by Rohan Dahiya
All that aside, I do need to discuss something which has developed recently, and I don’t know maybe it’s a habit I have picked up from you I don’t even know if it’s a good one or bad. Hassan and Tina got divorced. I don’t know all the details till now but she’s left the house papa and Hassan you know I’m sure he’s happy but he’s just become a teenager again. It’s actually like he’s going through the younger years all over again, that man has not changed one bit! I think you need to talk to him about it because he’s not talking to me or Geetu, and I’m sure he’s not talking to Sunaina about it because honestly I don’t think that girl would understand anything if it doesn’t have to do with her. I don’t know why you don’t see it but that girl just didn’t have the right upbringing because of Tina. That woman by the way has left the house; did I already write that? I don’t know it’s just a big mess right now over there and were I able you know I would’ve gone there to personally slap some sense into him. But the book actually has kept me really busy and then I’ve been writing some essays also for my online lectures and all. I think it’s good to be busy, otherwise I would just go mental in my own house. As far as I know with Geetu everything is going very very well, touchwood! I know you haven’t met Devendra for a while now but I’ll try and get them both to come see you soon. Maybe they can go with Ria and Surya!! I’ll plan it out don’t worry, you please take care of yourself and take it easy – I was a little worried when you mentioned how much tea you’re having these days. Don’t drink too much if you are by yourself it’s not healthy. Be happy, papa.
See you soon
With all my love,
Kama.
The house was silent as a grave except the clink of ice and the sniff of a tear. In the two weeks since Kama’s letter had arrived Asim had reread it a few times, rolling it around his mind like a slowly dissolving pill. As always there were things in her letter unnecessarily written, Kama had always had a flair for saying more than required but perhaps it wasn’t so much to remind him of those memories as it was for herself. She also never realized he didn’t like the candy cigarettes any more than their mother had, but the smile it brought on their face was what he really lived for. He swallowed hard but that chokehold of memories didn’t let go. He traced the box with his fingers, almost amused by how small it seemed after all the years and the smiles came back to him. He realized he didn’t mind the taste that much really and would make it a point to tell Kama how much he missed her.
Life had dealt his older daughter one of the worst hands and he had watched her pull back from the lowest low. He had watched her suffer more than a deserved share and died a thousand deaths at his helplessness to take her pain away. For the first few weeks she hadn’t left her bed, forcing them to hire a nurse to look after her. She refused to walk the five steps to the bathroom door no matter what he said, nor how he said it. How many times Geetika sat by her and held her hand and wept with her, it was a blur.
A full month had passed before Kama had braved a walk around in her own room. The nurse would have to return every alternate day to check in on her although he suspected that was more obligatory than mandated. By the time they had discovered her pregnancy it was too late, and Kama would not leave the house to get an abortion and Asim wasn’t sure if he could live with that. He wasn’t sure if he could take much more of it at all, really. The gang rape of his daughter was hard enough but to have a grandchild serving as a constant reminder of it was too much for him to cope with. Surely no one deserved such suffering in a single lifetime. It wasn’t possible.
However it was the alternate that he couldn’t wrap his head around. The concept of an abortion was alien to him, having spent most of his formative years in a village where life was uncomplicated and lacked situations as grave. It was a living thing inside her, it had a conscience. If they had it removed they would be killing a living thing. A half formed person. And then, through motherhood, Kama came back. He could see a glimmer of her older self – though it was clear she’d never really be the same. She simply told him it wasn’t his choice to make. The decision was hers and she’d made it and she didn’t need help, she didn’t need someone to discuss the possible consequences.
“We have enough young children around –”
“I’m not doing this because you may or may not need another grandchild. I’m telling you that this might be my only chance at being a mother. A mother who can see her child from birth, raise him or her from the moment they open their eyes.”
“You can very well do that with a surrogate or a thousand different ways! What is the matter with you?”
Geetu had spoken up for the first time, “It will never be the same as giving birth, papa. You’ll never understand that feeling, only a woman, only a mother can understand.”
And thus, Ria Kochhar had been born under the watchful gaze of her mother and her aunt. Asim could count on one hand the number of times he’d met the girl, their interactions mostly perfunctory though not for her lack of trying. There was something just different about her. Different in the way she stood when next to the other girls, different when she spoke, ate her food, dressed herself, everything. The family traits Asim loved seeing bloom in his other grandchildren, Kama was proud to find missing in her daughter.
Against her better judgment, Kama had pushed for open dialogue. Her father had every opportunity to get to know his granddaughter, the door was always open, that and every other clichéd line in the book – her book to be precise. She had decided that she could no longer be miserable in life at the hand of another person, family included. On his part, Asim watched from the sidelines the sensation his daughter became right from her first essay published online. From going viral to spearheading a feminist renaissance, she turned into an overnight bestseller with The Woman on Trial in Modern Delhi, making her a celebrity in her own right.
