Right Here Right Now

by Nikita Singh

  After I’m done ingesting the medicine, I ask, ‘Why?’

  ‘You have migraines. Balms don’t work, neither do your migraine meds. Aspirin works like magic.’

  ‘Doesn’t feel like magic,’ I moan. It’s like my head is literally gonna explode. I still can’t see everything; there are white spots and blanks and double vision all at the same time. For once I’m grateful to the bloody curtains for keeping the room dark.

  ‘Wait for it,’ Mum runs her fingers through my hair and says.

  I shut my eyes again.

  ‘Suno, where are my keys?’ my dad’s voice interrupts my wait-for-magic-to-happen.

  ‘Coming,’ Mum calls and gets up.

  Dad is already here, ‘Where did you put them? I can’t find anything when I need it!’

  ‘I put everything where it belongs,’ Mum says and goes to the master bedroom to look for Dad’s car keys.

  ‘See, that’s the problem. You have these designated places for things and I apparently know about none of them. Why can’t you just leave things where I put them?’ Dad follows Mum around, while she goes from bedroom to bathroom to living room, looking for the keys. I watch through my half open eyes and the completely open door of my room.

  ‘Because then the house would be a mess.’

  ‘But at least I’ll be able to find things.’

  ‘Come on, how hard can it be? The newspaper is in the newspaper stand, your watch on the bedside table, shoes in the shoe rack, keys hung on the key holder—’

  ‘Then why aren’t they on the key holder now?’ Dad asks.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ It’s amazing how calm Mum is, even when Dad is fuming in irritation. He gets irritated when he is late for work, which is every morning.

  ‘I’m getting late.’ Dad looks at me and shakes his head, as if to get me on his team in the battle and ask you-see-what-I-have-to-deal-with?

  I shrug and smile. My parents are adorable.

  ‘Here it is!’ Mum’s voice sounds victorious.

  ‘Where did you find them?’ Dad walks up to her and takes the keys from her.

  ‘In a pocket of the trousers you wore yesterday.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Now Mum looks at me with a I-have-to-take-care-of-twokids look. In all of the twenty-eight days of my new life, she has told me three times how my dad is very childish and it’s like she has two children. She shakes her head just like Dad was doing a minute ago and comes to me. ‘How is it now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your migraine?’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I try to feel the pain in my head to gauge its extent, but can’t feel any of it, ‘Oh God, it really is magic. It’s GONE. All of it!’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Mum smirks.

  Yeah yeah, we get it; you take care of both of us like it’s nothing and you’re proud of it, is what comes to mind. But

  ‘Yes, you did,’ is what I say. ‘But . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I skip school for today anyway?’

  ‘Who said I was going to let you go? Look at you! You’re in no condition.’

  I check my reflection using the front camera of my cell phone and agree with Mum one hundred percent. I look horrifying and am in no condition to be let out in public. My hair’s frizzy, standing up at odd angles, my eyes are swollen and have dark circles under them. Actually my entire face is a little red and swollen. It’s obvious that I had a rough night. I’m glad Mum doesn’t ask me about it. ‘I need rest.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Lie down, I’ll get you some warm milk. Then we can find something on TV to watch together.’

  ‘Sounds heavenly,’ I say to myself, as I close my eyes and listen to Mum get my milk from the kitchen.

  Eleven

  30 APRIL 2013

  I have mixed feelings about school. Not particularly my school, but school, in general. And not just school in general, but school and all things associated with it, generally. I mean I don’t know whether I advocate this whole widely followed system of schooling.

  Take teaching, for example, the way we are taught at school, or how we are divided into four separate houses, and standing in queues for assembly, with teachers keeping an eye out for mischief. Kids in my school are mischievous. For instance, right now, there are fireworks bursting in the next block, the sound of which echoes loudly where we are assembled in a queue for the morning prayer and such. All the hundreds of students are silent as a stone, while the teachers run about to try and find the source of the racket.

  Anyway, what I really mean is, we are sent to school since we are less than three years old, and we make friends and we have teachers we blindly follow and worship and sometimes have a crush on or hate, and they tell us what to do. We do not have a right to decide how we feel about it—we are only allowed to do what we are told to do and nothing more, nothing less. I’m pretty darn sure that’s not the best way a child should be raised.

