Right Here Right Now

by Nikita Singh

  Three

  3 APRIL 2013

  ‘I’ll be back to see you in a while; Anita will stay with you till then,’ Dr Sahani concludes and leaves. I breathe out in relief. That man scares me. I don’t know why I feel like my future completely depends on him, and he doesn’t seem to believe too staunchly in me getting better anytime soon. Maybe because everything he says is measured, like, ‘It seems okay, for now, but we can’t be sure, we have to keep an eye on it,’ as if there are things that could go wrong at every step.

  But then I have my parents to make me believe that nothing will go wrong at any step and I will be fine and we can go home soon. Even now, Mum is sitting right next to me, rubbing my right arm (it hurts a little, but I don’t tell her that) and Dad is re-entering the room after seeing Dr Sahani off, a wide smile on his face.

  ‘I told you it would be fine,’ he says.

  ‘But they are still waiting for all kinds of reports to come out,’ I reply. I’ve looked at my chart—I’m supposed to see a neurologist, a psychiatrist (God knows why) and a trauma specialist or something later in the day. And we are waiting for my MRI, CT Scan, an X-ray of my arm and a few more tests—I don’t remember the names—to come out. Busy day.

  The good thing is that, when I woke up this morning, I remembered every detail of everything that happened yesterday, especially the part where I asked Mum to come sleep with me on my bed and Dad insisted on staying so he slept on the couch. I made sure they both stopped fussing over me and actually got some sleep.

  Anyway, apparently that means I’m showing no signs of anterograde amnesia (I remember the term, since it’s been said about forty-seven times since this morning), which means my brain is able to make new memories and transfer them from short-term store to long-term store.

  Now all I have to do is try and remember everything from the past seventeen years, one month and seven days of my life. No biggie.

  ‘We brought some pictures,’ Dad says and pulls out a laptop from his overnight bag.

  ‘Oh, great!’ I say. Dr Sahani said it’ll help if I see pictures and videos from the past, meet people I know (or knew), visit places I used to, to remember. Even the smallest thing might be able to jolt my memory. I thought he looked a little more pessimistic than yesterday, and it bothered me, but, before I could ask, he left for an emergency surgery.

  Mum is sitting with me on my bed, and Dad pulls a chair to my left and sits down too. We place the laptop on the breakfast table over my lap and Dad puts up an album on slideshow.

  ‘Gosh, who’s that?’ I exclaim. It’s a picture of a toddler sitting naked on what seems to be a kitchen floor, long curly hair all over her head, up to her shoulders and dripping in mango pulp or something. At least I hope that the yellow icky thing all over her face, neck, chest, tummy, arms, legs and everywhere else is mango pulp. And it’s not just the possible-mango pulp and nudity that’s unpleasant. There is mucus coming out of her nose and entering her mouth and she is sitting on something that is yellow and icky but definitely not mango pulp. I make a gagging face. ‘Shit, is that me? Tell me it’s not me!’

  ‘It’s not you,’ Mum says. ‘It’s your cousin Parul.’

  ‘Thank God. My cousin Parul is in for a lot of teasing when we meet next, I guess!’

  ‘She is only seven years old, so don’t be too hard on her,’ Dad says.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t realize . . . I thought she must be my age by now, don’t know why.’

  ‘You do have a cousin your age. Two actually, Yogita and Bhavna. But you don’t get along with them,’ Mum tells me.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘We don’t know. You used to be close when you were younger, but one day you just fell apart. I think something happened.’

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  ‘None of you would tell us that, even when we asked several times.’

  That’s useful, I think to myself. How am I supposed to find anything out about myself when I kept secrets? I hope my friends have some answers for me when they come by later in the evening, as Mum told me they would.

  Dad’s phone starts ringing, and he picks it up. For some reason, Mum and I stop looking at the pictures and look at him instead, and try to understand who the call is from. As if I would know.

  ‘Okay, I understand,’ he is saying. ‘Send the file to Dixit. Yes.’

  ‘Who’s Dixit?’ I whisper to Mum.

  ‘His colleague from work. Your father is a civil engineer.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Wednesday,’ Mum says.

