“How many guys will you trap with your wily charms, you stupid little tramp?” My mother almost spat out. Her words cut deep, scooping out my deepest feelings of apprehension and exposing it threadbare.
Till now it had only been a vague feeling of uneasiness inside my head. But by speaking it aloud she had given it a concreteness. I knew she was not entirely correct. It was not as if I had actively pursued or wooed any of these guys. It was they who had pursued me. I had not trapped them in any way. In Abhi's case I had not even told him I loved him. The logical part of me said that I was not responsible in any way. But there was no escape from the feelings that I was to blame in some way. Feelings are powerful and logic was crushed under its weight. I was governed by them, not by logic. I was at their mercy and they were unrelenting, harsh and unforgiving.
Unwittingly my mother had struck at the very core of my self esteem and shattered it to pieces. I could not even pick up the bits. Almost immediately I was filled with a deep sense of shame, regret, guilt and hollowness. I felt sick.
“There is only one thing to do now,” said my dad. “I want you to promise me that you will stop all this letter writing nonsense. Fortunately, we are far away from Kerala. Nobody should come to know of this. If they do, our family name is gone. We are your parents. We have to think of your future. ”
I could not promise my dad anything. I did not even trust myself anymore—what could I promise him? I was silent.
They mistook my silence for acquiescence.
“Come here, there is something we must do,” said my dad.
I was too tired even to argue or ask what they had in mind.
I followed my parents to the kitchen balcony.
There was a bottle of kerosene in the corner, along with the household cleaning liquids. My mother generally put a capful of it in the water which the maid used to mop the house. It gave the floors a shine. But that was not what dad had in mind when he took the bottle. I was too dazed to even realise what he was doing.
In almost a flash he had poured some of it on the letters which he had taken out from the file. He threw them on the floor of the balcony. He then struck a match and the flames gobbled up the paper like a hungry monster devouring its prey. It was then that it struck me what he had done. But it was too late now. On top of the pile was Abhi's letter .I watched Abhi's bloodsoaked words going up in flames. The lump in my throat felt like it would explode. But I did not cry.
Though I did not shed a single tear, I felt defeated. I had had enough. I wanted to curl up and die. The sense of loss I felt when I saw the letters burn was oppressive. It felt like someone had heated up a hot iron rod and singed me again and again on the raw exposed skin.
“Everything will be fine now. Today onwards you will be a new person. Forget the past. It has gone”, my dad had said as I had walked away to my room. He believed it too. He felt I ought to let the past go. After all, I had come to Bombay with a dream to chase and would be armed with a management degree to help me climb the corporate ladder.
But that was not on my mind at that point in time, at all. I went to my room and lay down. I felt empty.
A huge, dark void was inside me now. It was like a phantom pain which amputees experience when a limb is cut off. The limb does not exist anymore but the pain they feel in that limb which no longer exists is very real. I did not know what to do to relieve the pain. I felt trapped in it. I wanted it to stop. I wanted no more of this agony. I curled up my fist as tightly as I could and the finger nails dug deep into the flesh of my palm. I did it again and again. The deeper my nails dug, the better I felt. Then I saw the paper cutting knife which I had bought some time back. I took it and made a small cut on the side of my wrist. I winced slightly as the blade cut the skin and a line of blood appeared. I felt better then. Now at least, the pain was real. I could bear this. It was not like the phantom pain which was terrifyingly unbearable. I made my way to the bathroom and opened the cabinet which had cotton and Dettol. I applied undiluted Dettol directly on the cut. It stung sharply and almost burnt. Oddly, I felt comforted.
My parents had no idea what I had just done. I felt happy that this was one thing they could do nothing about. Their reading of Abhi and Vaibhav's letters had made me feel so violated. This was my body and I could do what I wanted with it. It was a strange kind of defiance. It was a way of getting back at them for what they had done.
“Ha ha Ma, look at me now” I wanted to say. “What are you going to do about this, eh Ma?” I wanted to taunt. But fortunately I did nothing of the sort and lay down in my room and counted sleep.
Like before it did not come at all. Earlier I used to be comforted by the phantasmagorical creatures. But they had gone now. They had been replaced by blackness and a void. All I could hear now inside my head were agonising screams of the letters as they burnt. They were cacophonous. Each letter was screaming as it burnt, “save me, save me, please let me live”. But I was silent as I watched each one dying a slow painful death.
Dad had said that I would be a new person from that day. He had been right but not in a way that he foresaw.
Something inside me had died that day along with those letters. But I did not know what. I could not put a name to it. Perhaps it was a part of my soul. Or maybe it was a part of my destiny.
What it was, I couldn't tell.
15
Deeper down the bottomless pit
I woke up that morning and I remember feeling afraid. It was a kind of fear that I had never known. It was a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach which was spreading slowly upwards, towards my throat. It felt like somebody had blindfolded me from behind, had his hands around my throat and was squeezing it tight. I felt afraid. Extremely afraid. There was no logical reason to it, really.