  There are some positive things about it. I mean, we learn how to be around others, and we learn to start making friends with people we like and enjoy being around and have things in common with. And, in the process, we find ourselves: the kind of people we are, the sort of things we like, dislike and believe in and so on.

  But my point is . . . well, actually I forgot what my point is. I’m just getting stuff from the high-schooly movie I watched with Mum yesterday, and mixing it with my feelings. My feelings being: 1) Thanks to my sucky memory, I don’t remember making friends, and the friends that I woke up to about a month ago aren’t exactly people I have a lot in common with or enjoy being around and 2) I have no clue about the type of person I am; the things I like, my beliefs and stuff like that.

  The only thing I know for sure is that I certainly do not like Tisha. Even now, when I’m glowing internally with glee, watching teachers and staff members rushing about and students trying to hide their smiles (just like me), Tisha is making this majorly-bored expression and sighing like this is a complete waste of her precious time and she’d rather be done with the assembly on time and get to class. Well I’m certainly having a blast and hoping for the fireworks to go on forever and delay classes as much as possible—which is something I can see in Harsh’s expression too. He is standing a few steps behind me in the row next to mine and I turn to steal a look. His arms are folded against his chest and he looks pretty darn pleased with himself. He catches my eye and winks at me. I can almost see him mentally patting himself on the back, even though his lips are stretched in only a very small smile.

  My eyes widen. He did this. He is the student or one of the students who planned and executed this prank, hence the self-satisfied expression.

  I shoot him a look to enquire and confirm my theory and he just shrugs nonchalantly as if to say I’m-not-telling-youbut-hell-yeah-I-did-this and it’s-no-big-deal at the same time.

  I shake my head in disbelief. This boy. Now I’m even happier about the fireworks. Even the dirty looks Tisha shoots my way (she must’ve seen my eye-conversation with Harsh—she sees everything; that’s what she does in life) don’t affect my mood in the least. The first time she saw me talk to Harsh, her reaction was of a magnitude better suited to a full-blown MMS scandal. But then that’s her. And I don’t like her, but I’ve vowed to myself not to let her affect me.

  ‘Honey, you need to work on your taste,’ she whispers sweetly.

  ‘Oh, you care too much,’ I whisper back equally sweetly.

  ‘That’s because I do worry about you,’ and a worried look she does shoot at me. What a drama queen.

  ‘Just . . .’ I wonder what to say to explain it to her and then I find the one word she’d use in such situations, ‘chill.’

  ‘I’m only saying this because I don’t want to be blamed when your memory does come back. If the . . . real you could see what you’re doing . . .’

  ‘What the hell does that even mean?’

  ‘Aw, darling, I’m just looking out for you. When you become yourself ag
ain, you’d hate me for letting you hang out with King Nerd and his folks,’ Tisha makes a sympathetic face and looks at me as if she pities me.

  ‘Tisha, let it go,’ Ada whispers loudly. She is standing right in front of Tisha, who is standing right in front of me in the stupid assembly queue. I know I vowed not to let Tisha affect me, but I really want to just run away.

  ‘How can I let it go? Are you kidding me? She’s our friend. What will we tell her when her memory comes back and—?’

  ‘I’m just saying this is not the place . . .’ Ada protests weakly, but Tisha ignores her and continues her preaching for the next fifteen minutes.

  It’s only after assembly is dispersed (after there is an announcement that such pranks WILL NOT be tolerated and they WILL find the culprits and they WILL be punished) and we get back to our classroom and take our seats, that Tisha finally drops the matter. Our class teacher enters and the class falls silent. She starts with the roll call and I steal a look at Tisha to find her immersed in the cell phone she’s keeping hidden under her desk, before stealing a look at Harsh. I turn back after checking his regular spot and realize he wasn’t there. I sit very still and move only my eyes to surreptitiously scan whatever’s visible of the room without turning my head. I still can’t locate him. Where did he go?