  ‘Shouldn’t he be at work then?’

  ‘He should, but . . .’

  I get it. I’m the centre of my parents’ universe, and I’m sick so they have to put their own lives on hold and care for me instead. That’s just unfair. Dad should go to work; I’m fine. As soon as he hangs up, I’m going to insist that he goes to his workplace or whatever. But I think I’ll check if Mum’s a housewife at least (she looks like one) since I don’t want to be left alone all day just yet.

  Oh man. Am I going to hell or what?

  ‘Dad, you should go,’ I mouth to him.

  He pulls up a finger, gesturing me to hold on. But I can’t. ‘Dad, you should go,’ this time I say it aloud.

  He just gets up from his chair and walks out of the room, resuming his conversation over the phone. Moments later, he comes back, his cell phone in his pocket.

  ‘That was your office, right?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes it was,’ he replies, sitting back on his chair. He turns to the laptop screen and says, ‘That’s you from when you were twelve.’

  He’s trying to distract me. As if that’s going to work. ‘Dad, don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you . . . ugh, why am I wearing that hideous shade of lipstick? And why is my hair so . . .?’

  ‘It was for a theme party at one of your friend’s place. Rock or metal or something . . . some kind of music,’ Mum tries to explain.

  ‘Oh, then it makes sense. For a minute I thought that’s how I dress for real!’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Well what?’ I turn to Mum in horror. This is it, isn’t it? I really am some kind of a freak—a dark maroon lipstick, black leather clothes and dirty knotty hair freak. I’m sure I’m on some kind of a really dangerous drug too. I guess that’s how my ‘accident’ happened. Maybe it was a drug overdose. I freak out even more. ‘TELL ME! You’re not protecting me by keeping it from me!’ I yell.

  ‘I just wanted to say that your dressing sense . . . is, um, different from this,’ Mum replies. The scared look is back on her face.

  ‘What do you mean different? Bad different?’

  ‘No, no!’ Dad interjects. ‘Good different. Definitely better than this.’ He glances at the picture and says, ‘Yeah, this is just a costume. Don’t worry too much!’

  Oh thank God. I’m not some rock-chic-freak, which decreases the possibility of me being on drugs too. (The drug overdose reasoning didn’t work too well anyway, since the doctor said it was an automobile accident. But then, it could’ve been something else drug-related, like for example, I could have been a drug dealer who got into trouble and, um, maybe somebody threw me out of a moving car or something. Makes sense in a way, you know.)

  ‘And that’s from last Diwali,’ Dad points at the screen.

  ‘Wow, Mum you look amazing!’ I try not to feel guilty (YET AGAIN) as I look at her picture where she’s wearing muted pink lipstick and her eyes are beautifully lined (minus the dark circles that she now has, because of . . .) and her saree is a bright shade of green. ‘And Dad, you look so nice in traditional clothes!’ and he does in the white kurta-pyjamas he’s wearing in the photo.

  Both Mum and Dad are smiling as the next picture pops up.

  ‘Again, awesome,’ I say as the next few picture of my parents come up, all from last Diwali. Then there is a picture of me sitting at what must be my desk and I’m wearing a pair of shorts and a top and am immersed in my computer screen. ‘Wh
en’s this from? Isn’t there a picture of me from Diwali too?’

  ‘This is from Diwali,’ Mum says.

  ‘Oh, but I want to see what I was wearing! Isn’t there a picture of me from a little later? When I was . . .’ and I don’t feel the need to continue anymore. Of course. I didn’t change at all. This is what I wore for Diwali. A pair of tiny blue shorts and a top that has ‘I Heart NY’ written on it.

  ‘Have I even been to New York?’

  ‘What?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Never mind. I already kind of know the answer.’ I sigh. If I am somebody who doesn’t even bother to change into something more festival-appropriate for Diwali, I must be somebody who wears an ‘I love New York’ top without ever having been to the city too.

  I close the laptop and notice that my parents are looking at me expectantly.

