One Bucket of Laundry

One bucket of laundry, just a set of undergarments, a single nightdress and a pair of office clothes. Nothing more and nothing less. I tell the maid to take a day off, today is Sunday and I want to do my laundry by myself. I carry the bucket through the silent house to the drying line and being peeling them one by one.

They told me you died one by one even as my flight slowly crawled back towards home. First it was you Dada, who went through the wind shield and stained our black car red. All the broken glass shards dressed in your thickening blood and having painted the perfect scene of gore, you simply died, eyes still open… yet vacant.

I can almost picture your eyes if I sit in your rocking chair, snuggling your over-sized coat and think back really hard. You had tiny crow feet at the edge of each eye and they gawked at people when you laughed. You used to enjoy laughing more than anyone I know. You laughed at my pitiful jokes and laughed yourself off the devan and somewhere around that time even taught me to laugh through my divorce. You really did like laughing. You tiny neck and huge belly would both dance in tune to your laughter and I can just about hear you laughing at me even now. Peeling my laundry, flop-sided hair, old overgrown clothes and no social life. You’d laugh at what I’ve done to myself and shake me out of this state. You’d just laugh.

You wouldn’t have liked the doctor. He didn’t even smile when you told me about your death. It was all just papers and cold eyes; very impersonal. But on the feedback form there wasn’t any box for me to check about it. They only wanted to know about the medical standards and who’d be paying for the medicines and ICU of the remaining members. Dada, you would have secretly been glad that you died where you did. At least when the bees pricked every smooth pore of your body with their tiny stings, they were singing or humming or being merry in whatever form bees do.

They told me at the hospital that Ma went next. The bees got her before death did. Apparently no-drama Ma in her last moments made up for it with an overdose of drama. They say she ran in circles trying to get rid of the black dotted yellow pests, screaming her head off and plucking at her own flesh. She ran and screamed till accidentally she had stepped off the cliff. From there it was all downhill. The doctors told me that they could have possibly saved her if she’d been so fated as it simply pass out on the road due to the terrible pain all the stinging must have caused.  

Bhai died next. However, too young to appease the devil, he didn’t quite make it to the other side. His nineteen year old limbs stayed strapped into the seat even as they slowly disjointed due to the impact. He didn’t squeal or scream or even open his eyes to register the chaos. He just lay his head sideways onto the shards of the broken window and waited to pass into a coma. His shrivelled but faithful lab coat never left his side, present even at the accident, casually resting on the seat beside.

The doctors informed me that he was a donor and I had no difficulty believing them. It seemed like Bhai. However, the thought of his piercing blue eyes in someone else’s socket didn’t sit quite right with me. So I simply signed on the dotted lines and watched them take him apart.

I gave both you and Ma funerals the best I could. Instead of Bhai I burnt his lab coat. Orthodox Savita Mami cried foul at that, but I put her in place by playing the ‘I’ve just been orphaned’ card. It worked like a charm. I got my way. However, all too soon it was all done and nothing was left.

Now I sit, my forehead painted a shade of vermilion that has ceased to mean anything to me. The irony of it all is the only reason red bangles line my hand is because you wanted me to have someone after all of you. I didn't like the corporate dictator I married to begin with.

I still remember the courtship meeting. He arrived precisely at 9, perfectly on time. That’s when I first realised I didn’t like him. Whoever came to an Indian household on time? It was only courteous to arrive fashionably late. His years as an NRI had changed him. They had made him prompt. In the sound of the doorbell as his thumb pressed against it, I could hear all the morning alarms that would go of at 7 every morning. Possibly even on the weekends. They’d be no time to laze around on the bed, no time for morning flirtation. They’d be the clock reminding me that I had married the man who’d always demand tea or perhaps the more Amreekan coffee at 7.15.

I know marriage comes with its quirks and adjustments. I made them in my first marriage too. However, I’d like to believe I learnt a little more through that encounter than just how to warm a double bed. I learnt that compromises that you never wanted to make don’t come easy. It’s just the ones you’re eased into that you learn to accept.

