The Wall - part-2

Please click here to read Chapter-1

Chapter-2

Ajay could not believe what he had just witnessed. He took a step back and gestured Sanjana to come silently and see the horror for herself. They stood at the entrance of the backyard and just stared at each other in shock. Facing the wall, Mrs. Rajeshwari continued the conversation…..with imaginary Sundara Bai. Not just her voice, as Mrs. Rajeshwari switched characters, there were significant changes in her voice modulation, body language and her actions! Ajay had never seen such remarkable biological differences emerging out of the same body. Sanjana was shuddered! All these days, Sundara Bai was just a fictional character. And they did not get the slightest hint of this horror for two long months! They were dumbfounded of what had become of Mrs. Rajeshwari. 

It took a week for the psychiatrist to understand what had happened to Mrs. Rajeshwari. After knowing her early days at Bombay, assessing her medical history, her daily activities and with inputs from Ajay, psychiatrist concluded the case.

Dissociative identity disorder.

The Psychiatrist explained his mother’s case to Ajay.

“DID or multiple personality disorder is a mental disorder characterized by at least two distinct state of being in same person. Presentations, however, are very much variable between the characters.”

“But doctor, how could my mother….”

“There are lot of reasons why this can happen to a person. I believe, in your mother’s case, it is depression. Prolonged suppression of her feelings from a very young age had already disturbed her mind to a very large extent. And the loneliness that she experienced here worked as a catalyst. A tiny spark by Shanta Bai, your maid, is all it took for her to create Sundara Bai in her mind and eventually manifest out of her own body.” 

“Doctor, Can she come out of this?”

The doctor tried to be as assertive as possible.

“If the mind can do this to your own body, it also suggests that there is positively the same potential for healing… Because they are exhibited out of the same mind”.

“Please tell me that my mom will get back to normal”

“Well, most people do. But the timeframe cannot be ascertained specifically. Few get well within months and a few others take years! For the treatment, we’ll put her through a couple of therapies - psychotherapy will improve her mental well-being. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) which will help her combat the triggers that lead to the manifestation of Sundara Bai. And with a few medications, of course. But most importantly, the supportive care from you is very vital for her wellbeing”.

In the therapy room, where Mrs. Rajeshwari opened up slowly about her loneliness, how it affected her and how she buried her feelings deep inside her so that her son is not distressed, Ajay was standing outside, haplessly listening to the words of love his mother was showering on him even from her subconscious mind. Sanjana’s silence was a reflection of her regretful acknowledgement of what she did or did not do. When his mother talked about her suicidal ideations, he broke down. That was the moment of realization for him; that moment of epiphany which led him to get to the right perspective of what his mother actually longed for. At that very moment, he decided to do all he can to get his mother back to her usual self.

Over a period of time, the therapy sessions started showing results. The medication helped her increase the uptake of serotonin in the brain. She got back to her senses slowly. She started listening to her favorite bhajans. Her medication course was finally over and her circadian clock started functioning at normal schedule.  It took a profusion of time and effort for Mrs. Rajeshwari to come out of it. Sanjana resigned her high paying job and diverted her entire energy and attention for mother-in-law’s well-being. Ajay was equally getting involved in his mother’s well-being.

After a long time, a terrible constraint seemed to settle down. Without quite knowing what had happened, Mrs. Rajeshwari came back to life. Everything had changed. Yet nothing seemed so apparent except the wall at the backyard. Ajay knew that the wall would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Epilogue

Two years later….

The monsoon had just stopped with a mix of burst and lull. It was a very pleasant evening and the verandah was flocked with school kids taking mathematics tuitions from Mrs. Rajeshwari. The cool breeze that blew brought in a wave of freshness and filled the entire verandah. Along with the wind, a book glided smoothly and halted in front of the century teacher with its pages open. She picked it up, glanced through the content and saw the name on the book.

“Tarun, come here. You have done this math all wrong”

“Yes maam”

“If Sundarabai had ten mangoes with her and she gave two to her neighbor, how many are left with her?” 

The insidious disease which slowly poisoned Mrs. Rajeshwari’s life was insanity – Whether it was the insanity of her own delusion or the insanity of snobbery by Ajay and Sanjana is debatable. Neither Ajay’s wild consumerism nor Sanjana’s subjugation helped Mrs. Rajeshwari. Unfortunately, this abandonment of the parents at their declining years has become a savage indictment of almost every modern household of contemporary India. 

