Right Here Right Now

by Nikita Singh

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘So when I got up, I’d already missed the bus. I got dressed and was going to take the Metro, but then I remembered last night.’ He pauses and looks at me, anxiety clearly written all over his face, which, more than anything else, makes him look adorable, but makes me nervous about what he’s going to say too. ‘And I remembered your . . . nightmares.’

  I gulp.

  ‘That day when we went to meet Dr Sahani, you should’ve just asked him. The truth was just one sentence away, and it has been bugging me ever since. That you’re going through so much, when you could just know. Once you know, we could work towards making you feel better. But you just . . . didn’t ask.’

  I don’t say anything. I know what is coming next, and I steel myself to face it. While inside, my heart just keeps shouting, ‘No, Harsh, no. Don’t say it. Please don’t say it and ruin everything.’

  ‘On my way to the Metro station, I made up my mind. And I’m sorry. I know I should’ve asked you, but you needed to know. It’s important for you to know,’ Harsh’s voice gets desperate and urgent.

  I grit my teeth. ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I did.’

  I shake my head in disgust.

  Harsh continues, ‘I went to the hospital and asked to meet Dr Sahani. He recognized me from that day when we went to meet him together. He knew there was something on your mind that day that you didn’t say. And I told him what it was.’

  ‘HARSH!’

  ‘I had to. From where I’m standing, I could see that this was the only way. Without knowing, no one knows how many months or years you would spend contemplating and dreading the truth.’

  ‘You had no right,’ I mutter angrily.

  ‘Probably not. But I did ask him, Kalindi. And he said it definitely wasn’t rape. He said he couldn’t emphasize enough, that you were not abused sexually,’ Harsh smiles. ‘Did you hear that? It’s good news. You don’t have to worry about it anymore! Now you know that at least you weren’t—’

  I cut him off, seething with fury. ‘Good news? You invaded my privacy. You spoke to my doctor, who is bound by law to keep the details of my case confidential. They have these rules for a reason. Because some things are personal.’

  ‘I just wanted to help you!’

  ‘What if Dr Sahani had confirmed a rape? HOW WOULD THAT HAVE HELPED ME?’ I yell. A few people turn to look at us, but I don’t care.

  Harsh speaks softly, ‘I figured that if Dr Sahani told me that you were indeed raped, I didn’t need to tell you. A least not until you were ready . . .’

  ‘So you were planning to lie to me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have lied, I just wouldn’t have told you about it till you were ready to face—’

  ‘ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF RIGHT NOW? YOU WERE PLANNING TO BETRAY ME, TO KEEP ME OBLIVIOUS, JUST LIKE THEM,’ I point towards where they are standing, staring at us. Well, everybody is staring, so they are not the only ones.

  ‘No, Kalindi! You know I would never do that to you!’

  ‘BUT YOU ALREADY DID. AT LEAST IN YOUR HEAD!’

  ‘You’re missing the main point here,’ Harsh reasons desperately. ‘I didn’t need to keep you in darkness, because Dr Sahani said it was NOT—’

  ‘I DON’T CARE WHAT HE SAID. You freaking went behind my back and took advantage of my faith in you. I trusted you. I fucking trusted you!’ I scream.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Michael asks me. He has just gotten to the scene with Sarabjeet.

  ‘Ask him,’ I say. ‘It’s not like anything is personal anymore. It’s not like we respect other people’s privacy or anything.’

  ‘Okay, I don’t know what’s going on here,’ Michael says calmly, ‘but shouting out your personal business and whatever in public doesn’t exactly help maintain your privacy.’

  ‘And what are you guys looking at?’ Sarabjeet bellows at the mob in general. ‘Don’t you have anything more interesting to do than meddle in others’ business?’

  People start dispersing a little, a few of them pass comments and snide remarks, but I hardly pay attention to them.

  ‘Sort it out,’ Sarabjeet mutters.

  ‘And don’t create another scene,’ Michael adds walking away with Sarabjeet, leaving me alone with Harsh.

