by Vish Dhamija
Anita waited for a second since my last sentence was articulated in a softer than usual tone, like I was still reminiscing.
‘Do you remember ever having any discussion about the dysfunctional marriage of your parents with this friend of yours?’
‘Oh yes. As a matter of fact, if I came from a “dysfunctional” family — as you just mentioned — he came from a totally defunct one. Fortunately, or unfortunately, his parents had had a bitter separation. His dad was an alcoholic too and he did remark, more than once when he was drunk, that he could have killed the sorry bastard if the separation hadn’t materialised when it happened.’
I was suddenly on a roll. Once the old memories flooded in it was as if I was in some kind of a trance, narrating everything to Anita. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I reckoned that all had been bottled up in me for years needed a release.
‘And you both were quite close friends, right?’
‘Very thick.’
‘So did you believe him?’
‘Believe him? In what way?’
‘Did you even for a second believe him that he could have actually offed his father if his parents’ marriage hadn’t broken up when it did?’
‘Oh absolutely, no doubt about that. But why do you ask that?’
‘We’ll come back to that in a second, Jay.’
Anita got up, pulled out two bottles of water and gave one to me. After a bit of water gurgling she sat down again.
‘What do you know about schizophrenia, Jay?’ Her tone changed to a more business-like-doctor-like now.
‘Split personality? You mean a Jeckyl and Hyde type of thing? I think it’s more prevalent in stories and cinema than witnessed in real life, but then it could just be that I haven’t met anyone who’s been diagnosed with it.’
‘You’re correct, but only to a certain extent. It happens in real life more than normal people know about it. Schizophrenia can be best described as a sort of breakdown of thought processes — it can thwart one’s emotional responses to people or situations or things, or all of the above. The first symptoms, usually, occur in early adulthood and, if undetected and untreated, they can prevail for a lifetime. It might or might not be accompanied by other visible indicators like social dysfunction, which, in your particular situation, is clearly not the case. You are socially adept and professionally successful—’
‘Wow-owow-owow’ I abruptly came alive. ‘You’re not telling me I’m schizophrenic or something are you? You didn’t call me for this long session and take me all the way back to my first year in college to convey this to me?’
‘Hang on a minute, Jay. Be patient. You’ve paid me to analyse you so let me do my job. You can choose to ignore everything I say, seek a second opinion or forget all about it when you walk out of the door.’
‘Okay, ma’am, go on,’ I said, though I wanted to laugh. If I was, actually, schizophrenic then it meant someone else was drinking, wasn’t it? Good for me.
‘Schizophrenia is a continuum, but the two ends of the spectrum could be extreme. It’s a sequelae — an abnormality nevertheless…’
She paused for some reaction from me, but got none. I couldn’t focus on what she was saying, nothing registered anymore but I nodded like an idiot to give her a feeling that I was making some sense of deduction. All I wanted was for her to carry on and conclude this little pub-quiz. Perhaps she expected me compute the information she had so far expounded into some kind of a logical theory and relate it to myself. If that was the case, it certainly wasn’t working.
‘Am I making any sense, Jay?’
I looked at her blankly.
‘Do you remember the name of the friend who drowned in the swimming pool that night — the one we spoke about just a short while back?’
I drew a blank. I seriously drew a blank. Despite the visuals of that evening still being in high definition, the name of my drowned friend, like my Bihari friend, eluded me. In fact, put into the spotlight by Anita, I couldn’t remember anyone’s name at this given moment. No one’s. Honestly, if she had asked me I’d have had trouble reciting my own full name.
‘No,’ I muttered sheepishly as if lapse of memory was a serious crime.
‘Let me jog your memory, Jay.’
She finally opened the skinny folder she had on her side, took out a sheet of Xeroxed paper and handed it to me. ‘Sameer Kapoor, his name was Sameer Kapoor. Does that ring any bells?’
The clanging started as if an entire tribe of Rastafarians had started performing some percussion carnival inside my earlobes.