Anyway, I could see your expectant eyes cajoling me to open the door and even Ma took a second of from her tireless kitchen venture to give me a coaxing nod in the direction of the door. I couldn’t say no to that then. So I put on a smile that matched my pink lahariya sari and relying on my jewellery to do all the sparkling for me, I opened my door.

He was polite and charming, all six feet of him. He smiled and greeted me, I think more so that I could see his dimple rather than because I made him smile. I coyishly invited him in, just because with my love marriage I’d never had a chance to be coy. He stepped over the threshold and came and placed himself on the single seat.

Two things had already begun nagging at the end of my pallu, pulling me away from a life with him. First that despite the fact that all of our footwear was neatly lined near the door, he didn’t give it any consideration and kept his shoes on his feet. Second that he picked the solo seat. He could have sat next to you instead on the three-seating couch. I would have liked that; the knowledge that I was about to marry a man who wanted to know my parents better. Rahul, when I was married to him, never wanted to meet you or even just pick up the phone and call you. Over the years, it troubled me. For I would have loved to see you and Ma on weekends, I would have loved to know whether Ramu kaka brought tundli instead of torrai again or whether you went bird watching and spotted some new rare species. His disinterest often reminded me that I had married the wrong man.

I would have called you, but the guilt of him not wanting anything to do with either of you made me tremble every time I thought of picking up the phone. I knew that if I’d called you, you would have been nothing but your lively self. You wouldn’t have given his reluctance a second thought. You would have laughed and chatted and acted like nothing ever went wrong. And in your genuine happiness somewhere I would have heard the reflection of my own voice of irritation. Irritation at a marriage that was fated to never succeed and irritation at my stubbornness for not letting you stop me when I walked out for Rahul, suitcase in hand.

Satish to my overtly cautious self now seemed like a repeat telecast. What if he didn’t want you to visit our children? What if you never got to showcase your stamp collection to my kids and what is Ma never got the leisure time to tell them Hindi stories because Satish didn’t want a crowded household? He didn’t seem the type he would and I took solace in the fact that once a year he made it a point to go to Europe and meet his parents. He wouldn’t stop me from coming and if this was going to be my do-over I’d come diligently ever year. I’d call ever day and I’d do everything I didn’t do when I was married to Rahul.

It was an informal setting as his parents were absent, having not found flight tickets to make it here on time. However, they’d Skype-d with their apologies and already made arrangements to meet me a week later. I knew they already liked my MBA degree, they liked my Indian looks and they didn’t mind my divorce in exchange for the knowledge that I didn’t mind their son’s. It was like a match made in heaven.

So when he’d left with his slight American accent, and you asked me whether I liked him and I’d like to marry him, I nodded. It wasn’t a jubilant nod or a nod of even acceptance; it was a nod of indifference. I wasn’t marrying him; I was just trying to make you smile. And with my nod, it was done. Satish liked me. His parents who came the following month liked me more so. Within two month, cards were being sent out and in another month I had relocated to America.

Satish wasn’t the Bollywood villain that I had initially imagined him to be. He was flexible when it came to our relationship, even though he wasn’t in any other part of our routine. I didn’t mind because nothing but your and my relationship really mattered to me. So when just one month into our marriage, I’d asked him to come back to India to visit you, he agreed without a second thought. It was decided that on the way back, I’d stop at Europe and meet his parents too. After all, his parents were supposed to be equally important to me too.

I stand now, hanging my freshly washed clothes on the line. It gives me immense peace to see the single row they form. I know now that I no longer need a second line of reassuring clothes. I have this house full of your laughter. I make a mental note, to call Satish and tell him that I’m sending divorce papers. 

The Lonely Note

His fingers reached out to touch the glorious piece of equipment that sat in front of him. They quivered with longing. He eyed the beauty. Admiring it's craft, with each breath mesmerized by its simplicity. And then just as simply, his fingers touched the magical gadget. The record player. It was his.

A stodgy delivery man with greasy palms had delivered it earlier the day. But the man hadn't ordered anything. He hadn't known what the box contained. It was a large cardboard container marked fragile. The accompanying note, simply puzzled him.

