Right Here Right Now

by Nikita Singh

  ‘I know. You guys go on.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll join you later,’ Harsh says.

  ‘Cool.’ Sarabjeet and Michael leave the classroom and I turn to look at Harsh.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  He smiles his goofy smile and starts walking up the stairs. I follow him. Four flights up, we get to a closed door. There is a huge lock on it. Harsh pulls it down a little and it gives away.

  He opens the door and steps outside.

  ‘Why are we going to the terrace?’ I ask.

  ‘Because you need to take a break,’ he states simply.

  He pushes the door closed, but doesn’t lock it. We are on the terrace now, which is very hot, it being midday in summer. I wonder if Harsh thought this through. No way am I going to bunk two classes and spend that time sweating and getting tanned under a one o’ clock sun instead.

  Harsh starts walking again, and I follow him. He reaches the wall at the edge of the terrace, climbs up onto it, jumps down and disappears. My heart gives away. What the hell just happened? Did he just jump off a terrace?

  ‘HARSH!’ I shriek, running towards the wall.

  ‘What?’ he replies, in a very calm and not-dead tone.

  I peek down to see that it was only a six foot drop. He’s standing there, looking up at me with that huge goofy grin on his face. I sigh with relief. ‘You’re . . . impossible. I swear my heart literally stopped beating for a second there.’

  Harsh laughs loudly. ‘I was just trying to get you to a cooler place. The terrace is really hot, you know?’ he states matter-of-factly.

  ‘You were trying to give me a heart attack, that’s what you were trying to do!’

  ‘Easy now, tiger. Climb down.’

  ‘Don’t you ever do something like that again,’ I warn him and get on the boundary and jump down next to him. ‘This is an excellent bunking place.’

  ‘It is.’

  The building of the Presidency convent is built in a modern style. There are rectangular blocks everywhere. The front has seven rectangular blocks, each placed in a way that looks haphazard, but is obviously pre-planned and because they are there to enhance the beauty of the building, a lot of free space has gone to waste. Like the part we’re standing in right now. It is surrounded with walls on all four sides and looks kind of like a huge water tank made of cement, minus the water.

  Harsh sits down on the ground and offers me his handkerchief. ‘In case you don’t want to get dirty.’

  ‘What do you know? I happen to like dirty,’ I say, tonguein-cheek.

  ‘Whoa. Did you intend for that to sound super-hot? ’Cause it totally did.’

  ‘That’s just me. The effect I have on people.’

  We laugh, and grow quiet after a while. We sit silently, side by side. The silence is anything but awkward. It’s almost melodious. It’s like we are in our own separate worlds, yet together.

  After a while: ‘Tell me whenever you’re ready,’ Harsh says softly and then we fall silent again.

  For the next twenty minutes, we just sit. When I can’t take the voices in my head anymore, I say, ‘I’m having nightmares.’

  ‘What kind of nightmares?’

  ‘Like, I fall. I mean that’s the one thing that happens every time: I fall, and then I wake up. The falling is preceded by a wide variety of horrific things.’

  ‘Things like?’ Harsh asks. Something about his voice . . . I’ve never seen him this serious.

  ‘Sometimes there are people chasing me, and I run for my life. Sometimes I am sitting on a cliff with a boy and we are kissing, and his face sort of transforms and becomes all grotesque, and I pull back in alarm and fall down. Sometimes someone throws me out of a moving car and I fall on the road headfirst.’

  He nods.

  ‘It’s been happening ever since I woke up from that coma. I can handle it, mostly. But it’s getting worse. I’m always scared. I try not to fall asleep at nights, but when I eventually let go, I wake up from a new nightmare and get all paranoid.’

  ‘You haven’t told your parents?’

  ‘No. They worry.’

  ‘They should know. Maybe there’s something that can be done.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Seeing a therapist, maybe?’ he suggests.

  ‘Are you implying I’m crazy and I need a shrink?’ I laugh out loud.

