A String of Trysts

The sun goes down on another day
Eventful, yes. Enjoyable, er, y-es...
I guess. For it rushed by, once more
while I looked the other way

and not for a pause did the day stay still.
Feeling, fully touching, watching from
a window sill; columns of events
Marching past; a lake, another lake

a mountain, a valley, a river ran fast
Enmasked; encasked; enbussed; enclasped;
A journey by train... ah, yet another journey
nothing new. Arrive at one, and leave at four

an endless string of trysts galore
Never a moment to play an encore. 

Is art a valid source of knowledge?

I am not always that sure that we aren't walking on thin ice when we talk of knowledge constructed by the arts. Artists, of course, would be outraged if we questioned this. Personally, as an artist, I would feel demeaned and invalidated. However, that should not stop one from wondering, deeply I should add, about what knowledge, if any, is constructed by the arts.

These two videos were sent to me on whatsapp by friends. I found both rather powerful. Have a look and then read on:

 

Honestly, rather chilling. There is obvious sexual tension created by a combination of the music, the voiceover and the camera shots and angles used - the slow tilt up to where the woman stands at the top of the stairs, the point-of-view shots of the woman and the people below - all combine to make a powerful impact. Taken together, with the quick cuts, the audience would be riveted, ensuring that our expectations of some quick action would be raised. However, the quick action we expect is very far from what happens next with the woman tripping and rolling down the stairs. There is a quick cut to a ceiling shot, reducing the woman and her guests to little creatures without much consequence. The next shot shows four men walking in time to the music - a midshot that only shows us part of the picture, again piquing interest. This cuts to a close up of the bag itself - with the brand itself in half-light, half-shadow, in a sort of coy "I'm not here" register. The husky female voice continues its narration as the four men lift and zip the woman into the bag, talking about "everlasting elegance", with heavy use of irony between the action and the words.

The un-brand-loving person that I am, I couldn't figure out whether Prada was advertising its products, the brand, or telling women to stay away from stilettos. Could, of course, be all three. I am not even thinking about Prada's general branding-advertising style - simply looking at the video in isolation. The brand does leave a rather heavy impact. A non-brand-loving person would feel, "Ha, I told you so!" However, what impact would it have on someone who loves branded products, especially those who need to show that brand off, not just use it? This requires some thought.

Here's the next one:

This one was moving beyond words. The gentle music, the white-grey-blue-green tones in the backdrop creating a "cold" atmosphere, sharply contrasted by the sheer black of the piano and the composer's clothes - stark, real, and also chilling. The film opens with a black screen and a roaring sound, the composer looks sharply around at the glacier before beginning to play, both create tension in the viewer's mind. The glacier continues to melt in the background intermittently. I found myself wondering whether the composer would be swept away by a tidal wave caused by this. So, tension was created each time the glacier melted and fell into the water. One hoped that the composer-pianist would survive this, that in case of an avalanche or tidal wave someone would airlift the man and the piano swiftly out of the disaster zone. There were midshots of ice ridges, crane or aerial shots slowly moving away from jagged ice peaks, and long shots establishing the surrounding areas. Each shot was powerfully calculated to not just cause concern on behalf of the composer-pianist but by extension to the melting ice behind him.

One did not need to know the background to the video at all, unless one has lived in Crusoe-like fashion since very early childhood and never read the papers. There really was little need for the slogan at the end with the appeal to Save the Arctic. 

Here's the question, though: those who believe that climate change is upon us, did not need convincing in the first place; what impact did the video have on those who are, still, in denial that climate change is "human-made", or that human actions can help to arrest, if not reverse, the phenomenon? 

Both the videos above are powerful and moving. They are brilliant examples of what art can illustrate. They reinforce beliefs in the "believers". What is the impact, however, that they have on those who don't?

Moti Meena | An Immortal Fight

"Do not go gentle into that good night,... Rage, rage against the dying of the light." 

- Dylan Thomas

Life for a widow in many communities is death itself. It was no different for Moti Meena, an incredible woman from Salumbar, about seventy kilometres from Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Moti Meena's life has all the elements of drama - conflict between characters; conflict between a character and her destiny (which, for women, is defined by patriarchy); and severe internal conflict as well. But she fought each of those battles because she had the grit to fight: to fight a society that treats widows as so much unwanted baggage; to fight in-laws who treated her as a commodity to be traded; to fight the raging battle within her that told her she was weak and powerless. She took back that power and confidence that society and circumstances tried to rob her of and came through to be a light that illuminates and touches the shadows in everyone else's life around her.

On the 5th of March, 2017, Moti Meena's struggle with community norms and her outstanding contribution to rural healthcare programmes, saw her sharing a stage with other luminaries to receive the Rana Punja award at the Maharaja Mewar Foundation Annual Awards, Udaipur, Rajasthan.

The journey to shed off the shackles of the community started before her husband had passed away, working at an anganwadi. She had worked there for a year when her husband died of an "unknown" illness. Without much awareness of health issues and practically no health facilities, the Meena tribe is subjected to quack treatments that harm than cure. Quacks in the countryside cash in on illiteracy, poor health support and faith in destiny to peddle their pills and potions. Moti describes her husband's death as a betrayal, being cheated, and her mission in life is to help prevent other women from being similarly cheated. As a Senior Health Worker (SHW) with Aajeevika Bureau in Badwal, she looks after 24 hamlets spread out over three panchayats, all connected to an "Amrit Clinic", a rural health centre. With each clinic well-equipped with medication, two nurses on duty, doctors on call, the rural population is now, gradually, beginning to trust formal medical channels. This paradigm shift was difficult, and Moti, as the SHW, plays a pivotal role in bringing health awareness to her community with the Bureau's "outreach" programme.


