‘Try telling that to Justice Chowdhary, and that is not a threat.’
‘Warning?’
‘You’re smart.’
‘Smarter than I look?’
‘Certainly, Mr Singh.’
‘Thanks. Please call me Jay.’ He let out a wry smile.
‘There is no such thing as being a bit-pregnant. You either take the entire treatment or you don’t, Jay.’ Anita gave a disarming smile.
‘And if I don’t take your advice you report it to my doctor and he reports it to the judge?’
‘You’ve captured it in the right sequence, that is how the news will travel. As I said, you have sound logic.’
‘Thanks, again. Could we skip the foreplay please?’
‘You in a rush?’
‘No, not in the mood.’
‘Okay, so let me begin again, and this time without the meandering questions. You have been referred to me because of your problem with alcohol. Correct?’
Nod. Acceptance.
‘When did you start drinking?’
‘A long time ago, way back in college.’
‘How much do you drink?’
‘Half a litre, sometimes more.’
‘In a day?’ Anita appeared surprised or feigned it brilliantly, Jay couldn’t gauge.
‘More like in the night.’
She scribbled something on her pad. He still insisted that the Judge had caught him when he was nursing a hangover, and he hadn’t turned up tanked-up in the courthouse. Jay slowed down at times to ensure she comprehended his perspective on the incident. From his background read on her he knew she could and would get under his skin without being too apparent and — without letting him be aware — analyse each word he spoke and then analyse the symptoms and demythologise — whatever that meant — the angst and the accompanying fears and anxiety. Only God knew how because he wouldn’t be forthcoming, furnishing info on himself to a shrink. Thank you very much. He would respond to her questions with as little detail as he could possibly get away with, but he wouldn
’t reveal his inner self. As an advocate, he had enough experience in questioning clients and witnesses that he discerned that there were no innocent questions, and that, he reasoned, would made Anita’s task trickier anyway; he needn’t be rude or sarcastic.
After a few more questions — to Jay it felt like she was asking inane, hackneyed questions mainly for fiscal interests. Keep him talking, spend the time and bill him by the hour. Finally, Anita got up from the armchair and walked back to her desk and sat behind it.
‘If you want me to treat you, Jay, you have to trust me,’
‘I trust your words, not so sure about accepting the point that you are judging me though.’
Remember, no sarcasm, no impoliteness. This was a bordering on rudeness.
‘Your misjudgement on my judging you might get revised after a few sessions.’
‘Few sessions? You mean I have to come here again? Why?’
Anita nodded, said nothing.
‘Why do I need to come again?’
‘For another session?’
‘But why?’ Jay was annoyed.
‘I absorb what you tell me now, I process after you’re gone from here.’
Jay sat mutely for a minute, taking in what Anita had just stated. She was being factual. Didn’t he do the same with his clients — reflect on what they said in their absence? She was no different. Why wasn’t he forthcoming? Why was he being an arse when all she was endeavouring to do was help him?
‘I took some wrong decisions in my life when I was down —’ he started but halted, looking at her for some sort of acknowledgement.
‘Jay, there isn’t a creature I’ve met yet that, at some point in life, does not think that she or he took a wrong decision at some crucial juncture in life. And what if, of the choices presented, they had taken the road they did not take. But it’s life, not mathematics, and there isn’t just a single way of reacting to situations. The good news is that there’s always a way out of the wrong path taken, if that was the mistaken path.’
Resplendently reassuring.
‘You know sometimes I wish I did not have a good memory. Then I could have forgotten it all.’
‘Sometimes not forgetting something could be a good thing.’
‘That’s an interesting viewpoint. How, if I may ask?’
‘Because memories need to surface before they can be exorcised. It’s the latent ones that do more harm.’
‘You sound like you’re reading from a textbook,’ Jay beamed.
‘Believe me, I’ve seen more cases than the number of books I’ve read.’ Her attractive smile reappeared and Jay believed her. Maybe, just maybe, that was a tactic she used to beguile hostile clients like him. She looked sharp, which, in her case, was an honest reflection of her mental capability. She was elegant, not flamboyant or superficial. After being a tenacious arse for quite some time, Jay was beginning to realise that it was all for his benefit. He stared at his shoes for a long time as if there was some abstract modern art painted on them that he was trying to grasp. The silence was totally non-buoyant; they both sank in it for a whole minute.
Then Jay began:
‘I might sound pathetic but I’ve had two lives; one before my father’s death ... err ... murder, and one after it. And it wasn’t about the money, it wasn’t that I became the proverbial pauper overnight after being a prince, but it’s the hurt, the… feeling. I’ve become vulnerable to, well, almost everything…’
Jay gave a detailed account — in slo-mo — of his father’s murder, his mother’s conviction and her losing her mental balance. She had been in a mental asylum in Jaipur for over two decades. All that, according to him, had coalesced together to make him what he had become: an alcoholic. Not that he shifted the blame, but he narrated his perspective.
Anita listened to him without interrupting. Somehow, his initial fears of being probed by her had dispersed; he could see himself divulging more in further sessions if she could indeed get him off the alcohol wagon. He could perceive the happiness in her countenance, seeming pleased that he was opening up and confiding in her.