  ‘How could you?’ I ask Harsh.

  ‘I don’t understand what you are so mad about,’ Harsh says angrily. His anger angers me even more. What does he have to be mad about? I’m the victim here.

  ‘I’m mad about you taking advantage of my vulnerability!’ I exclaim, heatedly.

  ‘I did no such thing. My only intention was to help you. You hide the tiredness in your eyes with make-up, stifle your yawns in class the whole day, suffer headaches and body aches, you . . . you keep the lights in your room on the entire night. The entire night. When was the last time you slept for more than two hours in one night? Have you looked into the mirror recently?’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you! It’s none of your freaking business!’

  ‘You know what: IT IS. It became my business when we became friends,’ Harsh says from behind gritted teeth. I can see his jaw clench in anger. ‘It became my business when I started caring about you. And do you think it affects only you? Do you think it doesn’t kill me to see you like this? What you don’t understand is that you DO NOT HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS ALONE.’

  ‘I—’ I begin to say something, but he cuts me off.

  ‘LET ME FINISH. You need to know what your body has been through and you have to talk to your doctor. They can help. There are treatments. You don’t have to be all valiant and keep it bottled up inside so that you don’t worry your parents. They’re your parents, they worry. That’s what they do. If you don’t give them this reason to worry, they’ll find something else.’

  ‘That does not give you any right to interfere in my life and go behind my back.’

  ‘You needed to know. Dr Sahani said it wasn’t a rape, Kalindi,’ Harsh says, his voice soft, as if he doesn’t want to fight anymore and is just giving up. ‘It’s good news. Now you can stop wondering and dreading. And if it had been a rape, Dr Sahani said there is counselling. There is therapy, you could—’

  ‘Just stop, okay?’ I sigh. ‘I hardly know you. But I thought you were my friend, I trusted you. Hell, last night, I even confessed that I like you. Is that why you did this? To earn points or something? What did you think doing this would do?’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘How do I know that? How do I know anything anymore? How am I supposed to trust anything or anybody?’

  ‘You can trust me,’ Harsh murmurs.

  ‘Like hell I can,’ I laugh. ‘You knew you never had a chance with me. If not for my brain damage . . . I would not have lost my memory and my personality hadn’t been completely different. And someone like you wouldn’t have dreamt of having a shot at me.’

  ‘Kalindi.’

  ‘Shut up. Just . . .’ I’m silent for a moment. ‘You do know that I even talked to you in the first place because of the brain damage, don’t you? The injury to my temporal lobe caused me to lose my memories and the injury to my frontal lobe caused my personality and behavioural inversion. I don’t want you thinking I actually liked you even for a second. Stay the hell away from me.’

  And with that, I walk away and don’t look back.

  Nineteen

  21 MAY 2013

  I am absolutely and utterly miserable. Wretched, dejected, depressed and just plain sad. I have no one. There is no one. I feel horrible about what I have done. And in the ten days since I’ve done it, I haven’t had the courage to even face him, let alone tell him I didn’t mean half the nasty things I said.

  But I still feel betrayed. I feel bare. Like he knows something about me that he had no right to interfere with. I don’t want to think about it. So I get back to the audio book I was listening to. Not that I like it very much, or at all, for that matter. I don’t know what it is abo
ut audio books, they are just not very bookish. I don’t feel like there is a conversation between the author and me at all, even though this book in question is a first person narrative. It feels very much like a third person was chosen depending on a specific set of factors: their gender, age, accent, oration, texture of their voice and other such required features, and then paid to read out a book, which is just a job to them. It feels artificial.

  Plus you can’t adjust the speed with which you read the book. Like sometimes I read a book very very quickly from the beginning to end because I just WANT TO READ IT SO MUCH. And some other times, I want to read extremely slowly and savour every word. And some books are so funny I want to pause and laugh for a minute before resuming, and without actually having to PAUSE it.

  I’ve read twenty-three books in the past ten days. That’s kind of all I do. I tried listening to music in the beginning, and although I like music, it does not actually engage me and keep my mind occupied. I need to keep my mind occupied, lest it wander to the immense tragedy of friendlessness in my life.