Moti began her journey with Aajeevika as a volunteer, after an awareness camp she attended as an anganwadi worker. For six months after her husband's death she was housebound, indeed incarcerated, as all widows are, fighting a fate akin to living death. She had to assert her independence with her in-laws who were forcing her to marry her husband's younger brother who already had a wife and two children. She wanted to raise her three boys on her own and resisted this patriarchal intrusion to the extent of filing a case in the local "chowki". As expected, the "chowki" sided with her in-laws, not wanting to upset the power dynamics of the community. Moti was given a third choice -- to marry someone else who would pay some form of "bride price" for her. Resisting this commodification, Moti stepped out of the house and got a job. Not without dire consequences at home.

As she describes the mental and emotional trauma of that time, her eyes cloud and her ever-present smile disappears. "I sometimes lay awake at night and thought about committing suicide," she says. "If this is going to be my life, what is the point of living on." Such thoughts are not uncommon but I ask, "Why did you feel this way?" She thinks about it for a second. "I wasn't that troubled about my own life. I was sad for my children. They are so young. Where would I go and leave them? If they were older, I could have left them with the family. I tried to focus on what I could do so that these negative thoughts would leave my mind. But slowly, as I worked with Aajeevika, these thoughts faded. They would send me to various places. They began to trust me with responsibilities. That gave me confidence in myself. Slowly those thoughts went away."

"How did you make your way, in spite of the odds, to where you have reached?" I ask her. "It was not easy. Aajeevika wanted to send me to Chattisgarh for a nine-month training. When I told my in-laws about it, they told me that if I did, I could not come back to the house. My brother said he would look after the children. My parents were already paying my expenses. I could attend the training to become the SHW for this Amrit Clinic," she shares. "If a person has fallen," she adds, "you just need a couple of people to lend you a hand to pull yourself out and stand on your own feet. I felt like I had fallen down, and I just needed a little support. And now I have enough courage to travel anywhere on my own and do anything!"

Moti's work involves the education of a community with very little awareness. Every day, she visits one of the 24 hamlets and organises meetings. During one such meeting she taught them a song involving corruption that encouraged them to speak up against it. She measured the weight of all the children, using a nifty portable weighing scale, and recorded the weight to the growth chart. If the child's growth chart showed that s/he is underweight, she explained this to the mother and asked her to bring the child to the clinic for a check up with the doctor. Many children have been rescued from malnutrition with this simple intervention.

Trudging around the hot and arid countryside in her wake, I understood that her life is not an easy one, but she gains immense satisfaction from the work she does. She trains and supervises local volunteers, called Swasthya Kirans, organises "Ujala Samooh Meetings", awareness meetings on topics as wide as health and hygiene, human and legal rights. Women, especially, flock to these meetings to learn more. In one of the meetings that I attended, she told the women, "Our body has a lot of doors through which bacteria and germs can enter. If we keep our 'doors' clean, germs don't want to enter our body." A simple but powerful metaphor that communicated vital information.

In between raising her children and her work, Moti has found the time to complete her schooling till Grade 12 through open school. Now she would like to be trained as a nurse but is waiting for her children to grow up.

Meeting Moti Meena, witnessing the work she does, and encountering the spirit with which she approaches it, and her determination to fight regressive traditions, is an edifying experience beyond description. The lady's wonderful smile and happy nature that has crossed obstacles that most would flail at approaching makes this an inspiring life worth recording for the world.

*    *    *

A few months ago, this story was written at the behest of a journalist friend who works in a national daily. However, this maiden venture into journalism apparently failed on several counts. I don’t really know what the specific counts were because the journalist reverted with something as vague as “it’s all wrong and needs to be fixed”. So, after waiting six months for more concrete feedback, I totted this up to yet another of the many odd experiences I have had. Nothing new in this, I mused, and there’s not much I can do with the all-obscuring all-wrong-needs-to-be-fixed, can I? That’s how so much of the world works—it kills stories that don’t fit the discourse.

However, while you can keep a good story down, you can’t put it out. Just as Moti has often been down but refuses to subscribe to Out, it just wouldn’t go away. It would pop out whenever I opened a certain folder, peep out of corners when I stumbled across the photographs I took of Moti’s work, sneak out and stare me in the face every time I was cleaning the video folders. It would gravely remind me time and again that I had not set out to write a journalistic piece but to tell her story. That her story had touched a nerve deep inside me when I met it, and that when I wrote it straight from where the good stuff comes—the heart—it was meant to strike the same nerve in my readers.

So, here it is, untouched by any editorial pen, and while mortally flawed to the cognoscenti, not a single word is etched with the journalistic quill. Which is just as well, I might add, for the Meena tribe, to which Moti belongs, thinks of journalists as a despicable species who are only interested in making money by exploiting their poverty. I was cautioned by the Bureau to keep the newspaper-connection under wraps, so to speak, or I would be hounded out. Journalists, they told me, write about the poverty, not the wealth of a dying culture; they paint in dull colours the lack of facilities and ignore the abundance of strength and reserve; they amplify the gory shallowness of progress and bury the depth of possibility. So I went in as the learning facilitator I am; I saw, I learnt, and, in the long run, came back humbled by what I had seen and learnt.