  I turn to my right, pretending to get a notebook from my backpack and there he is! He’s sitting two benches behind his regular spot and to my intense embarrassment, seems to have been looking at me the whole time. He saw all of the stealing a look, not being able to steal a look, looking around surreptitiously, turning to my right and then finally finding him—and I’d been thinking I was pretty sneaky (though I’m glad at least Tisha didn’t spot us again). He has the same goofy smile on his face that he always does. The one that says I-have-a-secret.

  I look away from him and pretend it never happened. Man, what is it about this boy?

  For the next two and a half hours, we sit mostly quietly. Even before the first teacher has a chance to wrap up, the next teacher is stationed at the door, which is a huge loss for us. The two-minute break between classes is all we look forward to during the entire lecture. So finally, after all three classes before lunch are done with, we get up and yawn/stretch/sigh/ moan or something else along those lines.

  During these moments, I feel like the entire class is just, sort of, one. Like all forty-five of us are in some way just one common body. Each of us goes through the same thing as the next person and reacts to the same things, but each with their own way of letting it out. After its rather eventful start, it has been a lazy morning for all of us, and we all seem to be relieved to step out of the confines of the classroom walls and walk the corridors. Or at least that’s my theory of how the entire class is feeling; there’s no way to prove it.

  ‘Let’s go to the mess today, check out how it’s been doing,’ Bharat says.

  Everybody just sort of nods. We walk to the mess in silence. We sure do seem to be in a weird mood today, all of us. All five of us are here, but nobody’s saying anything, we’re just joining a pre-formed queue and loading our plates with stuff that looks vaguely edible. I notice that Tisha’s plate is almost completely empty, but I don’t ask. Everybody knows she doesn’t eat.

  After we’re done piling up food on our plates, we pick up a corner and sit down, half of us take chairs, half just sit on the table. We eat silently, and I look around to see if anyone’s going to speak today. Bharat and Sameer look quite busy with eating, helping themselves to liberal amounts of food, Ada is carefully taking small bites, like a lady, and Tisha is completely ignoring her plate, which only has a few slices of cucumber and tomato on it anyway. She’s still pretty engrossed in her phone.

  I’m not very hungry today. I nibble on some grains of rice till everybody decides they’re done eating and we take our plates back. Almost immediately after, Bharat and Sameer excuse themselves to go somewhere—they don’t tell us where—and I start walking with Ada and Tisha, although we don’t seem to be going back to class.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘Hmm?’ Tisha looks up from her phone.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Ada replies.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I repeat.

  ‘Umm, anywhere. Someplace quiet,’ Tisha says. We keep walking around looking for a quiet place, which is difficult to find, since this is lunch period and every student in school has poured out of class and found a place to hang out, like a colony of ants emerging from a hole and spreading all over, marking their territory.

  ‘There?’ Ada asks, pointing to the basketball court, where there are only a few people hanging out.

  ‘Perfect,’ Tisha says. Once we reach there, she abruptly stops walking and sort of spins on the toes of her feet to turn back and face us, making us stop abruptly in our tracks too. Her eyes are lit in delight as she dramatically exclaims, ‘So? What is the plan for tomorrow?’

  ‘Umm, plan for?’ I ask. Maybe because this is Tisha, I’ve got a bad feeling.

  ‘Tomorrow? I thought we’d celebrate it over the weekend,’ Ada says.

  ‘Why can’t we celebrate twice? After all, we can’t just not do anything tomorrow and wait for the weekend to come!

  His birthday is tomorrow!’

  ‘Whose birthday?’ I ask.

  ‘Sameer’s!’ Tisha rolls her eyes at me. ‘He’s your boyfriend, dude. And you don’t know when his birthday is!’

  ‘To be fair, I don’t know a lot of things,’ I mutter.

  ‘A lot of things don’t matter. Sameer’s birthday does. So, what is the plan?’

  ‘I . . .’ try to think of something brilliant off the top of my head, that would completely blow her away, but the top of my head can’t come up with anything, ‘. . . don’t know.’

  Tisha sighs theatrically. At this point, I decide to go mute and be a silent listener to the conversation, which goes as follows:

  ‘How about we all bunk school tomorrow and go out somewhere?’ Ada suggests.

  ‘What, like a road trip?’ Tisha asks.