The publishers worked at her behest, arranging all sorts of lectures and PR events via video call. Ria was her full time social media manager, pitching in for signed copy giveaways, personalized letters, moderating group discussions – she’d even made it to a few news debates from her home office. Kama would always share her thoughts and essay drafts with her father, even when he sometimes wished she wouldn’t – given their subject matter. However none of the recognition, none of the confidence in her writing, not even her daughter’s pleading had helped simmer down her agoraphobia. Over the years it had become her crutch, and when the time was right she hired a contractor on her sister’s recommendation to build additions on the far end of the farmhouse. A new room set up for the legal and control team – rape and death threats had become a weekly affair – a room for Ria’s work and private tutors; Kama even had her online grocery schedule down to a fine art.
One.
Two.
Three.
Breathe but don’t stop.
One.
Two.
Three.
Close your eyes for two seconds.
One.
You are in control.
Two.
You are the creator and destroyer of your own world.
Three.
Wipe the blood from your forehead.
One.
Two.
Three.
Push the knife deeper in his chest.
One. Two. Three.
Ruin him like he ruined you.
One. Two. Three.
One. Two. Three.
One. Two. Three.
One two three. One two three. One two three one two three one two three one two three one two three.
Kama woke up with a deep gasp, frightened more by the sight of her therapist grabbing her shoulders than the almost-memory of straddling the thing. The both of them had sweaty foreheads and shallow breaths.
“What happened?” she clutched her wheezing chest, “I don’t remember much but …”
“It … I think it might be too much too soon.” She massaged her temples. “I sort of lost control of you in the subconscio
us state. I don’t know why it happened but you just stopped responding for a while. I couldn’t understand why so I panicked and I tried so hard … I really tried to bring you out of it but then you started just screaming and thrashing.”
“Did I … Did you know what was going on at all?”
“It wasn’t hard to imagine but I’m not going to make any guesses here. If, and only if, you’re feeling secure enough to talk about it we can approach the topic in our next session. In the meantime I suggest you avoid anything that can induce stress, and continue writing in your journal.”
Kama let her head fall back onto the cushioned arm of the couch. Her heart was pounding and when she held up her hands she could see the violence still vibrating under her skin. She waited for it to ebb away while her therapist scratched notes, the room silent but for a ticking clock.
“It was dark but I could still see his face”, she sat up straighter, “but it wasn’t his face really. He looked like all of them, like one face spliced seven ways.”
The note-taking was broken with a silent look.
“I was on top of him but it was weird, like they show it in the movies you know? And all of it was the same as always but also nothing like it because it felt too real, I swear I can still feel the moisture in my hands.”
“And was there anyone else around?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hmm” she scribbled into her notes.
“It was the energy, I can’t explain it. There was this thing in the air like the molecules were all buzzing in tandem with me stabbing him.”
She nodded encouragingly.
“And I was sitting on his arms so he couldn’t move and I could feel that manic sense of power in my hands.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just kept stabbing him over and over and over again.”
“Kama, we can stop our session any time you want ...”
“No it’s okay. I don’t have a problem talking about it –”
“I hope you understand I have certain obligations as your therapist.”
Her blood turned cold.
She turned around, no longer bothered by the acid spewing inside her. “What? You’re going to report me – is that it? You’ll go and tell the court I’m a threat to what – every man out there? That’s bloody ridiculous just listen to yourself.”
“Listen to me –”
“No you listen to me. I need you to help me, you’re on my team you bitch! You’re supposed to be helping me get better and not fucking threatening me with this random highbrow bullshit.”
“I didn’t –”
“No you absolutely didn’t”, she spat, “because you’re a bloody fucking idiot.” She threw the first thing within reach. A copy of her own book, the lopsided jacket now staring morosely from the other corner of the room. “You’re only giving me clichés like ‘you won’t get better till you agree to be better’ and shit. Well I do agree, I agree veryfuckingmuch right now.”
She sat there and watched in silence as Kama simmered down.
“I could feel his warm body under me. I could hear the squish of every slice, the crunch of every bone. I could feel the power, the burning energy of asserting myself and acknowledging my conscious in that moment. I could feel it all, and I’m not bothered by it. It was beautiful. It was like a dream. And I’d do it all over again.”
“Okay”, she could sense the ‘therapist voice’ as she’d come to think of it had come back, “before we finish today’s session I want you to think over everything one more time. Actually perhaps it’s best you do it after a few hours, there isn’t any rush. There are chances further details come back to you. I want you to write them down. I want you to think about how you feel about the feelings you just described to me, what is your reaction to feeling that way being in the position you were. Write them down and we will start from there next time.”