"Here's the piece of your heart you gave to me."

So, he opened it. 

And once he had, there was no turning back. The sight of the record player invigorated his mid-aged heart and helped him forget about the pain in his aging knees. He carried it into his study, carefully, all the way holding it close to his chest like a new born baby. The minute he set it down on the table, a sort of feverish urgency overtook him.

He went into the attic searching for the melody to accompany his breath. He found it, sitting under a dusty pile of forgotten items: toys from when his kids where just infants, gardening tools from summers when the water scarcity was less acute and a helmet, to remind him of the rush of being young.

He clutched at the single vinyl record and gently removing it from its cover, placed it in the player. A few hisses, and then just divine melody.


A warning sign
I missed the good part, then I realised
I started looking and the bubble burst
I started looking for excuses
Come on in

I've gotta tell you what a state I'm in
I've gotta tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

The music played on and haunting voices from the past filtered back in. Her infectious yet off-key laugh. Her cold hands, even on a warm night. Her wit and her jokes. Surrounded by memories of her, all he could feel in that moment was his pulsating ego.

It told him to shut it down. It always knew exactly what to do. It had always told him what to do.

No explanation. No discussions. Just a single command. 

But he couldn't listen anymore. His head spun, his breath came in short grasps, and his ego warned him that it would overwhelm him. But he needed her. He needed her memories.

She'd come into his life when he'd least expected it. Puberty had merely smacked him and left. He couldn't fathom the responsibility of being a man and so he let ego run his life. 

She asked him, then she begged. Stay, she implored him. Stay, she whispered. But his ego couldn't let him. She was a sign of weakness. As she came closer and closer, her body invaded the space marked out for his ego. With every hug and every kiss, she chipped a little bit of it away. He knew he'd have to give her more of himself. She was changing him. There would be no place for his ego in that relationship. And he wanted to stay, perhaps he didn't need his ego anymore.

But ego wouldn't have any of it. So he left. He made excuses and he always kept the upper hand.

Sitting alone in his study, nothing but his ego with him. He searched. He implored his brain to remind me what her face was like. But everything was a haze. A blurry view of his life through his ego. Through his pride. He hadn't even realized it, but his raging ego has burnt every thought of her. It had chased away all the feelings.

All he had was his ego...

When the truth is, I miss you
Yeah the truth is, that I miss you so
And I'm tired, I should not have let you go

The Nightmare

Finding a flat to rent can be a real task. Movies, catalogs, websites, they've been training you your entire life to search for the perfect living space. So with every tiled backyard design you see in glossy pages and every sensationally breathtaking view from a french window a housing website throws in your face, you begin to weave your own dream.

However, after the first time a flat broker leads you through a dingy alley and shows you into a tiny crevice that he's trying to peddle off for a flat, you begin to readjust your expectations. Fast.

So you begin looking for the basics. Good rooms, cupboards, and windows. 

When I began searching for a flat more than a year ago, I went through all these phases. From expecting the castle of my dreams to be on the market to lease, I went to looking for durable plumbing. However, despite cutting my expectations significantly, I still wanted some of the things I'd grown up with. 

I wanted sunlight but not so much that it would scathe the plants that I intended to grow. I wanted ample of kitchen space, enough for both my oven and me. I needed to know that Internet lines could be drawn to whichever desolate corner I chanced on this housing arrangement. 

A few brokers and after visiting houses across sewer lines and below bridges I hit the jackpot of little houses. Windows, enough wardrobe space to satiate my shopping addiction and heck even a balcony! It was a match made in heaven. I knew then and there I'd sign the lease in blood if the situation called for it.

So a proud lease owner, I settled into my cosy abode the next day. Making use of every type of cleaner known to man I erased any remnants of the previous owner and even eliminated every radioactive life form that had spread thinly across the space.

But unknown to me a source of great annoyance was waiting. Biding its chance till it could spring upon me and scare the living daylights out of me. And it made it's appearance promptly next morning.