Whether it is unreasonable for parents to expect care and compassion in their twilight years or parenthood ought not to be regarded as a liability that children have to repay – Is for us to decide

The wall - A short story

Prologue:

“It is very difficult for me to be alone for an entire day. Let me at least teach mathematics to children in the evenings. This severe headache is because I am giving absolutely no work to my brain” 

Mrs. Rajeshwari spoke in almost muted voice. 

“Mom, it is all in your mind. Just get out of the mindset that you are alone. Trust me, your headache will vanish. There are thousands of mothers who are alone and they do not complain. I am meddled with my own problems in and outside of this house. Do you want me to quit job and be with you just because you feel lonely? You are alone for a couple of hours for a day. But you are not outcast or abandoned…. Are you? After all, what have we not done to you? There are hundreds of those Bhajan CDs that you like. There is TV. You have newspaper, novels and what not. I dunno what is stopping you from exploring all these” bellowed Ajay, who was in a hurry. As he picked up his laptop bag and was about to leave, he felt that the holler was unnecessary. He felt pity and tried to console his mother.

“Maa… Sanjana has already cooked breakfast and lunch. Eat on time, take your tablets without fail and take a power nap. Watch TV for some time. She will be back by 5PM. You’ll be alright mom. Don’t think too much” 

He kissed his mother good bye, got up and walked out of the house. Sanjana was already waiting near the car.

“What is it”? She admonished

“Arghhh! The same old make-believe solitary confinement of mother”

Sanjana gave an unpleasantly prominent look. Ajay tried to ignore and a few seconds later the car zoomed out of the gate and the couple left for their daily chores….

Chapter-1

For Mrs. Rajeshwari, life had turned one-eighty after her retirement. Her husband’s early demise had forced her to take the lead at a young age. On one hand, after decades of serving as a high school teacher, shaping other kids’ lives, taking responsibilities and driving her own family, she was expecting a sense of relief that she will get to live the life that she wants to. On the other hand, her own son and daughter in law were not realizing that she had just retired from work, not from life. They made it implicit that she had struggled all these years and now that she has retired, all she needs is rest.  Not that they were apathetic. They took her for periodic medical check-ups, never forgot her birthday, facilitated her pension and gave it to her without fail. She had the luxury of TV, internet and so on. Sanjana took care of all the cooking at home. Shanta Bai visited every day to clean and do the dishes. But involuntarily, they were not receptive to her genuine feelings!  So even beyond all these comforts, there was a sense of privation which always bothered Mrs. Rajeshwari – Loneliness.

Back in Mumbai, where she had spent the major part of her life, she had so many friends. After her husband’s early demise, she had moved to a house in Bandra west. R N Podar school where she was a teacher, was just 10 minute walk from her house. In the evenings, the verandah of her house was packed with kids. She was a brilliant mathematics tutor. She had that zeal to teach mathematics to kids in simple methods. Students she tutored consistently scored high marks in mathematics. Among the kids who secured a hundred on hundred in mathematics in Maharashtra board exams, majority were Mrs. Rajeshwari’s students. Vernacular newspapers called her century teacher. At the prime of her life, she was energetic, lively and led a meaningful life. 

Sanjana, a bank manager now, was once her student. By virtue of her profession, there were frequent transfers. And this time, she was transferred to Nashik. So Ajay had to resign his IT job in Mumbai and had joined the only software company in Nashik amidst the wine and other small scale industries. Without an option, Mrs. Rajeshwari too unwillingly had to relocate to Nashik. That is where her age of loneliness crept in.

For years, the fast paced life of Mumbai had pushed Mrs. Rajeshwari to limits. The city offered a frenzied spiral of dreams; it had given a new life to her; it had given her success and fame. Her burgeoning dreams were synonymous with the city’s haste itself. But Nashik was totally conflicting with what she had experienced in Mumbai for 30+ years. For unexplained reasons, she just could not embrace living in Nashik; not because of its tempered lifestyle, but because she started to experience a sense of solitude. Within months after her arrival in Nashik, she had developed the perception of being alone and isolated. With nobody to even talk to, locked in between the four walls was something that had disturbed her to a very large extent. 

The doorbell rang and she was sure that it is Shanta Bai.

“Come in Shanta Bai… At least you are there to talk to me. Why are you so late today?

“Arrey Maaji, in the next road, just behind your house, there is a lady; just like you Maaji. Husband died, Son and daughter in America. She had arthritis. So they operated and they put some metal knee for her Maaji. Some modern operation which cost her lakhs of rupees. But the surgery was not successful only. Her knee pain increased after operation. Now she cannot even walk outside."