Conflict in Literature

This is a good way to look at Conflict in Literature:

The cruel truth

The cruel truth that robs sleep of rest
Thundering in with rain, lightning, the witches of glum
Cuts through dreams and streams and puppy soft reams

But better by far than a bed of lying roses
The gossamer screen of delusional reality
Where truth is sacrificed at the altar of love.

In the storm, tonight

In the storm, tonight, two furry friends and I
Blown about by gusting gale
The sound of a dozen wind chimes ring
Helpless in the gale-force hail.

The lightning creates a light-sound show
Across an orange-lit midnight ride
While dust crosses once, twice, thrice
Leaves and trees bend in bowed-down pride.

Then the rain bursts in from south of west
Pinching cheeks with needle-sharp drops
Blowing ice-cold pins into the face
Breath leaves the lungs in bitter-deep froths.

But what this storm stand next to that life
Rocked with wind from without, within,
Of recent life of juggling with one hand
The other knotted to a main with string?

Did they not see that if they pulled
Too hard on one human refrain
It would be pulled apart at the seams
With destructive force of human remains?

Did they not know that behind the supermask
A living barely breathing person would fall:
Juggling work-play-love and all that again
Till love moved on to its next port of call?

Then the edifice into its crumbling death could fall
An abyss of morass of deep disgusting bog
Yet chance and circumstance or something between
Would perchance find its way through yellowing fog.

The drenching rain chills to the bone
Not enough, though, the puzzle to solve
Thunderheads may roar through the stormy night
And here I stand, much firmer in resolve.

Loss. Meaning.

“Many workshops later, little shrink, she would look back in wonder at the intensity with which she had felt the loss of the only relationship she had put her heart and soul into; the only one she had approached as an adult; one that she had wanted to write, not just scribble on.”

Sorry, little shrink. I know we've been sitting in silence for a long time. Or at least it seems like a long time. Really? Just five minutes? Relativity, I guess. Why do I feel a little distant from me today? As though I am sitting outside myself, wondering at the actions and thoughts and feelings of someone else? Odd. Very odd.

"Topmost in her mind, as the dirty tongue of the dragon pressed down against her lungs, were thoughts of the lies and deceit that went on and on and on. Why on earth should they worry her, though? It was over. She had accepted that. Why should it matter that the lies and deceit continued?

"From living a dream, yes, a dream, not reality, in which she thought she had finally responded to a call to 'find out what you want to do most in life - and do it', she now responded to a greater inner call that she had newly invented. 'Find out what you most need to do today - and do it - just for today. Leave tomorrow out of it.'

"Oblivion. Peace. The end of nothingness. Nothingness to nothingness from ashes to ash. Pushing up an ash tree might have more meaning. Not an option. Not for any reason more important than that attached to souls she knew would inhabit their bodies long after hers had quit this mortal frame. Nothing, really, can save your life. Not in the cosmic framework, anyhow. What exists is only possible if she brought it into existence. Beyond that, a mythical optimism, meaning that did not could not would not exist. Not unless there was something else that could hold onto the mythicism of Sisyphean origin. Meaning that could be summed up in yadda-yadda-yadda and la-la-la. Just a hop-step-jump from la-la-land. Effortless oblivion while the body the soul the warped-wefted minefield of a mind struck from within and without by the meaningless void into which it had fallen, perchance to sleep, to dream, to nightmare, to be lost in the labyrinth of voidness, voidity, void-world.

"He had called her prose-poetry-drama disturbing. Of course, it was. When calm is replaced by intense inner turmoil what else could it be. Even the turmoil had been carried away by the strong wind, gale-force, of the lies and deceit. Trust. Lost. Forever. Cannot be reclaimed from the sea of void. There would be a time to dissolve into the void with the faith that had been claimed by the sea, that had gone into the wind, that had perchance melted into the mist and fog of annihilation. Where do you find a little light in a black hole to guide you out of it? Where in the black hole can you look for life again? Where, indeed, do you find answers to unasked questions? Where do you voice a question you don't have the words for? How do you find meaning when the questions, unasked, unformed, unworded, unapplied, unconjugated, lie wasted like the leaves of the great trees you could look to for answers?

"Slowly she turns the now-too-loose ring on her finger, the one that seems ready to fall off at the slightest shake of the hand. Fragile and helpless it can't hold on to anything that will bring respite from undubbed questions undoubtedly waiting for a moment of weakness to bare their fangs and populate the shards of her life with bloodied remnants. The gore pops out once in a while shallowly buried in foggy waters that may or may not drown out the hard whispers of faithless uncertainty."

What is it, little shrink? Really? You want a voice in the narrative? But that would make it structurally deficient. You are supposed to listen. Say, it's only a paper moon, hanging over a cardboard sea, and it's only make believe coz there's no belief in me. See, that's structure. Perfect meter. If you were to enter my narrative, it would destroy the meter.

Focus on your breathing, Catsy. You know that brings your pulse down. Focus on this moment which is not going to let you get away. Focus on your word that you gave me. Your word has always counted for something. You said, I promise. Focus on that. This moment is the only one you can have, to live, to breathe, to do, to live, to think, to breathe, to do, to live, to breathe...

Yes. Breathe. I don't need a pulse monitor to know what it is. My heart is thunder in my ears, drumming, thrumming out sounds of the void. Did you know that the void is not silent? It is filled with thunder that thrummmmmms and throbbbbbs and drummmms. Till my eardrums explode from inside and my head explodes and implodes.