A bell, that sang an eclectic mix of Hindi  trucking songs, intermittently throwing hisses and static my way. Oh the tragedy! You cannot image the terror. 

I sprang out of bed, my fingers searching for a makeshift  weapon to protect myself. It was only the maid, and it was only the bell.

It's been over a year in this flat and I can assure you that bells like that don't grow on you. You don't get used to it and you don't begin to enjoy it. In fact, it's like repeatedly having a the scab torn off a wound. It festers and becomes worse.

Driven to the edge of insanity, I have been forced to look high and low for the power point, so I can dismember the bell that now is the sound track to most of my nightmares. But it's a cunning rival. Always hidden. Always missing. 

And over the span of the year, it has bred. Little spawns have cropped up all over the neighbourhood, screeching their own tracks through the night as I continue to sit defenseless in my flat with paper-thin walls. 

So, I now am the girl who embraces power cuts. For when it's pitch black and I'm all alone, I know the bell won't ring. It just can't. And at that thought, the corners of my mouth begin quivering. Ever so slightly. There's a smile rising from my gut and it can't wait to surface.

A Bottle of Courage

It’s taken me years and a spoilt liver to realise that I never wanted to get over you. I always wanted to stay your lover. The hickies you so loving lay on my bare skin might have faded but my fingers still search for the slight bruise. It’s taken my deathbed to show me that our love is eternal. It’s taken a lifetime without you to not be afraid anymore and say that I stopped living the day you stopped breathing.

The moment is still clearly etched in my brain. You were lying still on the floor, your back to me, as a pool of blood began to sprawl outwards. I never wanted to kill you; I just wanted to stop you. I saw you that day with a suitcase in hand, ready to leave me for another man, a real man and I panicked. I saw in the bundle you had packed, flashes of the life we would never have. I remembered the names for children we had decided together as we lay entwined in bed and all I could think of were the unborn foetuses that we never would have a chance to nurture. I must have been hallucinating, for I can swear that your blood ran along the contours their little feet would have made on our floor. But the floor of just bricks and steel, it never really had a chance to become a home.

Ironically, even over your dead body, the wind chime you had hung played musically with my feelings. There was guilt, but it was overpowered by the effervescence of relief. If you had left I would have never known family dinners, I would have never known home cooked meals and instead I would have known just the panties of strange women and a venereal disease or two.

In that one moment that I struck your head with the bat we’d bought for our kids to play with, you saved me from a life of degeneration. I would have seen little and sensed little if only I had missed your head and you had swiftly run away. It might surprise you and if you had known maybe you might not have wanted to leave, but I remember when we bought the bat.

It was a week after our marriage, a hurried affair much like our courtship had been. For me you were a girl who could tolerate me and for you I was nothing like your ex-boyfriend. It was a match made in heaven. You thought I needed repair, I never did understand what made you feel I was broken in the first place. But after the first time you led me to your bed and let me explore you between the sheets, I was ready to ditch the truth and say I was broken just to keep you around.

It was a good few months when you first came into my life. Your excitement was infectious and I was interested not only your negligee but also of the long talks that you engaged me in. My world of books had till that point permitted little time for human interaction. Your destiny brought you to me like a much needed bookmark. Coincidentally, the bookmark you gave me was the first and last I ever owned. I never did finish the book I had left in it.

I want you to know that it wasn’t rage that made me strike you, it was compassion. I wanted for you to hear what I had to say and since you stole the literary world for me, I did it the only human way you taught me to; through physical contact.

Your death meant I was ostracised. Those dinner friends you had invited no longer gave me a reason to use the fancy cutlery we had picked out. It was never my in-laws on the other side of the phone. Even the dog you had insisted we adopt, found solace in the life of a stray. The black mutt ran off into a dark night and I never saw him again. I could have stopped him, but I had you and he didn’t matter.

It was about that time that I had to choose between cigarettes and alcohol. I had read that both were powerful intoxicants who could grant you glimpses of the life you wanted. Since my father had died of cancer I naturally gravitated towards alcohol. First it was an innocent glass or two. They made dinner seem more bearable since my cooking didn’t match up to yours and indeed even the simplest of the dishes I attempted were terrible.