Paap teni! She was talking to me about her pain and loneliness Maaji. That’s why I got late”

Instantly, there was a ray of hope, a sort of glimmer in Mrs. Rajeshwari’s face. She imagined the neighborhood lady's and her own life to be like two peas in a pod. She thought that if she can befriend the lady that Shanta Bai is talking about, it’ll definitely help both kill their boredom. She thanked Shanta Bai that the almighty himself has sent this opportunity and asked for more details.

“What is her name?”

“Sundara Bai”

“Where exactly is her house?”

“Very Next Street. Exactly behind your house maaji. If you go to your balcony and she comes to hers, you both can actually talk to each other. Ha ha ha”

This idea appealed to Mrs. Rajeshwari. She gave this a lot of thought overnight and decided that she herself should strike a conversation after Sanjana and Ajay left for office. Even the thought of getting to talk to someone sparked a sense of excitement in her. She could not sleep the whole night. The next day morning, as usual, Sanjana and Ajay left for office. Shanta Bai came and finished her chores and left for the day. Mrs. Rajeshwari came to her balcony and stood there, facing the seven feet wall. She waited until she heard a feeble noise. She spoke in a loud voice:

“Hello, Sundara bai… I am Rajeshwari. Your neighbor”

“Hello. Are you talking to me? How do you know my name?”

A 30 second pause. *What if Sundara Bai gets back inside and fails to hear what I am saying. Oh no! This should not happen* Mrs. Rajeshwari raised her voice as much as she could.

“Shanta Bai told me about you. I am alone at home. Are you alone too?”

 “Hmmm. In today’s world, only people who are aged like me and you will sit at home”

Both of them laughed.

“Did you have your lunch, Sundara Bai?”

“Hmmm. In the beginning, I used to eat whenever I was hungry. Nowadays, I am eating to just keep myself alive. Doctor has told me that eating on time will help you get good sleep. So I forcefully eat something”

“Yeah. Same here. Eating just to be alive”. How many of you stay here”?

And so started their friendship. Over a period of time, they became very good friends. They enjoyed their varied conversations. They spoke at length about their families, their childhood and their college days, their post marriage tantrums, about their responsibilities as parents and how their kids had gotten busy in their own lives abandoning them. Their mutual conversation eased their pain and touched their mental wounds with a warm and tender acquaintance. For them, it was not just exchange of words. It was an everyday colloquium. At times, they forgot the seven feet wall between them and the tête-à-tête continued for hours together. This everyday conversation was the medicine that kept Mrs. Rajeshwari and Sundarabai alive and away from their otherwise secluded lives. 

A couple of months passed by. Ajay and Sanjana did take notice that the mother had almost stopped whining. Mrs. Rajeshwari informed Ajay and Sanjana of her shenanigans with Sundarabai at the backyard. Ajay thanked god that the rewarding effects of this talk became a compelling incentive for his mom to stop being lonely. He told his mother that she can talk to her neighbor at her will and that he or Sanjana would never object it. He also promised to check if he can do something to the wall so that they can have direct face to face conversations. Over months, it improved the psychological and social functioning of his mother on its own. In other words, it was a natural recovery for Mrs. Rajeshwari from the solitude.

It was Mrs. Rajeshwari’s birthday. Like every year, they decided to make her birthday, a special day for her. Ajay and Sanjana thought of surprising mother by coming home early, celebrating her birthday and taking her out for dinner. They left their offices early, purchased cake, sweets and savories from the famous store and reached home. As always, Ajay opened the doors with his keys. As he entered, he heard Mrs. Rajeshwari’s feeble voice busy in a conversation. He suddenly realized it could be Sundarabai, love thy neighbor, who was a blessing in disguise. A thought spontaneously came to his mind; Inviting Sundarabai home on mother’s birthday would make both really happy and that it would also put an end to their month long acquaintance. He thought this is also the best opportunity to thank Sundara Bai.

As he moved towards the backyard with his mind reasoning on how to strike a conversation with SundaraBai, he noticed something very unusual. That strange, bizarre and a totally unexpected scene freaked him out. He halted abruptly. 

“I tell you Sundarabai, you should really visit my Bombay once…”

“I like the way you say ‘My Bombay’. Rajeshwari, you miss Bombay very much. Don’t you?”

“Yes. Every day! I wish you could walk. I would have asked Ajay to take both of us to Bombay one day”

A chill ran down Ajay’s spine. Facing the seven feet wall, Mrs. Rajeshwari, herself was doing the two sided conversation. There was no Sundarabai in real. Sundarabai was a character created by Mrs. Rajeshwari in her mind.

