The Lens of Regret
By Radhika Meganathan
‘I think I screwed up,’ my friend typed on the phone. ‘How do I make this right?’
I had no answers. How could I, or anybody, when we are all collectively drowning in the same Covid-induced Sea of Regret?
Amala (name changed) and I knew each other from a job training as new graduates, nearly two decades ago. Throughout that year, I had played agony aunt when she had boyfriend trouble, and I was there when she chose to marry a Canada-based engineer — an arranged marriage — over the said boyfriend. And now, more than 15 years later, in the New Normal, she had gotten in touch with me via Whatsapp.
‘It was bearable before, when both of us had to commute to work and were busy taking care of the kids. Now he is in my face all the time. I feel like I am suffocating,’ Amala said. How she wished she could reverse time, fix the mistake, choose the other guy, change her life.
It was not the first time I had heard something like this in the last few months. Since lockdown, friends and family are grappling with various levels of what-if scenarios, thanks to sitting at home for days and weeks, often alone with their own thoughts and musings.
Why did I choose to get married when I wanted to study? Why did I spend so much on the wrong things? Why didn’t I get that surgery done sooner? Why did I not visit them when I had the chance to? Why did I decide to be a housewife? Why did spend so long in that thankless job? Why did I say yes when I wanted to say no? Why did I say no when I wanted to say yes?
Regrets (and opinions) are like assholes. Everyone’s got one. Including me, though mine is a little off the beaten path (pun intended).
When I was 20, I tasted the drug that I’d get high on, again and again, throughout my life, especially when things got tough.
It was the mandatory college trip. I still remember what my Dad had said, just before I got onto the train. “Here’s some money. Keep it just for an emergency. Don’t buy anything you don’t need.”
I tell you, middle class values die hard. I never really bought anything on that trip, not a single souvenir. But there was something I did bring back with me, something for which I’d pay forever.
The first place we landed in was Bangalore. It would take me another twenty years to return to the city, but even in 1999, it was a futuristic sight to this little Miss Froggie from a sleepy little Chennai neighbourhood. My batchmates excitedly murmured about swanky clothes and MG Road, and it was decided we would spend the evening there to do some shopping. After that, we agreed on a time and the common point of meeting for dinner, only I got lost well before then.
That would be my signature style of travelling in the future… no matter where I was, whether it was on my way to the Bronx zoo or the fragrant streets of Kuala Lumpur Chinatown or the back alleys of East London, I’d always be getting lost (and relishing it), but that first experience in Bangalore was the stuff of coming-of-age movies. One minute I was following my friends, and the next minute I was alone.
I looked left and right, unsure of what to do. It was the first time I had even been outside my home, without adult company, after 7pm. I was always told that it’s dangerous for a woman to be alone after dark. And here I was, lost in a new city, in a busy alley that was dark and unfamiliar and full of strange sights. Even in that lost state, as I walked unsure, peering into small shops and hoping to find my friends, I didn’t smell danger.
I smelled something else, something alien, exciting, overpowering, mesmerising.
I never forgot that smell. It was the smell of freedom.
I didn’t realise it until much later, but that day marked the beginning of my travel lust. It gave me the courage to barge into doors that were hitherto closed to me. It dictated my career and life choices. It made people judge me and brand me as a selfish, irresponsible, greedy freak. Because aren’t all Indian women supposed to settle down into a narrative that has them tick the right boxes, but not too many boxes, not those ones? Kids, fat bank balance, a real estate investment in my name — I had none of these, so what right did I have to be so content with life, with no regrets, to do things that made me happy?
Well, I was content, no matter how you look at it. Until March this year.
So, the lockdown.
Forget about travelling, I could not even take a walk in the park. Even the second longest beach line in the world, located about 20 minutes from my house, was out of service. Suddenly, my self-medication was gone. The thing I hid behind when life got overwhelming — GONE. The thing I always escaped into, the thing I chose as my own customised drug above all other conventional ones — GONE.
Here’s the 64-million dollar question: Without my self-designated lifeline, what was I left with?