Kama massaged her temples and waved dismally. Both ladies stood and huffed at each other. Dr. Ritika resigned herself to packing her notebook and folder while Kama straightened out the creases of her loose kurta. It skimmed the edges of her bare ankles as she walked down the wooded hallway to the reinforced window that ran the length of the side of her bungalow. The other woman brushed past her on the way down a spiraling staircase but her eyes were fixed on the flat dusty expanse of the sky. It was an ugly thing, the Delhi sky, especially on late afternoons such as that when the clouds lay swollen with rain. As the front door shut with a heavy thud, locks sliding into place, the corners of her house expanded outward. She turned back to face the now cavernous foyer that in its silence had become the staying place of all her fears. The silence made her teeth grind, the big empty rooms made her skin crawl. She walked through them with eyes lowered, scratching at her drying aging skin. She avoided the mirror, too scared of what might stare back at her. Perhaps it was just her mind playing tricks on her but Kama was almost certain the billowing kurta shuddered with her. She avoided the comfort of her bedroom, there was nothing as horrifying as waking up to nightfall. She avoided Ria’s room because last week, when leaving her laundered clothes by the foot of her bed, Kama had found her daughter’s journal. She knew the importance of privacy, or at least keeping up the illusion of privacy – after all that’s the best a parent can manage sometimes. It was her poetry, she’d unsuccessfully resisted the urge to read the whole lot.
Ria was turning out to be exactly the way she had been as a little girl herself, taking life way too seriously – it showed in her every word. The two verses that she read, though severely disjointed and angst-riddled, were good. It was possibly better than anything Kama had ever written. Every word was attached to the other with the kind of brutal honesty that made her wonder if she even knew who her daughter was. Now, with the ink of her pen drying a little more with each day passing, she found herself thinking about that moleskin pocketbook a little too often.
She sat down at her writing desk feeling the ache of every brittle bone of her body, the daydreams of her ideal novel abandoned by the last empty corner. The back of her tunic clung to her skin, dampened by a cold sweat. Her fingers, even with the comforting cool of a pen between them, hovered stiffly over the empty page. She stared at her useless arthritic hands and waited for the nib to touch the dry surface of her paper but there was nothing left to dream about. Every hour of the past nine months weighed itself down on her narrow shoulders.
‘Something, anything you know what I mean? Just give em something to show that you’re at least working on a new project…’ the slick voice of her publicist rang in her ear from memory. ‘How was it you put it, you just have to find a better method of pretending to know what you’re doing?’
The skies darkened above her and Kama found herself wondering if a lone afternoon had turned her into a nervous wreck, how would she ever survive two whole weeks without Ria around?
Chapter SEVEN
THE AXIOM OF ICARUS
Another Saturday night saw the city come alive. At another typically atypical restaurant, Sunaina sat in her favorite slip dress. There was none of the pressure of a regular date, except an hour had passed and the boy never showed.
Tell Me Lies, Tell Me You Love Me.
The bright sign stared back at her.
She ordered another gin and tonic and threw it back faster than the two before. She ignored the way her heart beat so loud it seemed to jump around in her chest. It was a heady sort of nervousness, like standing at a precipice, an edge, the point of no return.
She shook her head at the burning red glow. “Just call him” she muttered under her breath. “Just call him … just call him … just call him” over and over again like a charm to ward of the growing pit inside.
The underside of her knee stuck to the spot where it met her thigh. Every breath grew shorter as she dialed Lakshman’s number once more, and as it had been since the night began, the automated voice told her he wasn’t in service range. She burrowed with her eyes at everyone crossing her table, nobody wanted to be
in her way when she stood up.
Blows to the self-esteem that rank higher than being stood up on a date are few and far between. If a blind date stands you up, there are chances they never made it – or that they came, they saw, they ran. What happens when you know the person whom you’re meeting for a date? You know who they are out there in the world and who they are not without another pair of eyes to watch. What about being stood up by someone who’s already occupied your mind and refuses to leave? Sana stood in the humid street fighting the chokehold of shame, sorrow, and hunger. She hadn’t eaten just so she could fit perfectly into the dress. The two lines she did in the bathroom now worked against her. And so, unsteady on her feet from the top shelf liquor, she had nothing to do but fish for a lighter.
She screamed incoherently at her phone, knocking her leg into the open door as she climbed into the backseat of her car. The tears fell bitterly, in short pained hiccups. If the time was right and Lakshman had voicemail she could’ve left him a message, she might’ve been able to vent out her screaming heart. Though perhaps he might’ve left her a message too, he could’ve told her that she might never see him again. She called Gayatri, who was at dinner with Geetu and Dev, and then she called Surya, who at the time was headed to meet her family with Dhiraj.
Unfortunately their lack of response to her crisis was the final nail in the coffin. And so, with nothing but the driveway foliage for company Sunaina hobbled to her house with broken heart and wounded knee.
She raised her hand to the fingerprint scanner but the door opened on its own. She blinked away her tears and stepped out of the way as the servant girl rushed outside, nearly tripping on her own feet.