… To be continued

Love, life and other impediments - Part-2

Please click here to read part-1

I could not fathom why a police officer would call me on my mobile phone. If it was any official matter, my legal advisor would inform me of the forthcomings. Why would the police have to chase me; that too with an arrest warrant? I sensed something was fishy. But I could not understand what it was.

“Officer, My name is Samarth Irrinjalakuda, I am the…..” Oh Forget it. “I don’t understand all this. What have I done to get arrested?”

An accompanying constable spoke “Saar, you don’t see TV ah? Your girlfriend is there no. She has made all your personal life public saar. Better means you only…”

“Hmmmm…” The police officer gave the constable a blatant look. The constable, with an implicit gaze, stopped talking.

“Officer, can you please tell me what is happening?”

“Mr. Samarth, your girlfriend has taken your extra marital affair to media; the taped call recordings and dirty talk, pillow talk or whatever you call it; your sexist conversations, everything is being aired on Times Today news channel since noon. She has also produced before the media, recordings of your anti-feminist views on sex, your cynical views on women centric society, etc.

WHAT?

Are you really surprised, Mr Samarth? With my experience in cybercrime and CID, I could confidently say that those recordings were not forged. It was not you. Really?

Silence

Mr. Samarth?

Silence

Constable spoke again in a varied tone “Hehehehe.. Saar… in his silence wonly answer is there no saar”

I was totally flabbergasted and couldn’t utter a word. After a long pause, the police officer spoke again.

“Mr. Samarth, there is lot of furor out there. The women welfare associations have gathered demanding your arrest. It is quite a commotion in front of the police station. Since evening, all major national media is reporting your story. Social Media is abuzz with posts against you. The hashtag #HangSamarth is still trending on twitter. There is widespread protest in the national capital too. We have orders from the CMO to nab you. Women and child development minister Monica Gandhi has ordered an inquiry”.

His words terrified me. With a fretting temperament, I opened twitter app on my mobile phone. He was true. I had 6730 notifications and my handle had 4500+ mentions. I did not dare click on the hashtag. Fear crept inside me like the ghost patterns did to a horror movie watcher. For a moment, I thought of the consequences and I was hounded by the fear. I had no idea what to say.

Police officer continued. “As your well-wisher, I can give you a serious advice. Avoid media confrontations completely as much as possible. Talk to your legal advisor immediately and try for an out of court settlement with your girlfriend. If you go to court, media will create sensational news out of nothing, your family will be dragged into this unnecessarily, your wife will come into scene and then it leads to alimony and what not. These will rip you apart Mr. Samarth. I hope you know what happened to film star Rithvick Rohan in Konkona Rounit’s case”.

Oblivious to Tania taking it to television and the chaos that ensued, I tried to connect the dots. But everything seemed like against the odds. I could think of just two things. Was there someone else who was playing the cards from behind? I had no idea. Were Tania and my wife both involved in this? That seemed very unlikely. Probably Anita could be as clueless as I am right now. Suddenly something inside my mind was wide awake. It didn’t take a genius inside me to guess that. Now it was all in place. Oh dear lord! I just couldn’t fathom what mess I was into.

A.N.I.T.A. is T.A.N.I.A.

I recalled all the conversations with Tania. Salman Rushdie, euthanasia, medieval economy, matriarchy – all were topics of my interest! It was a perfectly planned decoy! Anita had executed the plan so flawlessly that I was just wheedling the response tailored to her trap. And I couldn’t realize a wee bit. A chill ran down my spine. As the halogens of the Police patrol shot two separate beams into the road’s slowly settling dust, I was confounded with what had just happened in my life.

When I first met Anita at MIT sailing pavilion, we both were students. I was at the Sloan School of management and she was pursuing her masters at MIT School of engineering. She was an impeccably beautiful girl with a brilliant academic record. After her bachelors from NIT Kurukshetra, she was pursuing her Masters in Structural Engineering, a domain which itself had inclined towards male dominion. She was the perfect concoction of beauty and brains I had ever seen so far, in a girl. I had fallen in love with her instantaneously at our very first meet. After my convocation, I had proposed her and she had accepted it. As soon as we both came to India, we spoke to our parents and they overwhelmingly accepted our love.

Just like me, even she wanted to rise and shine in her domain. Back in India, her project on constructing energy efficient buildings was critically acclaimed. Her design had won ASEAN center of energy green building award for 2016. A white paper “Structures with seismic viscoelastic dampers and energy dissipation devices” published by her had given her international recognition. Many state governments invited her to be the designer of their new construction projects. Her rising fame was recognized by the United Nations and she got a call by the UN Secretary General to serve on the United Nations’ High Level Advisory Group on Sustainable structures (HLAG-SS). For this, she had to be in Belgrade, Serbia for a period of three years.