‘You don’t mean…’
‘Good to know you are on the same track as me whether you believe it or not, Jay.’
I kept quiet. I wanted to see where this was leading.
‘Could you describe your friend Cooper to me?’ Anita brought me back into the room.
‘Eh?’
What the heck did she mean by that?
‘I mean what does he look like? Features? Height, weight, complexion, hair? Anything that you can tell me?’
‘Why’d you want to know that?’
‘Just humour me for a minute.’
I dived into the recesses of my brain but failed to come up with anything; I couldn’t conjure up even a single vivid glimpse of Cooper that I could describe to her. And then it occurred: Cooper always came unbidden and always in the middle of night or in the small hours. Especially, on the nights I was heavily drunk. I had never seen his face. And now when I was asked, naturally I couldn’t summon up his appearance.
She was sharp. She saw me struggling.
‘Do you remember what you called your friend, Sameer Kapoor in college?’
‘Sam Kapoor.’ Flash! The name came to me now.
‘It isn’t a million miles away from Sam Cooper, is it?’ Anita did not hold back this time.
She waited for what she had just said to sink in, for me to digest before carrying on.
‘Are you saying…?’
‘Yes. Sam Kapoor is Sam Cooper. He exists only in your mind, Jay. He does not exist in this world.’
That was a blow. I wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating or I was, but I patiently listened as she carried on.
‘There are known cases in psychopathology that are very similar to yours. Some people are directed by a voice that doesn’t exist — they imagine someone talks to them, gives them orders or suggestions; others suffer from pareidolia — they actually see people and things that aren’t there. There was a Nobel Laureate called John Nash—’
‘Are there any statistics?’
My mind was just not accepting this jargon and hence, I thought if I asked general questions on the topic, it might further alienate me from such claptrap.
‘Look, Jay. Here’s the thing: statistics cannot give a diagnosis. What it can do is provide the trends, maybe predict a probability, but each case is different. We are talking humans here, not machines.’
‘Why me?’
‘It’s not some singing competition won or lost on the performance. It’s a disease looking for the weakest cell to strike at. No one ever told you that life was meant to be fair; it was your assumption and you know what they say about assumptions don’t you? So, I could turn your question around and ask you why shouldn’t it be you? Or I could answer it for you: maybe because you were strong enough to handle this.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I almost cried out. ‘I just remembered that I’m not the only one who’s seen or met Cooper. Cooper has to exist, he’s a partner in my law firm, Bhīma’s met him and though I hate to break someone’s confidence, for a past few months I’ve been dating your assistant, Manavi, and he — Cooper — once came in her presence too. What do you have to say about that?’
‘I was expecting you to come up with this earlier. And don’t worry about Manavi — I know you two are dating. However, trust me, I’ve talked to Bhīma about this. He’s never met or seen Cooper. What he has seen, though, is you talking to yourself in the middle of the night sometimes.’
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
‘You think I run this outfit, charge people to kid them? Absolutely not Jay. Why would I do that? It’s the truth, unfortunately. Even Manavi confirmed you were talking to someone in the living room, but when she rushed down to check there was no one.’
‘That’s because he had left by then.’
‘Quite the opposite, Jay. The reason she didn’t find him that night was because he wasn’t there in the first place.’
I shrugged in frustration. How was this fucking possible?
‘Alcohol is a huge stimulant, as it reduces the brain’s efficiency. You must have noticed that Cooper only visited you when you were drunk, really drunk and practically out of your senses? If you were to plot his visits and study the pattern, you’d find he only visited you in those times.’
I had already summarised that in my mind; that was irrefutable. The truth was now dawning on me. I went quiet for a moment looking for any other argument or evidence of Cooper.
‘So why does he visit me? I didn’t hurt him. Does he mean any harm?’