Focus on your in-breath, your out-breath. Hold. Focus on this moment in which nothing bad is going to happen to you. Leave the future out of it. Focus on your breath.

Stop. Stop. You are destroying my narrative. Mine. Mine. All mine. Yadda-yadda-yadda.

"How often he had said that. How often had he meant it? He threw her away in the space of five minutes. She was depressed. Check. She was. She was in terrorised turmoil. Check. She was. Who put her in? Little Tommy thin. Who pulled her out? Not little Tommy stout. He was out with someone else when the void swallowed her whole. Who killed cock Robin? Not I, said little Tommy thin. Nor I, said little Tommy stout. We were both out shopping, having dinner, having coffee. Johnny Johnny telling a lie? No papa. Open your mouth. Yadda-yadda-yadda.

"A minecraft castle. That's all the world is. You can destroy it with the clickety clack of fingers on keys. With a snap of your fingers. With a word when you say 'no, I can't do this anymore'. You can dump someone in a garbage bin with just a flick of your wrist. A bin inhabited by a dragon with foul stinking breath. It is that easy. True. It is. You can demean, devalue, destroy what was precious. What kept you out of your void. What held out its arms so you could climb out. What sat next to you inside the void and did not leave till you were out. What stroked your hair and sat calm and patient when you went into the void holding on firmly and not letting it collapse around you. You can throw it away when the void tries to swallow you. A minecraft castle. Only make believe. A cardboard sky. A muslin tree. Only make believe."

But, little shrink, I scratch the pitiless walls to clamber out. With broken nails I scratch them to let me out. The wind chimes don't chime inside. They bring no peace with their silence. But I can't let them out of my sight. They sway gently in the breeze as I think longingly about what it might mean to have meaning again.

No, it cannot come from the other souls attached to my destiny.
No, it cannot come from the work I do.
No, it cannot come from other people who love me, whose hearts hurt with mine, who live inside my void with me so I don't feel alone in it.
No, it cannot come from anything that I haven't created myself.
No, it cannot come from a rope as fragile as hope.
Hell is indeed other people. But hell is also one's warped-and-wefted web-spun mind with a fractured imagination that cannot see beyond the void.
Meaning can only come if it is invented again. In the little things.
In a game of basketball hard-played, well-fought, meaningless except for the ephemeral joy of a moment of chasing a ball.
In a moment of gently calming the man-eating dog much maligned but showing no signs of baring its teeth.
In a moment of chasing a shuttle swept away by the breeze.
In a moment of stillness, of adding words to a narrative on hopelessness.
In a moment, little shrink, of finally, at the end of a long, tough day, putting one's head on a pillow and wishing for life-inducing sleep, knowing that tomorrow is another day and may have some chance of an invented meaning.

My Experiments with Youth

I think the mid-life crisis hit me when I was about thirty-two. A bit early, I admit, but we are being honest here, little shrink. And you think your life is dreary, huh? Dealing with lunatics, even lunatic surrogates, must make you feel really sane.

The child was about four and I was fat, addicted to two vodkas in a Screwdriver a night and Nirula's Hot Choc Fudge with extra nuts, and eating as little of anything else as was humanly possible. It is, I have to say, a little difficult to see a full frontal or dorsal of oneself in a small portrait mirror in the bathroom, which is all I had back home in Delhi. But we moved to Bombay, and for the first month, as the house was being readied, stayed in a hotel. In an elevator mirrored on all four sides I saw myself from every possible angle for the first time. I saw the better half looking at me in exactly the same way as I was. Dressed in an over-sized T-shirt and checked cotswool PJs that were also too loose, I looked the epitome of unattractive.

Luckily for me, in retrospect, it mattered little how I looked. Life, I had already decided, was going to be from one vodka to the next, with some fights about dagger-angles thrown in in the interim spaces. Ah yes, the dagger-angles, young shrink, were sometimes the most important aspect of life - they had to be dusted and placed just so, otherwise the better half's OCD kicked in big time. What do I mean by dagger-angles? Sorry, the back story has something long-winded attached to what the better half thought of as his legacy from his Rajput genes. A collection of daggers that had to be placed not just parallel to each other but also at precisely thirty-two and a half degrees from the edge of the mantelshelf. If they were thirty or even thirty-four degrees, all hell was likely to break loose. Well, such is life, sometimes. Why? You tell me. I haven't the foggiest. Yes, of course I am exaggerating, little shrink! I don't know what the angle was, precisely. Had I known, I would have taken a protractor to it. Anything to avoid the fighting, you know. Such a waste of time, and good breath.

So there I was, perpetually surrounded by these all-telling mirrors, not caring a bloody jot about how I looked. Hotel food is very interesting, you know that? Tonnes of fried chicken, sausages for breakfast, buttered rolls - you just had to pick up the phone and order room service. The child and I did precisely that, several times a day. It was all on the house. The child didn't put on weight. She was always on the go. I did. And enjoyed every moment of it.