  I don’t really know how to put everything that’s been going on in my head into words, so I try to think for a while before opening my mouth. But then I still can’t think of how to frame the words so I just end up blurting what comes out first, which is: ‘Was I like a really mean person . . . ?’

  ‘What? No! No, you were not!’ Mum says, almost reflexively.

  ‘Dad?’ I turn to him. ‘Please don’t lie to me. I will find out anyway.’

  ‘Kalindi, you were not mean. You were just . . . probably going through a phase. All teenagers do.’

  ‘What kind of a phase?’

  I can see Mum glaring at him, but he tells me anyway, ‘Umm, let’s see . . . disagreeing with everything we tell you, having shouting matches with your mother, wearing clothes that . . . we don’t approve of, staying out most of the time, hiding in your room when you are home, headphones plugged in your ears so that you don’t have to listen to what we have to say . . . basically shutting us out of your life and creating your own world.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ I think about it. So, I’m a troublesome teenager. That’s not too bad, maybe even acceptable. Unless . . . ‘Do I do drugs?’

  Mum and Dad exchange a look. Mum says, ‘Not that we know of . . .’

  I nod.

  ‘Do you?’ she asks in a low voice.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I exclaim. ‘I hope not.’ I look at Mum. ‘Is there a reason why we fight so much . . . ?’

  ‘I think . . . it’s because I used to be like you when I was younger. I was something of a rebel and I made a lot of wrong choices. I just don’t want you making the same mistakes, so I might be a tad controlling . . . which makes you feel suffocated,’ Mum says.

  It’s a little early in the day to have such deep and profound conversations. It’s actually a little early in my life . . . which is technically two days old. I thought I’d figure these things out slowly, but maybe it is better this way.

  Dad leans towards me and whispers in my ear, ‘She has never accepted that before.’

  I giggle. See? She hasn’t accepted her part in it for seventeen years of my previous life and she has already confessed it on the second day of my new life. This ‘accident’ really must be some kind of a blessing in disguise. It’ll bring the family close and when I get my memory back, I’ll remember all of this and turn into a non-troublesome teenager.

  ‘There is a part of your brain called the frontal lobe, which was injured during the accident,’ Dad says.

  ‘Okay . . .’ I say, not knowing how to respond.

  ‘It is the part that controls a person’s behavioural choices. Frontal lobe injury causes personality change . . . dramatic changes in the behaviour of a person . . .’

  ‘And you know this how?’

  ‘I asked Dr Sahani,’ Dad says simply.

  ‘You guys were that surprised by my behaviour? I must have been some kind of a monster!’

  ‘Yeah, very scary,’ Mum smiles.

  ‘Okay, now I have two more questions, since we are into expressing feelings and sharing secrets and stuff,’ I say.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dad, why don’t you go to your office?’

  ‘I . . . will. Once we take you home,’ Dad says, and I sense there’s more to the story. And I know exactly what that is.

  ‘You want to be with me when I’m like this, don’t you? Before I turn into a monster again.’ I fake an expression which is a mixture of anger and hurt.

  ‘I just . . . let’s just say that I want to be with you?’ he suggests, looking unsure.

  ‘Well played,’ I laugh out. ‘Now, second question—Mum, when we have our shouting matches, do you ever win?’

  ‘It’s a fifty-fifty situation . . .’ Mum begins.

  ‘Oh, come on! Don’t lie!’ She has been so sweet all this while that I can’t picture her yelling at me and getting me to do things her way.

  ‘I just . . . let’s just say that,’ Mum mimics Dad’s tone, ‘I can be very mean too, when I want to.’

  I turn to Dad. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Sadly, yes. I hardly get a chance to say a word in our house. It’s pretty much female dominated.’

  We all laugh. We joke around like that for some time, before I force Dad to return to work immediately, promising that if I do get my memory back while he’s gone, I won’t turn into a monster. It’s a little bit fun to find out all about my own past life as if I haven’t been the one living it all this time. It’s like a personal adventure. Every sentence my parents say is a revelation.