  ‘This is no joke, Kalindi Mishra. You having nightmares that keep you awake all night is not funny to me,’ he says, angry. I’ve never known this side of him.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re crazy. But you had a traumatic brain injury, followed by brain surgery. You lost your entire memory. There is a good chance this has something to do with that. Maybe this is one of the side effects or symptoms or something. Or maybe these are not dreams, but hallucinations. In any case, you need to see a doctor.’

  I get silent again. I don’t know how to tell him. This is something I try to not even think about, and saying it out loud, telling Harsh, would make it tangible. It would make something exist for real, something that has only ever existed in my head. ‘You don’t understand,’ I whisper, my voice breaking. I don’t want to cry.

  ‘Then make me. Explain it to me.’

  I shake my head, and the first tears escape my eyes.

  ‘Hey! Hey, hey, hey,’ Harsh wraps his arm around me and pulls me close to him. That makes me cry even more. I sob quietly into his shirt. ‘You have to tell me, Kalindi. I want to help.’

  ‘You can’t help . . . no one can,’ I say between tears.

  ‘Please don’t cry,’ he pleads quietly. I sniff and take a minute to stop crying. I shift my head from his chest to his shoulder and sigh.

  ‘I can’t promise I can help you, but I want to. And I’ll never know what’s wrong until you tell me. You can’t keep it all to yourself, Kalindi. I’m here for you; that’s what friends are for. You can tell me.’

  I think for a minute. Harsh stays silent. I think he knows I’m going to tell him; I can sense him waiting.

  I finally say, ‘I don’t know if these are just nightmares, or . . . if some of this is true . . . like, memories.’

  Harsh is silent for a second, as he takes this in, then he asks, ‘Do you think some of this has happened before? To you?’

  I nod. ‘I don’t know. I have none of my memories, Harsh. It is so frustrating.’

  ‘Why do you feel these are not nightmares, but memories?’ he asks urgently, like he can’t bear the thought of any of this having happened to me.

  ‘Nobody knows how the accident happened. They are all liars, but from what I can gather, after the last exam, I went to Sameer’s place, trashed it and was on my way to the party to confront him and Tisha. But I never made it there. I was alone. At least I left Sameer’s place alone. The doctor said I was most probably in a car accident. But I don’t know how to drive a car. So somebody must’ve been with me. But who?’

  Harsh doesn’t say anything but I can feel him thinking.

  ‘None of them was with me. Although I know they’re all liars, there is no physical evidence of any of them being in a car accident or any other kind of accident recently and I don’t think they would have any reason to hurt me, at least not physically.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t think they’d do that either.’

  ‘Then what the hell happened?’ I feel frustrated. ‘Only two scenarios come to mind, both equally horrible.’

  He doesn’t ask what.

  ‘One is that I was kidnapped. And the other is . . .’ I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want to say it out loud. ‘. . . the other is . . . rape.’

  There is a certain finality to the way that last word comes out of my mouth. It’s like saying it aloud made it official. Now the idea is not just a demon in my head—but the possibility actually exists.

  ‘NO!’ Harsh protests as soon as the word leaves my mouth. He gets up and starts paci
ng around, as if too unsettled to sit.

  It just breaks my heart. I feel like crying again, but I hold myself together. I start speaking in a rush, ‘But maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe nothing of this sort happened. Maybe it was just a hit-and-run case. Yeah, that makes sense. Some drunk driver hit me and then panicked, so he ran away leaving me there. That has to be it. I’ve just been paranoid and been reading too much stupid stuff online. I’m sure nothing like this happened—’

  ‘But that is the point. You’re not sure.’

  I get up too, trying to convince him. ‘I am. I mean, yeah, I don’t remember, but I’m sure I’m reading too much into the nightmares. They could be a result of the trauma; I mean even if I was hit by, say, a car and that caused everything that happened, that in itself has to have some . . . side effects.’

  ‘Why are you trying to convince me it’s not what you actually think it is?’ Harsh looks completely frustrated and his eyes are almost bloodshot.

  ‘Because I can’t see you worried like this,’ I say before I can stop myself.