When you are forced to sit inside a social distancing box with no exit hatch, to live with the same shapes and sounds that you have always wanted to escape from, the voices get very loud. They get so loud that you begin to chant them on a daily basis.
Should I have been more conventional? Should I have not taken such an unholy delight in flaunting tradition? Should I have listened to elders and saved up and tried to be smarter, more prudent? Would it have helped me now, as I stare at the ceiling in fear and boredom and panic and isolation?
I keep myself busy, of course, with work and chores, but there is a curious emptiness in me. Without travelling, I have been forced to stand still, notice my environment, take inventory of what I lacked. I do not like making that inventory, because the things I have failed to tick, most people have.
The reverse is true, obviously. The things most people miss — I have.
If only I had a rupee for every time I’d been told how lucky I am for having a husband who allows me to travel (?), for possessing a skill through which I can earn money without breaking a sweat (??), for being free of child-care responsibilities (???)… well, that’d sponsor an entire year’s travel. Only none of us are travelling anywhere for pleasure in the near future, are we?
Amala continued to say, ‘I try to recollect happy times, happy memories and I feel better for a while, but then suddenly, I cannot bear to hear him exhale so loudly or shout instructions on Zoom… every little flaw is amplified, every fight we have seems like a deal breaker now, and I keep thinking… what if I had a restart button? Wouldn’t I be better off?’
I tell her that we all have had this regret even in pre-Covid times. I too have thought about how my own life would have turned out if I had stayed back in New York after my internship or if I had accepted that cool but low-paying job in Singapore.
Instead, I concentrated on her first sentence. In spite of the completely different lives my friend and I led, we both used memories as balms. How did I cope in the past few months, when I didn’t have my usual drug? Here are the images that comforted me in this changed world:
* A family of foxes I came across while jogging in early spring in the Pocahontas, their tails as fluffy as I had always imagined them to be;
* the shine on the violin of a busker inside a London metro, playing Descapito and making suit-clad men and women sway as they hurried along the tunnel;
* a sublime fried rice dish bought on the delayed passenger train from Pattaya to Bangkok and my starving family eating it without asking the question, ‘Is there beef in it?’;
* the eerie yet comforting silence misting over the Loch Ness as I and a handful of others in the cruise pretended to look for the monster below;
* the taste of the arrack cocktail I had for lunch in downtown Ubud, which proved to be a blessing as I broke a tooth afterward and had to undergo a dentist procedure without anaesthetic because the doctor didn’t know English;
* the casual, almost snarky conversation I had in late January this year walking through Rishikesh bridge with a fellow traveller, about the spread of a SARS-like disease in China… both of us clad in three layers of wool, while a family of four below calmly removed their clothes and plunged into the freezing Ganges.
Memories are indeed the best balm you can ever have.
Sometimes I feel scared for not feeling scared… about the things that usually scare people. I feel like I am running a big scam, because people keep telling me about the things I am missing out on. And I try. I try and try and try to berate myself for all the things I have missed out on so far, in favour of a carefree life, but honestly, I can’t. I am uneasy, yes, but not unhappy. In spite of all the real and projected regrets, I am okay. I will be okay.
After ending her call, I log into Netflix and click “Documentaries”. If I cannot physically go to Japan, at least I can make a concise and beautifully man-made representation of it appear before me. It’s not the real thing, of course, but given the alternative of looking at four blue walls and howl in self-pity, I’d rather opt for an electronic mirage that transports me to the serene temples of Kyoto. You can forest-bath through a digital screen too, trust me.
So, when the next attack of lockdown madness hits me, I will have a new memory to fall back on. It won’t be a real memory, yes… but then, reality is over-rated. Ask anybody experiencing the Good Lord’s year of 2020.
Radhika Meganathan is a published author, editor and workshop facilitator based in Chennai. She writes nonfiction under her own name and fiction, as Smara. If you want to say hello, feel free to tweet her @IamSmara or visit www.chennaiwriterscircle.online