  In the fifty-two days of my new life, I have managed to have fallouts with two separate and completely different sets of friends. It’s quite an achievement.

  ‘Kalindi,’ Mum calls from the kitchen. ‘Breakfast!’

  ‘Not now,’ I call back.

  ‘Then when? It’s already 10.30.’

  ‘In a while.’

  ‘KALINDI!’ she yells, like yelling would scare me.

  I get up and go to the kitchen, but only because I want to. ‘I’m not hungry,’ I moan.

  ‘Of course you’re not hungry. How could you be? All you do is lie on your bed all day, which hardly requires energy.’

  ‘Exactly why I don’t need to eat more and accumulate even more of it.’

  ‘That is not what I mean. I’m asking you to go out. Make up with your friends,’ Mum says. She keeps saying that, like it’s that simple.

  ‘I don’t want to make up with them. You don’t know what they did to me.’

  ‘Because you don’t tell me.’

  ‘Because I can’t. You’re my mother,’ I try to reason with her.

  ‘And that’s why you should tell me! Maybe I could help.’

  ‘I don’t want anybody’s help. Why are people always so inclined to helping others?’

  ‘Because that’s what being a human being means,’ Mum says, with sage-like wisdom.

  ‘What do you know about being human?’

  Mum looks puzzled for a moment, then says, ‘Now you’re just fighting because you have nothing else to do.’

  ‘I have plenty to do!’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Reading,’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? Reading is enough.’

  ‘Fine! Fine. Read, if that’s what you want to do. It’s impossible trying to reason with you. Just please at least take a shower and change into clothes that don’t smell.’

  ‘This doesn’t smell!’ I lean to smell the fabric of my sleeve and it does smell, actually. But I’m not going to accept that in front of my mum.

  ‘Just wear something clean, okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say and walk out towards my bedroom, silently congratulating myself for getting out of having to eat breakfast. Recently, I’ve been so full all the time and when I am hungry enough to eat, everything tastes tasteless.

  ‘And shampoo your hair!’ Mum calls after me.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘And make it quick. Breakfast’s getting cold.’

  I sigh. So much for dodging breakfast.

  When I come out of the shower, I do feel better. This is the first shower I’ve taken in three days. Otherwise I just lie in my bed all day and all night, without caring what day or time it is. It’s like the past ten days have been just one very long day—with the exception of Mum forcing me to eat, bathe and talk every now and then, whenever she feels like it.

  I towel my hair dry and fling it to one side to prevent it getting into my face. I have regained complete function in my right arm by now, and it no longer hurts even a little bit. I keep my head tilted to one side and open the balcony door. I am already out in the balcony, hanging the towel on the railing by the time I remember that I no longer go into the balcony.

  But no harm done. The two windows and one door of Harsh’s room that open onto the balcony are all shut. He wants as little to do with me as I want with him. I feel a pang of nostalgia, but I control myself. I cannot let myself remember all the good times I’ve had with him and all the amazing things he made me feel. I have to remember how he betrayed me and use the knowledge of that memory to stay strong and away from him.

  No matter how warm and fuzzy and pretty and safe and whatever he made me feel.

  I get back in and shut the door. Before Mum has a chance to nag me about breakfast again, I lie down in my bed and resume my audio book. I figure I don’t have to go to the dining room and eat till Mum forces me to. I do know that she will, but I will delay the inevitable as much as I can.

  And sure enough, fifteen minutes later, Mum peeps into my room. ‘Why didn’t you eat your breakfast?’

  ‘Because I’m not hungry. I told you. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Clever. Eat.’

  I groan and get up again. While I eat my stupid breakfast, Mum gets ready to go somewhere. She’s wearing a pretty green saree, with her flat footwear which I’m not really fond of and has an oversized handbag hanging on her shoulder. ‘Have you seen my mobile?’ she asks.

