A Crowded Family

It was a bright day, they say, when I was born. Cool yet bright, comfortable to the senses of the human body. Although, I was brought into the world in an air-conditioned room, and would have been done so on any other day too, but I feel the comfort of that particular day symbolises the easy life I was supposed to live. Unlike my parents who saw poverty to the level when they ate water, rice and salt with green chillies and lime on the sides to bring in the spice because there were no lentils in the house. When my mother had told me about this fat-free diet of theirs, I had tried eating the same, back in my hostel room on a hot summer day, and believe me it was delicious. It was delicious and I was overwhelmed with the frugality that poverty brings to people along with the struggle of each passing day.

With exactly similar thoughts, I was on my morning jog, when I came across a pond with water so still it might as well have insects’ colonies on the green layer of algae and leaves. It looked like this

I looked at the quite calmness of the pond and the drooping trees around it. But before I could turn away to continue the jog, I saw an old woman in tattered sarees appear on the brown slope you see in the photograph. She came to the slab and stared into the water with her hands behind her back. Since there was no one around and with my unsubstantiated fear of her committing a suicide, I decided to go to the slope with a hope that the presence of another soul in the vicinity might make her rethink her decision of jumping into the water.

It took me four minutes to find my way to her and when I reached, I sat down on the slope, ignored by her. The absence of even a twitch on her body made me feel unacknowledged. So, I sat there, unable to think of anything but my noble work of saving someone’s life by just being present in a probable scene of suicide. It was a long time before she spoke

• Do you have a brother or a sister, son?

…

As a kid, it always bothered me why I did not have a sibling. Every one in the world had at least one brother or sister, except of course me. Was it the lack of financial resources that forced my parents to stop at me? I could never gather the courage to ask them. And then, one day, I met her. I would have been in the fourth year of primary school when her family moved into the house next to ours in the post office colony. She was two years older than me but looked younger and more than everything else, she was also the only child of her parents. Five months hence, we were good friends because I remember the following conversation –

• What do you want to become when you grow up? (She asked)
• I want to become Daddy.
• Nice thought. Why?
• I want to be strong and solve all the problems of the world like he does. But I will have many more children.
• How many children do you want to have?
• Four, I guess. You?

We were arranging stones to form patterns in the joint garden in the backyard of our houses which was covered with a bed of short grass. It was early in the morning, must have been eight, with clouds covering the sky and the smell of impending rain.

• I want to have three children. Four will crowd the house.
• I will have a big house, very big one.
• If I have a big house, I will have a dog, too. Three children and a dog.
• Oh I will also have a dog.

It started to drizzle lightly, more of occasional tiny drops. I continued –

• Why do you think we don’t have any brother or sister?
• I think our parents don’t love each other so much. I read somewhere that parents of a single kid do not get along.
• No. (I shouted, gleefully) My parents are always together. And they laugh together and watch TV together and cook together.

She heard me with full attention and then looked up. I followed her and looked up into the clouds. I saw a rain drop approaching my eye and just in time, I was able to shut my eyes and the drop splashed against the closed eyelid and broke into tinier drops. When I opened my eyes, I saw her staring up with her mouth wide open and tongue stretched out. I did the same and we tasted rain and childhood, together. In that moment, we did not need anyone else, brother or sister, but each other and the dark, thundering clouds.

…

The clouds thrashed upon us, a loud thunder.

• No aunty. I do not have any. Why do you ask this?

In this two lined conversation she did not even move her gaze and kept staring at the pond. She looked possessed with memories of lives seen and missed.

• Are you married?
• No.
• So, you stay alone?
• Yes.
• How easy it is?
• I never thought of it. It’s easy, I guess.
• You guess?
• Sometimes, during long holidays, I do feel the need of a company. I feel the need to be with someone with whom I can talk and share stuffs, you know.

She smiled. I saw the wrinkles on her face shift in patterns specific to happiness one derives from the memories of the past. She turned towards me and kept smiling. I looked into her eyes, afraid.

…

• Yes, there is a small dust particle there.
• Please do something.
• Well let me hold your eyelid. Give me your kerchief.

I blew into her kerchief, and put it on her left eye. I did that multiple times and asked

• Is it okay now?

She blinked her eyes four to five times.

• Yes, gone. Thank you.

I had just entered my high school and she was about to leave for her college in Delhi. She had taken history as her major and I was about to embark on the journey to the elite institutes of technology. One evening, our parents had gone to an event organised to honour a colleague of our fathers. I had decided to stay back and study and she had decided to stay back and sleep.