‘Cooper doesn’t mean harm, no. He doesn’t interfere or advise either. You do. You imagine he is the one telling you, talking to you. Hallucinations can be audible or visual. In your case it’s both: you see him, you talk to him and sometimes, you only sense his presence after he’s gone because some-thing’s changed when you have no memory of doing it yourself. You just don’t have any memory of the things you’ve done when you wake up, like someone else has made another drink for you or changed the music.’
‘I cannot, even for a minute, believe this. However, if I extrapolate your deduction… you think…’
I couldn’t think. My head spun even faster now. I tried reaching for the staccato memories of the night that my dad died, the ones that had haunted me every day since. But somehow, some moments were evading me. Or were they? Were they missing or was there some part that my subconscious preventing me from getting into?
Time stood still for a while as if the entire universe was waiting for my answer.
And then the memory of someone else being in the house that wretched night nagged me again like a little street urchin who won’t leave you till you hand over some change to him. In this case there was no change to be given or any shoe to be polished. The burnt out memory simply wouldn’t go.
‘Yes. Maybe he did something for you. Maybe he wanted to help you out of the misery you were in, experiencing severe altercation between your parents. Remember, by your own admission, you were so drunk and stoned that night you have no memory of anything. All you remember is that your father was dead when you woke up and your mother was holding the knife. She, obviously, knew who the killer was; that’s precisely why she wanted to save him.’
‘You don’t really think I stabbed my own dad, do you?’
She didn’t say anything. She smartly waited for me to rationalise what must have happened. Suddenly, it all made sense like pieces falling into a jigsaw. It made sense why my mother must have wiped off all the fingerprints off that knife. She wasn’t shielding anyone else. She was protecting me. Me? And, even in the end, she had told me not to go looking for the killer. Why? Because she knew the truth will wreck me.
‘Did she know Cooper?’ I asked.
‘No, she was completely oblivious of Cooper, Jay. As I told you, no one knows Cooper, no one ever knew Cooper.’
I might have been known as the greatest, most-revered, most expensive defence advocate in the country. But the levee broke. The tears came unannounced, uninterrupted and shamelessly. Incoherent ideas and a welter of memories flew past me, even scenes from the burnt-out past were scattered around in fragments now and I had no intention of picking any of them up. Everything moved past me as if someone was fast-forwarding a reel faster than I could consume. Hysteria was just a block away. Instances of my interaction with Cooper took over. How he was always a step ahead. How he always knew what was happening in my life. He knew my mother had died even without me telling him. He hinted that if I looked harder I might find her innocence buried somewhere. He knew the music I liked and the food I ate and the places I visited. He knew when I went on my first date with Manavi. And now, a shrink was telling me there was no Cooper? What about his telephone numbers that he erased from my iPhone? God! That struck hard: I never had Cooper’s numbers or address in any of my address books. It was my imagination all this while. His unexpected outburst at seeing Manavi, too, became obvious. If she were to be with me all the time, he’d be caught out. So it was my own alter ego telling me that?
My thoughts strayed to my mother: an epitome of sacrifice. She suffered my dad for years because she wanted to be near me. Me, who wasn’t even her biological child. I mistrusted her when she visited Swamijee when all the old girl ever wanted was her own child. And then, she stood by me in the direst of times. She didn’t have to take the blame. She didn’t need to confess and to be convicted. She didn’t have to live the rest of her life incarcerated in a mental asylum. She did all that for me? An ungrateful stepson?
I was in a self-induced reverie. I had waited twenty-seven years to uncover my father’s killer only to find… No, I couldn’t complete the sentence, not even in my own mind. How could I?
I have no idea how long I sat there, running all the permutations and combinations to come up with something that could emphatically convince me that all this wasn’t happening and this was one shitty dream. That this was a non sequitur based on some weird and perverted inference that was all fucked up.
‘Jay?’
I heard Anita’s voice, softly calling me.
‘Jay, are you okay?’
I nodded. I knew if I spoke the words would come out wet. Or I might break down once again. Through the thin film of cascade I saw her walk to her desk and pull out another bottle of Bisleri and bring it to me.
