The Waiting Room
By Sangeeta Isvaran
Where does the loneliness of identity reside if not in the fleeting moments between the being and the waiting? And what do we see when we open our eyes?
The droplet of water dancing on the rusty bar of the window caught my eye and sucked me into its sparkly world. I tumbled through the rays of sunlight refracting without judgement into a million rainbow colours, uncaring of mundane things like ‘gravity’, ‘up’, or ‘down’, saturated in this feeling of immense love.
“Inga daane nee eranganum? Isn’t this where you need to get down? The sex clinic?” The voice of the bus conductor broke through like a splash of mud on my white jeans. My eyes met his leering ones and I smiled, letting my love spill through, and got down at the stop.
I lifted my face up to the sky, enjoying the fierce pounding of the rain washing the sticky ugliness of the bus conductor’s voice away, wishing I could dissolve into the streams that ran down my body.
“Hi.”
I jumped, wondering where the voice had come from.
“Hi.”
Ah, it had come from under the bush. I crouched and peeked under. Two round eyes under messy pigtails stared back at me.
“Hey yourself,” I said. “How are things down there?”
“It’s raining.”
“Really? Are you sure?” My weak joke fell flat under that solemn gaze. She lifted up a muddy doll. “Chittu is scared of thunder,” she said.
I squinted at the indeterminate form; what was it — a Barbie doll, a teddy bear, a sailor? I stopped, shocked at my need to categorise even a doll.
“Come on, let’s go in,” I said. “It’s pouring buckets.”
“Inside is pouring more. Outside is only pouring outside.”
I paused. That childish voice echoed in my mind. I fell into those enormous brown eyes, into the drops sparkling in them. I took a deep breath.
“Come on, kutti chellam. Let’s find your mom. Or your dad?”
“Don’t have mom or dad. Only Mary akka.”
Another deep breath.
“Come in then. I need to pee. Inside needs to come outside.” I tried to joke. She stared at me, then her face scrunched up and she laughed, a delighted, raucous squawk, and ran in.
Yes! I did a mental fist pump, and followed her in. She was standing near the water cans piled around the filter, filling a tiny plastic cup with water.
As I walked towards her, my eyes fell on a picture of the female reproductive system hanging on the wall. It drew me in — ovaries and Fallopian tubes in graceful, yearning curves; that uterus, so smug, narrowing down to a mocking vagina.
The nurse called, “Ms. Meenakshi?”
“Yes,” I responded, “that’s me.”
Her eyes widened, confused as they fell on my moustache.
***
Light, lightness, life. I feel the flow. It is such relief to sit in the shadows. Finally the spotlight is not on me. I observe, I witness. I see. I sink. A sigh of relief to release the weight of being. No judgement in a child’s eye.
***
“Pardon me.”
I ignored that pedantic voice, loath to leave my happy space, that comforting, meandering shadow of the mind.
“Ahem? Are you seeing the doctor?”
That inane question penetrated my bubble where nothing else might have worked. Why else would I be sitting outside a doctor’s room?
I turned my head and looked at him — old. 80/85 years? White kurta pajama. I leaned forward and inhaled discretely. Calvin Klein. So, slightly rich old man. What’s he doing in a sex clinic? I meet his eyes and smile, “Yes, uncle?” I made sure there was a slight emphasis on ‘uncle’. Just in case of creepy-old-man-itis syndrome. “Can I help you?”
Suddenly, he pitched forward, his hand reaching out and grabbing my shirt in a vain attempt to stay upright. I staggered, trying to keep him from falling, our eyes locking. The bubble expanded. Nothing existed but the light in my eyes, growing dim in his. His eyes fluttered once, twice and faded …
As the nurses rushed to him, my senses incongruously focused on the SPB song playing in the background.
‘Irandum onrodu ondru serndhadhu
Ondrum asayaamal nindru ponadhu.”
***
The waiting room looked into a small courtyard with a lush garden. It made me feel like I was drowning in the infinite shades of greens. Of the caladiums, ferns, jasmine. The over-bright light of monsoon that filtered through the rain made the colours of the Portulaca, Purple Hearts and Wandering Jews, Hibiscus, Allamanda, Edenium, come alive.
Thuck thuck thuck …
The rhythmic sound was soothing, almost hypnotic, helping me sink further into the sea of greens, blues, reds and yellows, my body swaying to that pulse of life. Wait, was there a tree swaying, dancing with me? My eyes, dazed by this vibrant sea of life, focused on an immense rain tree … a glorious explosion of greenery and colour. Swaying under the rhythmic thuck, thuck, thuck of axes steadily biting into the bark. My heart faltered, almost seized. Three men sweating, muscles rippling, pumping, killing a colossus for a few hundred rupees.
Imprisoned in the lattice of leaves, the sticky web of life. Light streaming in, love streaming out. Limbo is the still space where memories are more real than reality. My jagged edges of pain. Thuck, thuck, thuck.
Sangeeta Isvaran is a dancer-choreographer, social activist and co-founder of Katradi, a non-profit organisation that uses the performing arts and sports to work with gender and community-based issues.