Few moments after our parents had left for the event, I heard music coming from her house. She was playing one of her mix-tapes on the cassette player that her boyfriend had gifted her. She hid it well from her parents and found ways to stay alone and play it. It was as usual The Beatles’ Revolver and Rubber Soul. Listening to whatever she listened, I had started to like ‘Michelle’ and ‘Norwegian Wood’. After a while, I decided to take a break and go to her place. I knocked at her door and the music stopped. She opened the door –

• Again? (I asked)
• Yes, again. (She replied)
• Let’s go out for a walk.
• Okay.

In a minute, we were in the safe roads of our colony, under the stars.

• Are you going to forget me once you leave Jabalpur?
• Obviously not, you idiot. I am going to come home after every term- that’s thrice a year. And I am going to write letters, of course.
• You know, I am joining piano classes next month?
• That’s so cool. So the next time I am home, you’ll play for me, won’t you?
• Only if I learn to play by then.
• You will. You’re an intelligent guy. Even more than him.
• That boyfriend of yours – I like him, too. He is a nice guy. Although I have never met him but the way you talk about him, he seems like a person I’d get along with.
• Yes, he is.
• So? You’re going to have three children with him and a dog? (I asked, smiling.)
• It’s too soon to talk about such things. We are still kids, you know.
• What’s his name, by the way? You have never told me his name.

…

It was next year that I came to know that the cassette player she claimed had been gifted by her boyfriend was, in fact, bought by her. I decided not to talk about it.

• All these people are against me. I’m telling you. They think I imagine things.
• No, you don’t. I know you never lie.
• They say he is not real. But he is. Here, he kissed me here.

She pressed on her lips with her fingers so hard that her nails pierced into the delicate skin and a droplet of blood oozed out of her lower lip.

• You’re bleeding. You don’t have to prove me anything. I know he is real. Okay, let’s do one thing. Let’s go and meet him – you, me and him – and we will have a great time together.
• But he is in Delhi.
• Of course he is.
• Are you also doubting me? You are like them, too. Like everyone! (She shouted, crying.)

We were in the Madan Mahal fort. It was our secret getaway when we wanted to just be with each other, away from everything.

• Come here.

I pulled her towards me and hugged her tight. I couldn’t help but lift my left hand and slowly touch her head and slide my hand over her long hair with affection. She was a sister I never had, a friend I can never have, a lover I still crave for, a kid I always want to have – she was everything to me.

• I believe you. And you know what, when you both marry and have three children and a dog, I will bring my four children to your house and we will have a gala time together.
• That would be eleven people and a dog in one house. It would be so crowded. (She said, still sobbing, and hugging me)
• Well, we can kill the dog.
• Yeah well, we can kill you too.

We walked down the mountainous fort and back to the place, where once, we had made patterns with stones. When I came back and took off my shirt, I saw a maroon spot of dried blood on my shirt’s right shoulder. I felt uneasy.

…

I felt uneasy looking at her smiling eyes, because behind them, I sensed the presence of years of extreme pain endured.

• What are you doing here, aunty?
• My son died here.

…

I got admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her college – Gargi – was very close to my campus. I was extremely happy to move to the same city as hers. Two days before I was about to leave for Delhi, she jumped into the Hauz Khas lake, very early in the morning. The news reached us one day before I was about to leave for Delhi when early morning walkers found her floating body and her college administration called the STD booth of our colony.

Two days before. Early in the morning. I was probably deep in sleep, snoring, when water found its way through her nostrils and mouth and food pipe and wind pipe and filled up her lungs and stomach and ears. I was probably having dinner the night before and watching a movie on the TV when she had scratched her head and decided to end her life. Schizophrenia and Depression, was what they called she suffered from.

But I know what killed her. It was not the disease but loneliness. Loneliness and constant fights her parents used to have. Poor child, my mother would say, when the shoutings and the screams pierced the walls of our houses and reached our living room. She always wanted someone to share her life with. I was there, I was always there but she needed someone closer. The theory she said about parents of single kids – she had not read it anywhere but experienced in her very house.

I wish I had kissed the blood on her lips that day. I wish my admission date was two days earlier so that I’d have met her the day she was about to decide to end her life.

…

• I am sorry.
• No. It’s okay. It has been ten years.
• How did it happen? If you don’t mind telling me.
• He jumped into this pond. We never figured out why. One day before, we had gone for a movie and he was happy as always. We never really found out. He had left a letter, though, which said – “In the next birth, I will be born twice, to you mother. I will split my soul and will be born twice as brothers or sisters.”
• Was he the only child?
• Yes.

…

It was still afternoon and the clouds had gathered. My parents consoled me and asked me not to cry. Sweat rolled down my cheeks. Something heavy curled up inside me. I emerged out of my house and went to the backyard. The grasses were taller now. I waited there, and waited. When the first drop fell on my arm, I looked up. With my mouth wide open, I tasted the rain drops. And in that moment, I knew she was there with me, holding my hand, also looking up with her mouth open.