  The next chapter of my adventure is about to begin in a few hours. My friends! They are going to drop by in visiting hours (Mum and Dad have been exempted from following the visiting hours rule). After Dad leaves for work, I ask Mum to tell me all about my friends. I want to surprise them by knowing their names and how they look. Although, frankly, knowing how your friends look and what they’re called is the least that is expected of you, so it’s no big deal.

  Still. If I go all, ‘So . . . you must be my friends?’ on them, they might be hurt. They won’t start crying like Mum did, but why risk it? We turn on the laptop (which Dad forgot to take with him to work; Mum says he hasn’t gone to office since so long that he probably doesn’t remember the routine, which is just great—Mum now has to deal with two forgetful people) and start browsing through pictures again. Since it is Dad’s laptop, there aren’t many pictures of my friends. But there are lots of pictures of me and in some of them I am with my friends.

  For the rest of the afternoon, I discover all about my friends (not ALL but, you know, everything that my mother knows and chooses to tell me) and try to memorize their faces and attributes. The nurse, Anita, comes in and announces that it’s time for me to take a nap, but I’m way too excited to go to sleep now! I have awesome friends, whom I’m going to meet for the very first time (in my new life, that is) in just about an hour. There’s no way I’m going to go to sleep!

  Four

  I’m sitting up on my bed, fairly excited. I wanted to go sit on the couch, because I don’t feel too sick and sitting on the hospital bed in my hospital robe, with my legs up and covered under a quilt makes me feel like a patient, which is not how I want to feel when I meet my best friends in the entire world for the VERY FIRST TIME.

  But Mum would have none of it. She said I’m not allowed to strain myself since the doctors are still figuring out the extent of my internal damage and we don’t want to make anything worse. I tried to protest but then I had a glimpse of her shouting-matches-self and realized it’s best to back off. Now that I’m not a troublesome rebel teenager, her shouting-matches-self scares me a bit.

  I have memorized all the names and faces. And I have memorized who sent me which flowers and which boxes of chocolates. I have taken a shower (with Mum’s help, much to my embarrassment) and put on some moisturizer and lip balm. Mum tied my hair back into a low pony tail and clipped the bangs that kept falling all over my eyes and annoyed me to death. I wonder how the old me dealt with all that hair. Mum said I used to love those bangs and highlights and got them against her will.

  The intercom buzzes and Anita’s voice speaks up, �
�You have visitors. Two boys and two girls, who say they are your friends. Should I send them in?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I reply nervously. Anita is just playing with me. She knows I’ve been expecting my friends. She was the one who re-bandaged my wounds because the old bandages looked dirty and I didn’t want to look dirty when I met my best friends in the entire world for the VERY FIRST TIME.

  I look at Mum for support and she smiles at me. Her smile seems to be saying ‘It’s okay! They are your friends! They already like you! You have nothing to be nervous about! Relax!’ Or maybe her smile isn’t saying all that, and I’m just remembering stuff she has said to me in the past couple of hours.

  But here is the thing: in my past life, I used to hate my parents and love my friends. Now that I have had that frontal lobe injury thing Dad told me about, my personality has changed. Now I clearly love my parents, so what if I meet my friends and realize that I have started hating them? Or they hate me when they see I’m not really the same me. I’ll have no friends. I have no memory of the past and won’t have anybody with whom to make new memories in the future. My life sucks royally.

  Also, I think my mum doesn’t like my friends that much. She has told me whatever she knew about them, which isn’t much, since I kept a lot of secrets and my parents weren’t an active part of my life so they don’t know much about my friends. I remember her response when I asked her if she liked my friends, which was: ‘You like them, and they like you, so I like them.’ Which is like something from mathematics: hence proved.

  Before I can dwell on it any more, I hear footsteps approaching and I sit up straight. Seconds later, four people enter the room and I know exactly who they are.

  Ada is the one with the long curly hair reaching her waist and the milky white clear skin. She is wearing very high heels with black leather leggings and a loose white sleeveless top with sequins around the neck, gathered at the waist by a thick green belt. The green of the belt matches the green of the large loops in her ears. She’s probably a couple of inches shorter than me, but her heels more than make up for that. (Mum said she’s been my closest friend since we were very tiny.)