Then along came the first girlfriend. I would like to think of her as the first of the seraglio but who knows if she was the first. Much younger than me, about 10 odd years I think, but my dotage was not established back then. Only the fat-age. Yes, sorry, corny, little shrink. So they used to work together in Delhi. He was her boss in a firm that had no firmness about romance on the job. Didn't I smell a rat? Amazingly, no. In fact, when she used to call the house, and he sat cocooned in the study for hours talking to her, I jokingly called her his girlfriend. Hey, the joke turned out to be on me. Did I catch them at it? Well, maybe there was phone sex, but I wasn't listening in, you know. Didn't I care that my now ex-ed-then-husband was spending hours on the phone talking to another woman? Of course not! Grow up, will you? It was the late twentieth century, for hell's sake! And he claimed to be talking about work. For hours? It should have set off an alarm or two. But the girl and I used to chat sometimes too. She was nice. Kind to the child. That sort of thing makes a difference to a woman. Let's shelter her name, shall we? After all, she meant no harm. The child used to call her Moniyanty in her endearing lisp.

Moniyanty and I got along famously at office parties. I suppose that too played a role in how I viewed the whole affair. I didn't fit into this corporate crappy conundrum and she would seek me out and chat with me through the whole sycophantic shindig. As the boss's wife, I was deeply uncomfortable, and she would sort of shield me from the rest of the gang by sticking to me limpet-fashion. Oh calm down! There's no need to feel this vicarious outrage. She was not a sycophant. She treated me with the same respect that I treated her.

The fun and games began in Bombay when she stayed at our place for a week. Ex and she would spend entire nights together in the study, "net-surfing" they said. Did I still not suspect anything? Dear god, you really are too young. My obvious charms had not faded even though both youth and beauty had bid farewell at five p.m.. At eighty-five kilos, I could still draw a crowd. Not that I wanted to, really. But I had come to the delightful conclusion that men will admire anything with boobs. Even lemon-sized ones. Did I care about my boobs becoming a synecdoche? I didn't give a rat's ass. The child was my life since I was not allowed to have a career. Yeah, "not allowed" by the constant battering soon after her birth that "one of us [had] to stay home and look after the baby". Since I couldn't make as much as he did in my job, it had to be me. We're a team, I was told. Someone earns and someone raises the child. Sure, caveman style. Nod away, little shrink. We feminist types will crumble too if constant and enough pressure is applied. Give up our autonomy. For love? Hah! For peace. And sanity. To just be left alone from the daily bloody battles over pulling apart the "team".

However, I stray, and your time will soon be up. Let's rewind then to the day I realised what was going on right under my proverbial (and pretty, if you will allow) nose. She was to leave later that day so I cooked lunch. Nothing much, Maggi with some veggies, the way I knew she liked it. When I went to the study to call them, I didn't knock. My mistake. Always knock when the better half is within with girlfriend. Trying to push open the door, it met with a solid object on the other side, and was pushed shut from within hurriedly. This time I did knock. Ex opened the door, looking flustered. Can you believe it, I still didn't get it. Come for lunch, I said. Moniyanty has a train to catch. Then I pushed the door open further and saw her. Disheveled hair, tears hastily wiped off her cheeks but still spilling out of her eyes, a reddening nose, and distress writ large. Need I say more?

I retreated, heart beating faster than a hammer on a coffin, set the table and brought out the food. We ate in silence. Silence is such a blessing, isn't it, when there is nothing, really, to say. I looked at her, twenty-something, looking nineteen, and I thought of myself, thirty-two going on fifty-five. There was, really, nothing to say.

Yes, I know, little shrink, the narrative from this point forth gets deadly boring. But find me five women out there who haven't gone through exactly the same thing, and I will show you five women who are in complete denial. This is the way of men and that is the way of women. You want me to go on? Why? Ah, this is not about the narrative in general but I need to vent.

It's been eighteen years but I still remember things clearer than yesterday. For some reason, I can't let it go.

When he returned from the station there was still nothing to say except, I think I will find another place to stay.

What, he thundered, brazening it out.

Oh, all right, I will say it then, if you are trying to deny it.

It was nothing, he responded. She's obsessing, I feel nothing for her.

Seriously? That's not what it looked like. Not from your face, anyway.

She's not going to do anything to hurt you, he said. She is deeply fond of you and the child.

Of course she is, I countered. I have always been nice to her, I added.

She's gone back to Delhi, and not coming back. I asked her to, but she said there was nothing in it for her. She said she can't hurt you.

Good for her, I supplied.

But why, I wanted to ask, desperately not wanting to hear the answer. Why did you... get involved with her, I wanted to know. Words that turned to icicles on my lips. I didn't have to ask.

Look at you, he said. You used to be charming, vibrant, beautiful, slim. You loved me. Now look at you. But more than that, I feel emasculated with you, by you. You're not satisfied with anything I do. I take pains to make your life as good as I possibly can but I fail. Each and every time. What do we even talk about, anymore? The kid? Your frustrations? You've even lost that wonderful laugh of yours.

Have you wondered what made me into this? No, of course not. Look at my life. Do I have one? I don't even have an identity anymore. I had a promising career. How many people do you know who jump from the bottom rung to third from the top in the space of three years? A career not advanced on my back, mind you! Built up with sheer hard work. From scratch. And what am I left with? Do you have any idea what it takes when someone asks me what I do to reply - Nothing. I am a housewife.

So it is not enough, he hollered. Not enough to have a beautiful child and a loving husband. That is what I mean. You have no respect for what you have. No regard for it. You don't look up to me for making a success of my career. And who did I do this for? You. And the child. I gave up what I was passionate about to make a career in this shitty corporate world. You think it was easy for me? But I did it. With the greatest ease.