I walked to my window on the sixth floor and looked down. Office goers were leaving for work, the children were waiting for their school buses. I peeped into the windows of other apartments and saw women cooking, maids working, children getting ready to leave for school. I looked at the cars that were parked below and the drivers cleaning the cars of their employers. It was a day like any other—an ordinary day.
Except, I was terrified. The fear gripped me. There were no words to express it. It felt overwhelming. My heart was beating fast and I broke into a cold sweat. It was irrational, incomprehensible and terrifying. I wanted to shake it off, but I did not know what to shake off. One part of me tried to rationalise and speak to myself, but it was drowned in the massive panic that I was beginning to experience.
I went back, sat on my bed and took a few deep breaths. I closed my eyes. I put my arms around my feet and rocked back and forth, wanting to calm myself.
“It's okay. It's okay” I kept repeating to myself mentally. But the words seemed to have no effect. I felt fear rising to my throat like bile and could barely breathe.
I did not understand what was happening to me. All I knew was that I was terrified and there was no rationale or logic to it. It was nothing like I had ever experienced before.
I sat on my bed for about fifteen minutes and watched the clock ticking. I felt more and more afraid with each passing second. It felt like I was losing something. I could not put a name to it, but knew it had to be stopped. I felt helpless.
Finally I walked to the kitchen.
I saw my dad making a cup of tea. By now, I could barely breathe.
My face was ashen. My hands were cold.
“Daddy” I called out in a whisper. It was hoarse. My voice could barely be heard. My dad looked up in surprise. One look at me and he knew there was something wrong. Seriously wrong.
“Baby, what is the matter?” He asked. He sounded anxious, tense. He never called me baby before this. At least not that I remembered. It was too much for me to bear. Especially as it sounded so tender and it came after the castigation I had received just the previous evening.
I burst into tears. Uncontrollable sobs. Loud wails initially that gave way to a pitiable whimper. And th
en silent sobs.
My dad held me “What happened? What happened?” he kept repeating.
I had no idea what happened. Nothing had happened. Nothing that could be explained anyway.
“I am scared, Daddy” I could hear myself say. The voice seemed to belong to somebody else.
“Calm down. Whatever it is we will sort it out.” He said.
His words had no effect. By now my mother too had come into the kitchen.
“Is there something wrong at college?” she asked.
There was nothing wrong. Everything at college was indeed fine. I was doing exceedingly well in academics.
I shook my head and I was being entirely truthful, for once. I could not even tell them that I was afraid because the letters were burnt. It was really not because of that. The letters were gone and it was sadness and pain I felt. I had accepted that.
But this was pure fear that I was experiencing.
The fear was rising by the minute. I was in a state of panic.
“I am scared, ma. Ve ry scared.” I muttered, sounding like a lost child, a six year old.
My emotions were spiralling out of control. It seemed as though I was possessed. I was still sobbing internally.
“What are you scared of? Can you tell?” asked my mother.
I could not.
My parents did not know what to do. They took me to the living room and made me sit on the sofa. My mother got me a bottle of ice cold water and poured out a glass.
“Drink this.” she said.
I obeyed. I was breathing fast but had managed to stop sobbing.
Dad was pacing up and down.
“Maybe it is just taking time for her to adjust to the new course. MBA can be very demanding,” said my dad.
“But she has done so well in her first term. Her marks are great. And the other day too at her college fest, she won some contest.” retorted my mom.
They were talking as though I wasn't there.
“Is it because of the letters?” My dad asked me.
I shook my head. It really was not.
“Even if we burnt it, we did the right thing. The letters have no place in her life,” said my mother.
I did not know what to say. My hands had now turned icy. The soles of my feet felt cold too. My heartbeats had multiplied. It felt like some giant speakers had been attached to them, with an amplifier inside my head and somebody had turned on the volume at full. They seemed to be booming into my ears now. Thud-thud-thud was all I could hear. The room seemed to be closing in on me. I just wanted to sink into the earth and disappear. I did not want to hear anything. I did not want to listen to them discussing about me.
From some place far away, I could hear my mother's voice asking me if I felt better.
I could not respond.
I closed my eyes willing whatever was gripping me to go away. I felt my dad's hand on my back. He was rubbing my back, trying to calm me. He was saying “There is nothing to be afraid of. I am here now. Don't worry. I am here.” He kept repeating it and he kept rubbing my back.
I so wanted to believe him.
“Take deep breaths,” he said.
I did.
“In and out, inhale and exhale,” he kept repeating. I remember thinking that he was sounding like a yoga instructor on TV and was surprised that even in that state, I could make an association like that.
I breathed just as he had told me and gradually the panic subsided. I began to feel a little better. I opened my eyes.
I saw my mother's worried face. I could see that my dad was worried too but he was trying to hide it.
I felt better now. There was no fear or panic anymore. There was only a very sick feeling—the kind that you get when you have not studied for an exam and you know that the exam is going to start in ten minutes. I was still not completely calm but it was not uncontrollable now. I could think and focus.
Dad and mum could see it on my face.