‘You know, I could never face the world after that night. Shame is one of the hardest emotions to come to terms with and to accept. It’s noisome, it’s revolting and it’s ridden with guilt despite the fact that I did nothing wrong. I somehow feel I, too, am guilty, as I was there, like maybe I could have stopped it from happening.’
Memories are like 5.1 surround sound — when they are switched on they come from all directions. The phantasmagoria ran through Jay’s head like faded Polaroid shots. Jay tried to pluck out some pleasant memories, but failed; only the ugly ones flooded back. Nevertheless he kept talking.
‘Thanks for the session, Jay. From what I can assess at this moment, I don’t think there’s anything Sequelae — by that I mean there’s no pathological abnormality, it’s just that given the circumstances you reacted a bit negatively, a bit harshly on yourself. But, as I mentioned earlier, we need a few sessions to establish that and maybe further sessions to reverse that. Would you like to have another coffee?’
‘Thanks. Why not?’
Coffee meant Manavi would be coming into the room.
Anita hit the buzzer. Manavi came into the room.
Was she for real? To quote the rocker Prince, “she was the reason why God made a girl.” He tousled his hair like a teenager, admiring her.
Anita requested coffees, and observed him watching Manavi with excessive interest.
‘Any woman in your life?’ she said when Manavi left.
‘No.’
‘No family, then?’
‘I have a son.’
‘You have a son?’
Nod.
‘But, you aren’t married.’
‘Since when has being married been a prerequisite to have a child?’
‘So you have a son out of wedlock?’
‘Out of humanity.’
‘Does he live with you?’
‘No. He’s in a hostel.’
‘Do you not want to talk about him?’
‘Not at the moment unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
‘We can always discuss him later, no worries. Any close friends?’
‘Not many.’
‘What do you do on weekends, Jay?’
‘What do I need weekends for?’
‘Rest, for one.’
‘I rest every night.’
‘Recreation?’
‘I party most evenings.’
‘With whom?’
‘Are you applying for my social secretary position?’ Now confident that his humour would not be taken otherwise, he started bantering. ‘I can party on my own.’
‘You mean drink.’ She smiled.
‘And music.’
‘No friends come over?’
‘Cooper does, sometimes.’
‘Cooper is also your business partner, right?’
Nod. ‘
That means you’re with a work colleague, doesn’t it?’
‘We never talk business at home.’
‘Anyone else you meet socially?’
‘I have another close friend, Akbar Ali. I go to his place every now and then, say once a week at least if not more.’
‘Do you three not get together?’
‘Never.’
‘Why?’
‘Akbar won’t come to my place and Cooper won’t go to his.’
‘Quite a strange set up, don’t you think? Two of your closest friends don’t want to meet each other.’ She jotted something down on her pad. ‘Why wouldn’t Akbar come to your place?’
‘He hates wealth, ostentation. Finds it vulgar and says it’s against his conscience, blah, blah…’
‘And why wouldn’t Cooper meet you at Akbar’s place?’
‘He’s too posh to go to Akbar’s shabby hut. Now if you think both these guys also need therapy…I can bring them here and you can connect the dots.’
‘Why don’t you connect the dots for me,
Jay, so that I can analyse.’
‘What would be left to analyse after that?’
‘I shall analyse the pattern of the line you draw to connect the dots. There can be several ways one could connect two dots, right?
‘I follow,’ Jay said, but it had never occurred to him before this point that it was odd that the three of them hardly ever got together. As a rule, the privileged and the unfortunates didn’t intermingle, but with him in between, there was no reason why Sam Cooper and Akbar Ali couldn’t get together? He was already connecting the dots, it seemed.
‘See, these sessions could be fun and meaningful. You are virtually practising like you were in a courtroom, Jay. I’m sure you will be more at ease in future sessions.’
Coffees over, Anita, in the true manner of a therapist, prescribed a regimen: sessions twice weekly for three weeks, then as and when required. ‘Please book your time with Manavi on the way out, Jay. Thanks for coming today.’
‘Thank you, Anita.’
Out at the reception, Jay blushed — for reasons he couldn’t fathom. Childish? — as he approached Manavi. He was old enough to be her father. Well, not literally, unless he procreated in early teens, but still. Didn’t someone say that the generation gap was getting shorter? There was surely a generation’s gap between Manavi and him. He saw her looking at him and his heart — he thought — skipped more than one beat.
Old mug, she must think.
He gathered himself together, and like a true gentleman booked his next appointment, thanked her and exited from the office without looking back.
FOUR
Somehow, the meeting with Anita left Jay agitated. Even though he had expected the therapist to get under his skin to scratch his unpleasant past, it nevertheless left him in a foul mood. The vile past he had kept buried had now been revealed to a total stranger. And the stranger being a professionally trained therapist would analyse it in bits and bytes. Would she be able to help him after knowing all that he had told her today? Up until now, he had shared his past with just two of his closest friends. And he thought he’d better visit one of them now.
‘Take me to Akbar’s place, Bhīma, and stop at a liquor store on the way. We’ll pick up a bottle of Chivas,’ he instructed.