Anita’s rising career aspiration was countered by my ego and my parents’ social norms. My parents wanted a bahu just to keep the family bloodline from extinction. Nothing more. But Anita always argued that India had the most overeducated wives in India and that if something that had to be changed, it was my parents’ attitude. My parents always saw her as a girl from middle-class family who did not understand the north Indian family dynamics. To be frank, I too was intimidated about her success. I could not get accustomed to the fact that she was professionally more successful than me. This always enraged Anita. She wanted to go to Serbia. But my father believed that daughter-in-law staying away from home for three years was a sort of premonition. And my mother always blamed her for breach of harmony at home.

The existence of this patriarchy in my family was something I had hidden from her even after marriage and this enraged her. She often felt cheated. Owing to patriarchal stress, even though I wanted to help her, I did not. Succumbing to family pressure, I could not keep even a single of the armada of promises I had made her. Whenever this came up to be discussed, I was totally taking my parents’ side and worse, I was always going against her. I tried to convince her; but she refused and was hell bent on going to Serbia.

My father and I discussed a wicked idea of forcefully putting my child in her womb, so that she is left with no options but to stay back. What followed it was obvious. A few months later, she told me that she was gestating. I was so meddled with the plan’s success, that I did not even make an attempt to congratulate her or even feel great about the news. Now, for all three of us, she was just a medium of fulfillment. More than the happy news, we celebrated that we overthrew her; we partied that her professional career was coming to an end. We rejoiced at her helplessness.

By the time the baby was born, her professional career was totally doomed. She came back to my home, only to be ill-treated by me and my parents. Doctors termed it as postnatal depression and told her it was very common after delivery. The more she resisted, the more she was tormented by us. She couldn’t manage without popping 2 anti-depressant pills a day. I made sure that media did an extensive coverage of what had happened to the most famous structural engineer this country had ever seen. Although, no one got close to the reality, every media house ran its own version of her doomed career. Anita’s condition had disrupted her family’s reputation too. Her sabotaged career aspirations were quoted as examples in the TED talks on Women’s career. For outside world, she suffered from postnatal depression of level 3 severity. But in actual, it was something else; something very different and something more intense.

As the jeep entered police station with the siren ON, hundreds of activists pounced on the jeep, screaming and raising slogans against me. One woman I caught my eyes with, took a rotten tomato and threw at my face. From being a lover, being heartbroken to being a felon, I was in a varied mood within last 8 hours. As the police officer escorted me inside, I was falling deep down, preparing myself for the long wait. I wiped off the rotten tomatoes along with the anticipation from my face. I knew my life had slipped very deep to insurmountable levels of despair. I knew my life will never be the same again!

I was charged for sedition, hatred speech and acts intended to outrage the feelings of women. The case was running in court. The same media houses which I had asked to cover Anita’s story, covered my case with specifics of every hearing in detail. One day, out of the blues, Tania had absconded and the hence case was dropped. But the damage had already been done. I could not think of undoing it even in my wildest dreams. The same media which had assisted me to put an end to Anita’s career had branded me the ‘Bad man of the Corporate World’.

Outside the court, the police escorted me to the jeep. I had clear instructions by the police to avoid media. I saw Anita at the far end of the court’s corridor handing over something to another person. As the jeep turned right and approached the corridor, I caught a glimpse of the other person. My eyes instantly recognized her. She was the same woman at the police station, who threw rotten tomatoes at me! As the jeep increased its turbulence and vanished into the traffic, I saw the woman doing a Namaste, with Anita clasping a 2000 Rs note in between her palms. Standing next to the woman, smirking, was my car driver.

Epilogue:

True realization of self in a man’s life arises when he encounters something in his life that staggers him into the need for self-examination and self-explanation. In the conference hall, I was sitting alone, at the far end of the corner, in the last row, which was away from the entrance. On the podium, one of the board of director was reading from the script:

“On behalf of the board of directors of Accel Ventures Inc., I take immense pleasure in announcing that Mrs. Anita Irrinjalakuda, will take over the responsibility of Chairman and Managing director of Accel ventures. The members, the statutory auditors and the shareholders of this fifteen million dollar enterprise have unanimously……”

As she entered the stage with her daughter, she threw an askew glance at me with a malicious grin. She had given me a taste of my own medicine, with a dose I would remember for the rest of my life.