Alcohol also facilitated conversations and conversations I did have. For a long time I thought I had got loony and I was talking to myself, but then the truth dawned on me. I was talking to you, for you had never left, I had stopped you. Alcohol was the bottle of courage that an introvert like me had always needed.

Your replies were always just silence, nothing more and nothing less. Although, I hadn’t expected it, your quietness made me angsty. Many times there was a growing agitation in my mind and to forget that I upped my dosage. If you ask me, I think you’d better be able to mark out the point when I graduated from few glasses to few bottles since you never did drink at any of those instances.

I guess your silence made me wonder whether you were unhappy that I had stopped you, for you never did speak about the children that you wanted and you never did unpack that suitcase. It just sat beside the door for all my years tormenting me.

Now, I’m just a beaten down man who pukes up blood, that all I have left. But I feel if there’s a world after this, then I’m heading your way. This time don’t answer. Just stay silent if you’ll have me once I’m there. 

Cleaning out the Closet

Today, I was cleaning out the closet. Behind the usual pile of humdrum episodes, I found hanging in a corner, wrapped in muslin cloth, our memories. Yes, the ones we'd woven together. It had been years, but the hauntingly beautiful sensations still cloaked it. The way you looked at me. The way I left. The warmth in my stomach.

I felt it, in that moment. The dull ache in my heart that no  amount of antacid seemed to remedy. The lump in my throat and the emptiness of my hands. I reached out and unwrapped those sensations, my fingers trembling as they touched the raw happiness that ran through them. Your hands entwined with mine, your heartbeat steady below my palm, your eyes on mine. It was all there.

I still remember the day I met you. A chance occurrence. Never in a million years would I have turned around and placed my heart in your hands. You were nothing like the man of my dreams. You were tall, too tall. You were difficult to read, and I wanted honesty. You were undependable at a time when all I needed was home. Why would I ever turn around? But I did. I did again and again, until I began turning only so that I could see you again.

I withdraw my fingers from the cloth. A thin invisible cut runs through my palm. It's almost like a paper cut, but it hurts a lot worse. I head to the kitchen to make some coffee and bread. Why leave my heart and stomach both hurting? I look at the toaster, the inferno, and the sweat scent of cinnamon covered french toasts hits my nostril.

You always did promise me breakfasts. For a boy who claimed to make the world's best french toasts, I sure did go a lot of mornings without any food at all. You stocked nothing in your fridge, nothing in your shelves, but then again, as long as you were there I couldn't care less.

All I got was some popcorn once. It wasn't salted. It was plain, simple, much like our love affair. But sometimes I wonder whether all we had needed was some drama? Would you have stuck around if I had created a few alternate personalities? Would you have fought for either of them? Or would they all have been left, as lonely as me, watching time and love pass them by?

Maybe I should have. In these coffee-for-one moments, some company would have been good. Without them here, my needless whispering confuses people. My single spoon, single fork and single heartbeat can't keep the cold out.

I look at my reflection in the clear glass of my kitchen window. There's a face there I don't recognise. There's no smile playing on those lips, no ideas mischievously dancing in those eyes. There's just a face. The girl staring back at me, she's just two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Nothing more, nothing less.

Shaky Starts

Sometimes in our drive to be the best version of ourselves we forget to take a step back and revel in what we are. We look at our reflection in the mirror, but don't really see what's smart, what's sharp, what's important, and what's great. We forget to be thankful for the little joys and we forget to do the things we love.

Writing is the greatest love affair of my life. People, situations, places. Things are always changing. Last year was all about transitions. I was trying to find my place after starting of at a new job in a new city, and I must admit I was swept away. From learning how to live independently to figuring out a billion technical tools and terms. There hasn't been a single, dull moment.

However, my whirlwind romance with financial writing has meant that other things on my to-do list, have been placed away in the attic and forgotten. No more. I've decided to take charge again. Bring back what was fashionable before share graphs and balance sheets. 

So no more pausing. No  more spaces. It's time to write.