  I shake my head and call her number. It rings in her bedroom and she goes in to retrieve it. She looks around, as if assuring herself that she has everything, and then walks over and sits in the chair opposite me. And does nothing. She’s just sitting there.

  ‘Are you telling me you got all dressed up and ready to sit at the dining table?’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the market.’ She does not elaborate.

  ‘Then why aren’t you going?’

  ‘I’m waiting for something.’

  ‘Mum. I promise I will finish my breakfast. You don’t have to like guard me to make sure that I will eat everything,’ I roll my eyes at her.

  ‘Maybe I do.’

  ‘No, seriously. I’ll eat it.’

  ‘Yes, you will,’ Mum says simply, not getting up to leave, like I had hoped.

  The doorbell chimes and, walking towards the door to get it, Mum says to me, ‘Take care, sweetie. And remember that you can only move on if you forgive. Holding grudges doesn’t get anybody anywhere.’

  Which would’ve been totally weird if, in the next second, she hadn’t opened the door to let in Ada, Bharat, Tisha, Sameer and Kapil. ‘What the . . . Mum, what is this?’

  ‘Ada called me. They’re good kids. I’ve known them almost as long as I’ve known you,’ she points to Ada and Bharat and says.

  ‘So now it’s your turn to betray me? Is there a script we are following? Can I trust no one now?’ I cannot believe this. My own mother.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. You’ll be fine,’ Mum dismisses everything I have said and leaves. ‘Have fun!’

  Once she’s gone, there is an awkward moment, which isn’t exactly unexpected. They keep standing at the door, not stepping in; I keep sitting at the dining table, not eating. We keep staring at each other.

  ‘Come in, I guess,’ I say finally.

  They enter. Nobody says anything. I am completely out of words too. I am nervous and glad and a little angry and betrayed, but I don’t know what I feel most strongly. This is the first time I’ve had human company other than my parents in over a week. I’ve forgotten how to be around people. At least Mum made sure I showered and changed into decent clothes, I think.

  After a while, I suggest, ‘Let’s watch a movie?’

  There are nods and hmms and okays from everyone, so I lead them to my room. I put in a DVD I borrowed from Harsh, and turn it on. We find p
laces to sit. I turn my study chair around and sit on it, Ada and Tisha climb up on the bed and lean against the headrest, Kapil takes the pouffe on the other side of the bed and Sameer and Bharat sit on the sides of the bed, legs resting on the floor (which is not the most comfortable position to watch a movie in, but I don’t say anything). The movie begins.

  It’s the movie Michael had been endorsing that day I first went over to Harsh’s place: The Dark Knight. It’s about a superhero, Batman, who is incredibly rich and also handsome, although the latter might be my personal opinion. I feel like everybody in the room other than me has already seen the movie, because Michael told me EVERY PERSON ON THE ENTIRE PLANET HAS SEEN IT. I picked up The Dark Knight because Michael spoke so highly of it and I didn’t want to bore everybody with a bad movie. Although admittedly, they were very different from Michael and there is a good chance they’d not like what Michael worships.

  (I miss Sarabjeet and Michael, but I had to let them go. I don’t have the right to steal Harsh’s friends.)

  The fact that they’ve all seen it gives them plenty of space to not be interested in the movie and talk to me instead, but they don’t. Five minutes into the movie, everybody including me is immersed in it and we’re all silent for a really long time.

  Finally, over an hour later, Kapil breaks the silence by pausing the movie, turning to me and saying, ‘Umm, I really have to be somewhere. I just came here to tell you that it was none of my business. I mean I knew my girlfriend had been cheating on me with Sameer, but you and I, we were never close. It wasn’t my place to tell you that before you lost your memory, your boyfriend cheated on you with my girlfriend and you should not be with that boy after you . . . it’s confusing.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. And for some reason, I burst out laughing.

  ‘Okay . . .’ Kapil looks at me oddly. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘You came here just to tell me that and I dragged you into my room and made you watch half a movie before you finally told me?’

  ‘You didn’t give me a chance!’ he checks his watch. ‘I should really get going.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure.’