Boundaries
It is true that my attention has regularly resided in the far-off place where ‘lost’ exists — a location in which pandemonium dictates and the linear progression of ‘real time’ becomes just another layer in the brain’s palimpsest of imagination and memory.
— Caryl Pagel, from “Lost in Thought,”
When I found out, I felt a personal responsibility; like I could have done something to stop the chain of events from unfolding as they did. Convinced her otherwise. At the very least, I would have wanted her to know that I was no better off than she.
I used to see her every day on my afternoon runs. It was the summer after I had finished my final year at university, and I had nothing much to do. The noon sun never reached its crescendo it seemed, bogged down by the constant clouds that threatened to spill over. Everything was perpetually moist. On dry days, I would have the rare pleasure of running through concrete buildings, tall green trees peeking through the grey. But more often than not, I would have to make my way over to the fifth floor of the building next door, where the make shift gym was. I chose that hour because of the comfort of anonymity, and to pass the long lazy afternoons, which crept forward at a sluggish pace. I liked having the small hall turned modest gym to myself. I wouldn’t admit it openly, but the shadows in the late evenings gave me goosebumps, put me on edge. I liked the surety of day, and besides, there was always hot lunch waiting when I got back home.
She lived on the fourth floor. I saw her when I took the stairs. Sometimes she’d be watering the plants in the corridor, and we would exchange courteous smiles. At other times, the door to her apartment would be wide open, a pair of red slippers out front. I had peeked in one time, the hall was bare. There wasn’t much to look at, nothing on the walls, which were a dull beige. In a corner of the room, there sat a small, scrawny feral lapping hungrily at the milk laid out in a sauce pan. She sat leaning against the wall, and when she glanced up, she smiled at me, beckoning. I tip toed in, so as to not disturb the kitten devouring her meal, and folded myself into a small bundle on the floor. For a while, we just sat like that, silent as the evening bled in through the windows. Maybe my perception is coloured by hindsight, but in that moment, I saw something slip off the face she wore for the rest of the world, to reveal something tragic, proud and desperate.
Another time, I heard her singing through the closed door, with a voice that could command a room full of people if she so wished. Like the monsoon clouds that would hover around for days before suddenly blowing away, I found her moody. Despite these swings, we maintained some kind of acquaintance I suppose, partially something more. Over that summer, she grew to be an enigma; someone mysterious and alluring — two words no one had ever used about me. For some reason, I never mentioned these encounters at home, though I was often unsettled by something I couldn’t put my finger on.
That was also the time when I was living with a headful of maybes, so much so that everything I wrote or said sounded uncertain; I would begin with perhaps and end my sentences with I believe or I think. My doubt was everywhere. I would wake up at dawn, the sound of a train hurtling at full speed through me. A sense of impermanence was in the weather. On one such dewy Tuesday morning, I woke up to a strong murmur. It took me some time to reorient myself and find the source. My mother had been on and off the phone for the better part of the morning, which was unusual for her. The thing about my mother is, she is a born coaxer, and a pacifist. She avoids confrontation and moves to a different terrain all together if one tried. There was no cornering her. Her usual mornings are spent hustling and bustling about, with the radio in the background.
That morning, there was a deep frown set on her forehead. She sat listening attentively for a long while, expression unchanging, clucking her tongue occasionally and finally muttered a goodbye and put down the cordless receiver. I raised my eyebrow, in question when I caught her eye. She walked to the kitchen in response and started to lay out my breakfast.
‘Ma’, I prodded, ‘is something the matter?’
In a grave voice, which was very unlike my mother’s nature or usual intonation, she narrated to me the bits of information she had accumulated.
Apparently, in the morning, on the bus that served as daily commute for the petroleum plant’s offsite, Mr Ghosh was missing. He hadn’t informed anyone of his absence, so the others had assumed he was being his tardy self and called him. When the rings went unanswered, one of officers decided to go up to the house to nudge him to hurry up. They were already pushing the traffic hour.