  ‘Yeah, we could go to—’

  ‘Gosh, no, seriously? It’s pretty hot for an outing, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, right. Then what?’

  ‘Okay, so this is what I think we should do: we go out shopping for a great gift today after school and order a cake and stuff and then show up at his place with all of this at 12 and SURPRISE!’ Tisha shrieks excitedly.

  Hmm. I’ve only lived about a month, but this doesn’t sound too original or unusual to even me.

  She continues, ‘We’ll mislead him by telling him that we have something planned at night, going to a club or something, so he won’t expect us to show up at his place in the middle of the night!’

  ‘That’s a great idea!’ Ada (surprise, surprise) agrees.

  ‘I know, right? This is going to be absolutely perfect. I even have a gift picked out.’

  ‘Ooh, what is it?’

  ‘You’re. Not. Gonna. Believe. It.’ Tisha goes into full-fledged drama mode at this point.

  ‘Argh, come on! Tell me!’

  ‘Okay, okay. Check this out: I have a friend, from my last school—Anjali, you don’t know her, and her brother is like some sort of a big deal in the textile industry, okay? So he lives in Mumbai and deals with import export or something in the lines of international shipments and what not. Like, pretty freaking influential and stuff. And he got his hands on an original Linkin Park T-shirt. And get this: it is SIGNED BY CHESTER BENNINGTON HIMSELF.’

  ‘NO WAY.’

  ‘YES WAY! Imagine, a black T-shirt, with the LP logo on it in red, green and white, where the white portion is signed by freaking Chester Bennington. I managed to convince Anjali’s brother to sell it to me and he shipped it to Anjali. I just have to pick it up today. Sameer’s going to be completely blown away.’ Tisha looks very pleased with herself.

  ‘No kidding,’ Ada shakes her head in awe, her eyes all wide.

  Tisha looks at me, a
nd I realize it’s probably time for me to re-enter the conversation. ‘Umm, so you guys all love Linkin Park, huh?’

  ‘What? No, God, no. I don’t hate them, but I’m not a big fan either. Neither is Ada. Although you used to be mad about them,’ she crinkles her eyebrows as if in thought.

  ‘I figured, from all the posters in my room.’

  ‘Hmm. Sameer and Kapil are like diehard fans of LP though.

  Not that I care about Kapil anymore. But my point is: Sameer will totally adore my present,’ Tisha says.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Ada chips in.

  ‘And what are you getting your boyfriend?’ Tisha asks me. I sense resentment and mocking in her tone.

  ‘I haven’t thought of anything yet.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to think quickly, there’s not much time left.’

  ‘I know that now, but I just found out moments ago that it’s his birthday tomorrow!’

  ‘Don’t worry, we can look for something when we go shopping today. I have to pick up a gift too,’ Ada offers.

  ‘That’d be great,’ I say. Now, I can hardly find something as awesome as signed Linkin Park merchandise, but I can’t exactly show up there without a gift either. He’s my boyfriend. It feels weird to even think it.

  So once I get home after school, I quickly get out of my school uniform and change into a pair of blue jeggings with a red top and tell Mum I need to go to the mall with Ada and Tisha for a couple of hours. I leave when the phone rings, which is the signal that Ada and Tisha are waiting downstairs.

  We wander the mall for hours and I get really tired of trying to figure out what to get Sameer. If he does love Linkin Park as much as I’ve been told, Tisha’s gift is going to win first position hands down. What can be better than a signed LP tee? What do boys like?

  I finally end up entering Archie’s and assembling a collection of all sorts of pretty shit into an even prettier basket and getting it wrapped. It’s a gift more suited for girls, but then I do think of Sameer as one, so it makes a lot of sense that way. I’ve put in a box of chocolates, a greeting card, a bottle of perfume, a key ring, a rather beautiful diary and a pen, a refrigerator magnet shaped as a heart (I don’t know why) and a bolster with the movie poster of The Dark Knight printed on top. It becomes a really big basket of goodies and I feel a little less jittery. Sameer is basically a girl; he’ll like this. And the safe thing about picking such a wide variety of stuff is that even if he doesn’t like some of these things, there will still be enough items left for him to like. No one individual on the planet could dislike EVERY item in the basket.