  His expression changes completely in a matter of seconds. ‘You are . . . unbelievable.’ He holds my face in his palms and looks at my face. ‘You have been going through all of this alone, never complaining, never telling anyone . . . and when you have so much to deal with, you are worried about me being worried? You’re just unbelievable,’ he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘I care about you. And I don’t want to worry you,’ I say honestly. ‘I have never seen you like this. And I want my wide-goofy-grin-Harsh back.’

  ‘Your wide-goofy-grin-Harsh?’ he raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Whatever,’ I shrug, pulling back from his hold.

  He laughs. ‘Whatever.’

  We have to rush back, since the bell has gone off and we’re supposed to get our bags and go to the bus. Harsh climbs back to the terrace first and then helps me up. Once we’re inside, Harsh returns the lock to position, so that it looks like it isn’t broken and useless.

  As we climb down the stairs, he says to me softly, ‘It’s going to be okay. We’ll find a way.’

  And I say, ‘It is okay. Don’t you worry about me.’

  And Michael’s voice says from ten feet away, where he’s packing his bag in the classroom, ‘Where on earth have you two been?’

  Seventeen

  7 MAY 2013

  ‘You really need to help me with this,’ I mutter to Sarabjeet, who’s absorbed in the voice of our chemistry teacher.

  ‘What?’ she mutters, looking slightly irritated for having been disturbed.

  ‘This. Chemistry. I don’t get it.’

  It’s like she has to forcibly tear her eyes away from the blackboard to look at me. She frowns, ‘What?’

  ‘My amnesia? No recollection of past life? Sucking at stuff like chemistry? You need to help me with it.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yeah, relax. I’ve got it covered. You’re in safe hands. I’ll get you up-to-date over the summer vacation,’ Sarabjeet says and turns her attention back to the teacher, sort of dismissing me. Which makes me want to annoy her some more.

  ‘Thank you so much. You’re the best. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, to—’

  ‘Shhh!’ she cuts me off. ‘If you don’t let me concentrate now, we’re both going to flunk.’

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. I shut up.

  I stay mute for the rest of the class, wondering how to face Harsh. After school yesterday, he insisted that we go meet the doctor who operated on me after the accident. I tried to talk him out of it and told him I was just not ready to face Dr Sahani and the answers he might have, but he told me now is as good a time as ever and that he’s with me. He said knowing is better than not knowing. No matter what the truth is, it would be better to know than to wonder and dread.

  When he put it like that, it made a lot of sense. So I went to the hospital with him. But as we sat in the waiting room (Dr Sahani was busy with a patient, and we hadn’t made an appointment), I began panicking. If Dr Sahani tells me that I was, in fact, raped that night, how is that supposed to help me? It’ll just solidify my worst nightmare. If I just don’t know, and I try really hard, I can convince myself that it was just a hit-and-run. But once I know, I’ll know for life. I’m just not ready to deal with that information.

  Just then, Dr Sahani came out of his office and asked us to come in. ‘Kalindi! How are you doing today?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m good.’ I got up from the chair I had been waiting in and walked up to the doctor. Harsh was right behind me.

  ‘Great to know,’ Dr Sahani was inspecting my face for I don’t know what. ‘What brings you here?’

  When he asked that, all I wanted to do was run away and never come back. I was NOT raped. I was NOT raped. I was NOT raped. I kept repeating it in my head like a mantra. Like if I said it enough number of times, it would become true.

  I really was going to do it. I was going to ask him.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’ Dr Sahani pointed to his office door. ‘Perhaps we could speak more privately?’

  I couldn’t do it. Standing in front of Dr Sahani, one sentence away from getting the answer to the question that had bothered me every day and every night since I woke from that coma, I was convinced that I was, indeed, raped. I was a hundred percent sure it happened. I couldn’t have Dr Sahani confirm my worst nightmare. I just couldn’t. I felt all the energy drain from my body and I just wanted to run away.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I spoke calmly. ‘I just wanted to thank you for saving my life.’ And then I smiled the most difficult smile of my life and left the hospital in a hurry.

