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?
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?
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