Did I ask you to? I loved you when you were a nobody and a nothing, remember? I loved you for the passion you had for music. You were not a bloody slot machine to get things from but that's what you decided to become. I told you on the day you asked me to marry you that I never wanted to give up my career; did that not register in your self-focused head? You think we are a team? A team has more than one person in it who matters. How the hell are we a team if you are the only one who matters? Yours is the only opinion that counts.

Little shrink, what would you have done at this point? A point at which it would have made sense to walk away? I did. Well, I tried. I walked to the door only to be hauled back roughly. The next thing I knew I was on the floor, saved from smashing my gorgeous face on the floor by my arms.

It was the first time he was violent with me. There were other times but that will come in another story, I guess.

That was his experiment with youth. Not the only one, I must add. My experiments with youth were qualitatively different. I went to a nutritionist. From eighty-five down to fifty-eight in three months. Vigorous exercise, strict diet, supplements to keep up my strength and from a fifty-five-year-old body back to twenty-six. It was important to do this. Not for him. He could go to hell. It was important for me. Not that I had had body image issues. But it helped to see that there was something I could do to change a part of my life. Why was that so important? Why was it so important that I work on how I looked, little shrink? I don't have a straight answer to that one, I'm afraid. Could it be that of all the choices, that was the only one available? I mean I did try to look for a job. I got three offers - two at newspapers and one at a weekly magazine. They weren't ones I could juggle with the child's needs and schedules.

And in-between walks and other forms of exercise, I was hacking. Yes, I became an expert at hacking into his email to check if Moniyanty had written a love note to him. An expert at waiting up for him, crawling soundlessly to his phone to check for messages. When he went to Delhi on work, I would find out where he had stayed, call up the hotel and ask for his call records to be emailed to him. Go through them with a fine-tooth comb to see if he had called her, how often and for how long.

Isn't this a boring story for you, little shrink? One you have heard a hundred times before? Ah, no, you're not old enough to have heard it that often! I keep forgetting how young you are. But rest assured, in your long and hopefully fruitful career, ninety-nine out of a hundred women will recite the exact same story to you.

And what purpose did it all serve? Sometimes I found a crumb or two that told me he was lying through his teeth when he said he wasn't meeting her. It wasn't even enough to confront him with and when I did, all he would yell was that I was going on and on about a relationship that didn't exist. But.

It was a prison of insecurity and insanity that I was trapped in. Yes, my own mind had turned into a prison and I was a shackled to an unrelenting wall that I was repeatedly banging my head against. The mind can be the worst possible trap, you know, little shrink. It leads you up garden paths and into beautiful houses that turn out to be horrific nightmares. And I sank to the bottom from where there was no hope of ever rising again.

I did rise, I think. I couldn't leave it all behind, though. The lies, the deceit, they haunted me for the next seven years that we were together. They haunt me still. And coupled with the unending seraglio that followed closely on the footsteps of Moniyanty, the deceit did not let up till I let go. What he was looking for in them is still a mystery to me. But I got out. And when I did, I vowed to myself that I never, ever, would get into that particular trap again.

Oh yes, the psycho, of course. Talk about leaping from the frying pan straight into the fire! Let's not talk about that today, shall we? 

Alone in my skin

Sometimes, loss

Impasse

Every day is an open-ended book, little shrink; you turn a page and the next day is full of possibilities again. Every life is not. Some end it on a cliffhanger. Others conclude it peacefully after being faithful to the hero's journey. But the saddest ones are those filled with mere survival strategies, with very little thought given to actual, authentic living. Yes, I know, you are not here to listen to me philosophise but to get the real story since you did not believe the last one. We need to go back to a few months ago, when...

***

The house feels alien, somehow. The door makes its usual tinkling sound against the cow bell hanging from the curtain rod. It’s dark and I can barely make out the silhouettes of the two dogs, still tied up even though it is late and they should be off their leashes for the night. Clearly, no one has taken them for their night walk, even though it is now 11.30 in the night.

They are glad to see me, little shrink. Others may or may not be. One door remains ominously shut. Nothing new in that. But the atmosphere outside is heavier than the cut-with-a-knife version. Or is that what is inside my mind, that's what you are wondering, aren't you, young shrink? Of course, it is.

I drift back to the morning filled with raised voices, the in-clan clash of two indomitable wills, one lying dormant for a long time while the other has just learned to raise its rebellious head. Why is it, I  often have to ask in another context, that the young and old find it difficult to communicate with each other? The generation gap, comes the answer, pat and swift. And what causes the generation gap, I ask to follow up on the first question. This gives some pause. Maybe, some say, it has something to do with different value systems. And why are the value systems so different, given that they often belong to the same family, I ask. Because the young like Western value systems and the old are traditional.

This is the moment for the inward laugh. What do you think about this? Oh, right, it doesn't matter what you think but what I do. Well, the explanation is facile and I am often facetious but, in this moment, it is a bitter laugh. What do values have to do with what appears, to both parties, to be self-focused behaviour? The raised voices throw erudite "theory-of-knowledge" concepts at each other. Perspectives, they rant, do exist. What the voices fail to achieve is perspective, though. Little shrink, tell me, now, why we can talk about perspectives but not achieve them? Yes, of course, it is the human condition.

Quietly, I take the dogs for their walk. They are the victims of uncaring humans but they do not deserve neglect. The barometer outdoors lifts tangibly and it is a drag to go back in. In this battle of wills no one will win, no one will lose. And no one will take prisoners either. The stakes, as they say, are too high.