‘What next?’ I asked after downing the full bottle. ‘Without Cooper I’m a broken man.’
‘I won’t let the truth break you. I will help you overcome Cooper.’
‘Will he go away?’
‘Cooper will never go away. You will have to overcome the delusion. Have you heard of something called psychokinesis, Jay?
I shook my head in ignorance. The tears had dried up, but I knew they could return any minute.
‘Psychokinesis refers to the power of the mind. People are known to move things merely by thinking about it. All you need to do is to use it to overcome your illusions.’
‘It’s easier said than—’
‘I know, Jay, I know. Trust me you aren’t the first case of this kind that I have consulted.’
She paused for some time, letting me chew on all that she had explained.
‘Do you know which is the fastest animal in the universe?’
What was this now — another pub-quiz?
I kept quiet waiting for her to answer and give me the example or analogy or whatever she wanted to. I couldn’t care less.
‘Cheetah. It can reach up to a speed of over 110 kilometres per hour. What chance do you think a deer has to escape the predator? But God works in mysterious ways. The Cheetah can only achieve that speed in short bursts of, maybe, a little more than half a kilometre and the deer only has to run faster than the cheetah for that long. It sure is difficult, but it isn’t impossible. It was a wrong choice of words on my part to tell you that Cooper will not go away. Next time you see him, just ignore him. You have to consciously realise he isn’t there, even if you see him. In time you will leave him behind and his presence will cease to matter.’
‘If I could go back in time, I’d say “no” the first time I was offered alcohol. Since, after that I am not aware at what point I could have walked away. I guess after the first few times all of this was inevitable.’
‘You can’t live the rest of your life in guilt, Jay.’
‘Do you think I murdered my father?
‘No. What makes you say that?’
‘But you just said…�
�
‘I didn’t say anything about your father. I’ve only deduced that Cooper is your alter ego and even that is one of the several possibilities in a hypothesis — an assumption within an assumption. There is no evidence, no witness. I could be completely wrong. However, if you were to ask my opinion as a friend…’
‘Go on, Anita.’
I got up and walked up to her desk, opened her little refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of water. I passed one to her and sipped on the other one. I wanted to show her that I was getting back into my element.
‘I think your mother already paid the price for your father’s death. I don’t think she’d be happy,’ Anita looked up like she was talking to the heavens, ‘if you still went around digging. What would be the point? Who would you do this for?’
All that hypothesis and theory bullshit Anita had given me was acceptable. I appreciate that no therapist could confirm what had happened that night. In fact no one could confirm except the one person who had been present in that house that night. Me.
But I didn’t argue.
I was supposed to be out by noon, but when I looked at the clock it was 4pm.
‘I’ve ruined your entire day.’
‘Don’t be funny. I feel happy to have shown you the—’
‘Light?’ I humoured. ‘Thanks Anita, I owe you one.’
‘You owe me nothing. And this isn’t your last call here. I want to see you later in the week to give you a detailed plan on how to cope with your delusion. From then on, we’ll meet once a month.
I gave Anita a hug before leaving.
***
By the time I exited Anita’s office Manavi had left for the day. I knew she’d call later. Back in the car it occurred to me that I was crying again, I pulled out a tissue and wiped my face. My eyes met Bhīma’s in the rear view mirror; he had surely seen me crying but he looked away. Thank you, Bhīma, I wanted to say — for understanding, for talking to Anita, for so many things — but I knew my voice would break if I spoke.
Manavi called, but I explained that I was tied up with my work — the trial — and hence it would be an unnecessary commute for her tonight and tomorrow. I’m pretty sure she understood I wasn’t “me” today. She got it. See, Cooper was wrong, she was smart — and then it struck: there was no Cooper. Why, then, did I tell myself, the other night, that Manavi wasn’t good for me when I knew I loved her and even proposed to her? If you find the last sentence confusing, just picture how blurring the lines are between Cooper and me? How could there be no Cooper? And now that I could discern, how could there be no “me” other than just me?