At this point, my mother paused. ‘Go on’, I prodded, ‘what’s the big deal ?’
‘Beta, Mr Ghosh is dead. He was found in the bathroom.’
I pursed my lips, I didn’t want to know this. I had big plans. Now this news of death would follow me all day. ‘That’s too bad ma. Did he have a heart attack? Does he work with Papa?’
I didn’t want to be morbid, but I had learned that men in their fifties dying out of the blue was not as uncommon as one might think. Our news, our gossip was filled with the news of death. Someone’s father or uncle or boy was always succumbing to fate. I didn’t understand why my mother looked particularly troubled. As far as I knew, I had never heard the departed mister’s name in the house, so he was clearly not a family friend. Guilt and annoyance coiled in my gut, winding tighter.
She sat there, opening and closing here lips a few times, like a gold fish, as if unsure of the words she was going to utter.
‘Ma, what is it ?’
She shifted in her seat and dropped her voice. ‘It’s strange. His wife didn’t ask anyone for help, didn’t even call anyone. She simply opened the door when the bell rang and informed them that her husband had fainted in the bathroom.’
My mother added after a pause, ‘Some of the women are saying she was sipping tea on the sofa.’
‘Ma you know better than to believe all this gossip.’
The story revealed itself in parts through the day. During lunch we found out, that the death, in fact, had not been an accident. Mr Ghosh had not hit his head, or have a stroke, or a heart attack. No, his death it seems, had been planned. Mrs Ghosh had bought a suitcase the day before. They said it was to dispose the body. In the night, while he worked on the computer, he had left the door unlocked and fallen asleep at the desk. She had hit him on the head from behind, and then dragged him to the bathroom. In the morning, she had cleaned up the blood, made herself tea and waited in the hall for people to come knocking.
At some point, my mother mentioned that Mr and Mrs Ghosh lived on the fourth floor of the building next door.
Outside, the rain fell and fell as if the day’s sorrow was pouring itself out.
The next morning, the police arrived and took my evening friend to the prison for the mentally ill. They had recovered the psychiatrist’s reports that labeled her as a Schizophrenic. Everyone watched as they escorted her into the police van. I couldn’t go to the gym that evening. Mrs Ghosh’s house had become a crime scene.
Their daughter, who lived on the opposite side of town did not react with shock or surprise at the news. She said she knew her mother must have done it. Others found this additional detail scandalous. I was sure they didn’t hear the dejection in her voice.
After some point, the death was no longer the talk of the ladies. They spoke about the illness instead, each one crafting a new story, each one more elaborate than the previous, often malicious. It was a habit so typically Indian, mostly brushed off as lively curiosity, but I have wondered at times if beneath it lurks something more sinister.
‘She hadn’t been taking her medication for the last 6 months.’
‘She was ready to flee, she had bought tickets to Kolkata.’
‘She thought her husband was in the mafia.’
‘She told the guard to check on her every day at 10 am, to see if she is alive. She believed her husband wanted to kill her.’
‘She thought her husband was having an affair with the house maid who wore red slippers.’
I wondered why no one talked about the hell she must have been living in. No one talked about the three lives destroyed in a single night.
Ma couldn’t sleep that night. She tossed and turned and finally called me over to her room. She was worried about a number of people — her brother’s wife, her own mother — who she thought were not very mentally stable. In my mind, I asked her if she wanted everyone else in her life to also slap on a mask out of consideration, out of a wish not to increase concern. I told her about the ideas I had about myself, largely untested. That I found it difficult to hold on to tangible things sometimes; my distinction between imaginary and real a blurry line, head full of the most unpleasant, critical voices. I knew she had paranoias of her own, that I was the wall holding up the floodgates that night. I would have to be the one to coax them back into hiding. I hugged her tight and turned to leave. Stay is a sensitive word and when my mother whispered it to me, I did. It was late, but of course, I couldn’t sleep.
© Snigdha Dagar 2020