One ante meridian. Sleep evades as voices roll over and over in my memory. The principle by which I am normally able to live is that one can only change one's own behaviour and attitudes. No one can change anyone else. What have I done that is wrong and what can I do to push this impasse into that realm in which conflict resolution is possible once more? No, it begs another, more fundamental question: what is the conflict all about?

I meander through the last nine years, the ones in which I found freedom, the ones in which I worked hard to be an effective social being, a single parent, a career woman, someone that others could lean on and seek comfort with. Most important on that list was finding freedom. A place in which I could be myself. One in which no one could dictate what I should do or not. Precious for someone who had never really had it. The first place to offer choices. And here the edifice, built up over the past nine years, seemed to be under threat. When the castle is threatened from the outside, one has the wherewithal to repel the attack. But when it comes from within?

***

Nine months later, the echoes of the raised voices haunts me, again. Nine months in which the child enwombed should have grown from foetus to newborn left nothing but a void after labour.  Nothing achieved in the interim for, though the effort was great, the logistics failed. Faultlines were revealed where none were thought to exist. And the earthquake, when it came, broke the Richter. Much like a much-touted female mythical figure, the earth opens up and swallows me whole. What did I fight for but an ephemeral cause that dissolved with the mist at dawn? As Bach's Brandenburg played its first strains, the 6 a.m. alarm, the enveloping warmth morphed into the coldest chill leaving the world a colder place than it had earlier been.

There are fantasies, still. This time, however, they are self-focused. It is straightforward and fairly simple. So I hang up the wind chimes that have waited since the last mid-term break. I hang them up inside the room just so I can do something beyond feeling paralysed. I hang them up inside so that my favourite fantasy of putting them up in the balcony, casually toppling over, will stop plaguing me. I look out and down from my poised feet on the step ladder, down to eight floors below and think of how easy it would be to casually, gently, just fall to oblivion. There is no panic here. Just paralysis. A butterfly pinned under the glass barely able to look out at what the rest of the world can see. Perspectives. Little shrink, have you ever wondered what the butterfly feels when it is pinned, then put into a case for display? We think it is dead but is it really dead? Are those lifeless eyes that completely dead and is it really gone from the world of sentient beings? Perhaps that is a perspective worth exploring.

Ah, yes, your time for this week is over now. When you come back you may or may not find me here. Nothing much I can do here in a padded cell, though. If I had a spoon, I could dig my way out but where would I go and what would I do? Don't worry, little shrink, there isn't much I can do anyway, pinned down inside a padded cell.

A Cosmic Conspiracy

This is a surprise. You're back for more. I thought you weren't coming back, little shrink. You said that you had no time for fantasies from a lunatic fit only for the zapper. Although I would wonder about whether a shrink should be allowed to talk like that to a patient, but hell, I know how you feel.

How have I been? How have you been? Oh, right, this is not supposed to be about you. Well...

Some days I lie awake in the night quite afraid to go back to sleep. If I do, I might dream. If I dream I will see him. Somehow he winds his way into every character that peoples my dreams. Perfectly nice people turn into violent psychopaths in my dreams. They sometimes have his face. In others, they have the same menacing air. And when they look at me, I am still crushed. By fear. Stark, raving fear. What if he should appear before me now? Because sometimes the fear does envelop. As in the other day, little shrink, when I went back to where we used to work.

Aggarwal Sweets. Just across the road. And a wave of fear and nausea. And another. Till something cinches the midriff and breath rushes out. Involuntary. Panic that urges. RUN. Before he finds you. Before he makes you captive again. The voice on the phone is a straw to hang on to. BUT WHAT IF HE SHOWS UP? I should have stayed in the metro station. Not tried to be brave or sit on this terror. Because I am not doing a really good job of that, am I? There's traffic. A lot of traffic. And surely I would pick up on his evil presence long before he can come up to me, and run?
Just a few more minutes. Breathe. Breathe. Or this light-headedness will be fatal. Why is that guy staring at me? Does he recognise me from ten years ago? Breathe, dammit! That's all you have to do for the next few minutes. Just hang on to this straw of sanity till rescue arrives. It doesn't take much more.

In the distance a truck rolls past. There is a scream. Was that me, screaming deep inside my head, because I just remembered the terror of sitting at Aggarwal Sweets, forcing something, anything down my throat, keeping my eyes focused on the plate because god forbid if I looked up, looked at anyone, it would start again. The endless torture. The third degree. The bashing. The bloody battering ram strong enough to break down the strongest. And it did break me.

I thought I had rebuilt myself.
Really, it seems nothing more than a delusion if this is all it takes to crumble.
And the traffic sounds muffle, in a strange Dopplerish way, become a sort of buzz that gets pushed away, as I push at the fear, yet again.
So what is the worst that could happen? The worst would be to have him standing there, with a mocking, knowing look, knowing that there I was, still his victim.

In the little house there was a barred window. In the daytime, I never dared to look out of it. If he caught me looking out he would ask, who is there that you are looking at. With eyes narrowed he would pull me away with gentle violence and look out. God forbid that a man, any man, should pass by then. But at night I could lie completely still and look at a little patch of sky through the bars and know that it was still there. It didn't matter how trapped I was. The sky was still free and some day, it could again be mine. If I found a way out. So I looked at it and planned my escape. Every night. A new plan every night which would fizzle out in the light of day.