“What happened?” asked my mom. Her voice was a bit unsteady.
“I don't know, ma.” I answered.
“Do you have any exam or test tomorrow?” she asked. Perhaps she thought it was a panic-attack or an anxiety attack. Perhaps she had read about them and had felt that what I had just undergone was a manifestation of stress.
After all, we had just moved to a new town and I had joined a very demanding academic course which would lead to the award of a coveted management qualification, the magic tag that would open corporate doors. It had always been my ambition, like the ambition of most young people those days—to get into a good management institute and then have a corporate career, earn big money and to make a name for myself
What none of us had anticipated was the long nightmare ahead.
My mom thought that it has just been an anxiety attack.
She could not have been more off the mark or more wrong.
Blackness now descended around me like a cloak. I seemed unable to look beyond it. The fear was gone but it was replaced by a depressing feeling which made my heart feel like it weighed a ton. It was a sinking feeling, a feeling that something was just not right, a melancholic, miserable feeling that hung around me now.
I had classes at college the next day and I did not want to go. My parents did not force me.
“You take rest today. Maybe you have been working too hard. You will feel better tomorrow” said my dad, when I told him I did not want to go.
I hoped he was right. I spent the rest of the day in my room, just lying on my bed. I did not feel like reading, I did not feel like making notes, I did not feel like running or writing poetry. Everything that I used to fill my hours with earlier, I did not feel like doing and so I didn't. P erhaps dad was right and maybe I had been driving myself too hard. I decided to try what he suggested.
But the next day too I did not feel any better. Again I stayed at home.
Joseph called up that evening to find out why I had not come to college and my mother picked up the phone. She said I could not come to the phone and I was not well. When I felt better I would come to college and he could speak to me then. She also told him that there was no need to call again. I heard her and now I did not even have the strength to stand up to her. I quietly had accepted her rule of “No boys are allowed to call you on the phone.” Even though I was doing a management degree, this rule still seemed to apply. It was archaic but that was my mother. If it was a present day setting, I would probably have received ten text messages from Joseph and my parents wouldn't have been any wiser for it. But in those days, telephones still came with dials and not even push buttons, therefore means of contacting each other were truly limited, unlike today.
In any case I did not feel like speaking to him too. What could I explain? That I stayed at home because I felt an irrational fear and a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach that refused to go away? It sounded so stupid and so unlike me. It was easier to avoid him and I was too beaten to take anything but the easy way out.
By the fourth day, when I had not gone to college, I knew something was wrong. My parents too sensed it. But none of us were willing to face it. We hoped it would just go away.
On Friday, my dad said “Look Ankita, you are fine physically. Just force yourself to go to college. You will feel better once you meet your friends and do your course work. There is so much you are missing by staying at home. Four days are over now. You listen to me and you go today. Then tomorrow and day-after tomorrow you can again stay home. On Monday you will be fit as a fiddle.”
I felt he had a point. So I took my books and left home at the usual time. When I reached the bus stop, the same attack of fear which I had earlier came back. There was again no logical reason for it, just like the last time. Everything outside was just the same as before. This was the same bus-stop that I had caught the bus so many times before. This was where I had come every single day ever since college started. Ye t it did not feel like that today. I tried rationalising with myself saying nothing had changed. But logic
and rationalisation had no place inside my head like before. The traffic, people and other things around me were going about their usually business, just like before. But for me, the world seemed to have stopped. I was paralysed with fright.
I broke into a cold sweat. My palm went cold and again I could not breathe. I sat for ten minutes in the bus stop trying to get my mind into some kind of order. The other passengers around me were blissfully unaware of my inner turmoil. Everything was normal for them and it was just another ordinary day. But to me, it felt like the end of the world. Finally, in a daze I made my way home, somehow. My mother opened the door to my frantic ringing of the doorbell.
“What happened? Are you all right? She asked, worry writ large over her face. My dad had already left for work. My mother looked anxious. She wanted me to assure her that I was fine.
I could not.
I was not fine.
It was the first time I realised that there was perhaps something very wrong. I had hoped badly that whatever it was would become fine when I went to college.
“Look Ankita. Just be strong. These are simply thoughts inside your head. You can just snap out of it by controlling your thoughts,” said my mother.
Oh how I tried! I wanted to snap myself out of it. I willed it to go away. I tried thinking of happy things. I tried calling back my giant creatures and elves with musical hooves. They refused to come to my aid. All that was left now was a huge void and blackness.
When my dad came home from work, I overheard my mother telling him what had happened that morning. Dad came to my room immediately and tried talking to me. He asked me how I was.
I felt I had let him down in some way. I started crying. I could not seem to stop the tears.
My parents did not know it at that time and neither did I that it was something much larger than any of us had envisaged, anticipated or foreseen.
It was the beginning of a sharp curve, a painful detour, a journey that would lead me completely away from my destination, to the edge of a cliff. A journey that would almost take my life, destroy me completely, suck the life force out of me and then toss me away as an empty shell.
Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny Page 11