  Harsh and I didn’t speak on our way back home. Or in the bus on our way to school this morning, or at assembly, or when we got to class, and now the lecture has started and I can only try to get him to talk during the lunch break. While I appreciate his not bringing that incident up, not speaking to each other at all bothers me a great deal.

  When we do get to lunch, I get all jittery. I don’t know what is going through his head. It’s scary.

  We get up and make our way to the mess. Sarabjeet and Michael walk ahead, discussing something they learnt in CS yesterday. I fall back and walk with Harsh. He looks straight ahead.

  ‘Harsh,’ I say.

  ‘Kalindi.’

  ‘Mishra.’

  ‘What?’ he asks, finally looking at me.

  ‘Kalindi Mishra. You call me Kalindi Mishra.’

  I don’t know why that one short sentence gets me all emotional. He’s looking at me and I look at him. Something changes in his expression and, just like that, he becomes the wide-goofy-grin-Harsh again.

  ‘Kalindi Mishra,’ he says and smiles a little.

  I smile back. He smiles wider.

  And just like that, we’re fine again. We reach the mess and once again fill our plates with whatever catches our fancy, then look for an empty table to sit at.

  ‘We need to devise a plan for Kalindi’s education,’ Sarabjeet says, as we sit down with our food.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You’re not bad exclusively at chemistry. We’re going to have to bring you up to date in all the subjects,’ Sarabjeet says.

  ‘Relax, we have six weeks to do that,’ Harsh says.

  ‘Six weeks to cover the basics of all the subjects? Like from nursery to class XI?’

  ‘I’m not completely stupid,’ I protest.

  ‘See? She’s not completely stupid,’ Harsh says.

  ‘And I don’t think kids have chemistry or physics in nursery,’ Michael points out.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Sarabjeet says.

  The rest of the conversation happens excluding me, like I’m not even here, and it goes like this:

  Harsh: ‘Yeah. And it’s simple. There are six subjects. She can handle PE herself; it’s easy enough.’

  Michael: ‘We can help with English, but it’s not something she’d need to worry about either. It’s just reading, a
nd she can read.’

  Sarabjeet: ‘Yeah, she can cover English during classes at school, with the rest of us.’

  Harsh: ‘That leaves only physics, chemistry and maths.’

  Sarabjeet: ‘Only?’

  Michael: ‘You can take chemistry, Sarabjeet. I’ll take physics.’

  Harsh: ‘I’ll handle maths. She’s good at it anyway. Will just need a little help.’

  Sarabjeet: ‘Maybe it can be done over summer vacation, after all.’

  Michael: ‘Hmm.’

  At this point, I interject, ‘Sounds like a plan!’ They all look at me like they’d forgotten I was with them. ‘I have three personal tutors!’

  ‘Lucky you. If I taught me, I’d always top class,’ Michael boasts.

  ‘Well technically, you do teach you, when you study,’ I say.

  ‘I meant if I had a teacher like me,’ Michael says, then turns to Harsh. ‘This young girl needs to be disciplined. She needs to learn how to talk to her tutors.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Harsh says. ‘I believe in spanking.’

  Out of the blue. Just like that. I blush bright red in less than a second. ‘You guys are terrible,’ I mutter.

  ‘We are, aren’t we?’ Michael asks Harsh.

  ‘We are indeed,’ Harsh laughs.

  Then we get busy eating and I look up only once I’ve practically licked my plate clean and am sure the blush has gone away.

  We get up to leave. Just as we’re about to leave the mess, Ada and Bharat enter. They stand directly in front of me and Ada says, ‘Kalindi.’

  I try to ignore them and keep walking, but she shifts to her right and blocks my way again.

  ‘At least give me a chance to—’

  ‘NO.’

  And then I walk away. Harsh, Sarabjeet and Michael continue walking with me like nothing happened. Nobody brings it up even when we hang out at the old football stadium.

  It’s when we walk back to the classroom that Harsh asks me in a voice barely audible, ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I repeat.

  ‘Okay,’ Sarabjeet nudges me and says.

  ‘Okay,’ Michael joins in.

  10 MAY 2013