On the wall, he had hung the picture of two little children. Mocking me, perhaps, with a picture of my two little ones who were... I didn't even know where they were after a point. He had hung the picture above a sixteen-inch television I had bought for him. At night, I lay awake, pretending to be asleep as he watched television, looking at those two innocent faces. Were they really my kids? Did I have the right to use that pronoun any more?

Why do you pity me, little shrink? I did get out. But I went back for the photograph. Because I was not about to leave my kids with him. Not even a photograph. I risked being kidnapped again when I went back for it but somehow escaped him.

So you want to know the truth about how I got out? Not satisfied with the tandoori psychopath story? Oh dear, you're still mad about that, are you?

The monster I left my kids with had spirited them away. He wouldn't tell me where. No address, no number, no way of contacting them except on weekends. And then too with this monster listening in through an earphone. Just in case I was plotting something.

But it was a game of chess that finally gave me my escape plan. Well, part of it any way. There he was, distracted by the obvious charms of this white woman he had befriended, and we were somewhere on the road to Rishikesh, in a little restaurant, playing chess. Not that I usually managed to beat him at it. But honour dictated that I keep trying. The mind of a psychopath is wonderful at the game of chess. It is about planning ten moves ahead. But sometimes there are distractions. And the white woman was a distraction.

In five moves I had his queen and broke his castle. By the time he realised what I was up to, I had his king pinned to its place, unable to move. What a wonderful piece the knight is! My knight moved into place where none of his pieces could touch it, and the only spot his king could have moved to was covered by my bishop from four squares away. Checkmate.

The queen, though deferential to the king in every other way, is really the most powerful piece. She can move in any direction and as far as she wants. And she, she alone, can control the entire board.

That's when I realised that I needed his queen to be on my side. His mother. My knight, his brother. Somehow, both knew but would never acknowledge what was really going on. Of course I couldn't tell them, little shrink. Did I really want to be beaten to a pulp?

Thank you for changing out of that lab coat, though. This one is a better colour. What is it? A baby blue? Looks good on you. Oh, standard issue, is it? How boring!

Ah yes, the queen. His mother. I had to get her on my side. That was the first step. How could I do that without telling her the whole story? So I started talking to her about my kids. Told her stories about them when they were tiny. Without saying it, I told her through every story how much I missed them. How dangerous it was to leave them with the monster. How I had to get them back. And how I had to do it alone.

And eventually, she was my counsel and my advocate. The great thing about an unmarried Punjabi boy is that his mother can still reduce him to a dithering idiot with a look. She did. She looked him straight in the eye and asked him what his intentions were. Why aren't you letting her go and get her children back, she asked him. A rhetorical question. One that she began to ask him with increasing frequency. He would find some way or the other to mollify her. She doesn't have a good enough job, he would say. She needs us to protect her from the monster, he would add. Yes, little shrink, the irony didn't strike him. So I had my fantasies about killing him. Wouldn't you have had some?

There was an old Agatha Christie novel in which the woman had used something called thalamide to slow poison the victim. But thalamide does not exist, I found out to my great disappointment. Googled it. Then hastily cleared the browsing history because he was sure to check all the sites I had visited while he was otherwise occupied. The white woman was the greatest blessing. She proved to be the worthiest distraction possible.

Then, of course, came the day when he beat his mother up, and when I stood in front of her to protect her, smashed his phone into two pieces. Finally, the cosmos was conspiring in my favour. It was just another step to buy a cheap phone till his got fixed. One, I knew, could be made part of my actual escape plan. Ten moves ahead. Well, at least a couple of moves ahead.

No matter what a psychopath wants to achieve, there is always, luckily, a fatal flaw in his character. The psycho's flaw was his innate laziness. Lie in bed and let others do the earning for him. His golden goose, he called me. Eventually, little shrink, that was also his downfall. One day, he gave me the password for my phone. Just in case I needed to call him for anything.

With hands trembling I dialled the number of my friend who had offered me a job months ago. I asked her to call me back and she did. But before she did I had already deleted the outgoing call record. Just in case he checked. Will you give me that job now, I asked her. I could hear the shaking and cracked voice that was apparently mine. What did she make of it? Whatever she did, her only response was to say, come here, and I will protect you. I may not have a job for you any more, but I can still protect you. Yes, yes, I will, I breathed, but please tell him that you are giving me that job.

Then the queen did her bit. She hollered at him to let me go. That he was calling down the worst possible curse from the cosmos if he didn't. Punjabi superstition is top notch. You are keeping a cow from her calves, she shouted. [Yes, seriously, little shrink, I am really not making this up!] And finally, she called his bluff. What are your intentions vis-a-vis her, she asked menacingly.

Struck dumb at that point, spineless coward that he was when faced with his mother's wrath, he agreed. And we bought the ticket that would take me away to my freedom. To the safety net of the only friend I had who had the guts to protect me and would. When he was buying the ticket, the irony did not escape me.

On the first of March I got onto the train, and he was there to see me off, complacent in the power he thought he still wielded over me, thinking all the while that I was not escaping, that he would have me back. Two moves ahead, psycho! But I couldn't stop those tears of relief and joy from flowing out for the next six hours that it took to get to my friend. Funny, he thought those were tears I was shedding at being separated from him. I did not disillusion him.

I still celebrate the first of March as my freedom day. No, little shrink, not with any great celebration. Just a few quiet moments in which I think back of how, just because I wanted to do something, the cosmos conspired to make it happen.

You don't believe me, do you? Fact is stranger than fiction. Would you rather have the fiction, then?