A massive dose of Nothing: Welcome to a Purposeless World

Summer afternoons have an eerie stillness. There is not a whisper of a breeze, or a hint of motion. The streets are empty of people, and only the trees are left to wilt in the searing Delhi heat.

It is this solitude, however, that proves so immensely attractive to vacationing young minds. Troupes of children colonise staircases in different apartment buildings, playing ‘Red letter ‘A’…’, ‘Monkey Memory’, safe in the knowledge that they would not be called in to eat, sleep or study. Those whose parents went to work thrived on this unstructured time till the evening. Those with mothers at home blessed the heat that made the adults so drowsy.

Dolly was late that day, so Sheep was still at home. The bell had rung, and her aunt had called for her. It was their neighbour again.

He stood before her aunt, and looked at Sheep like a man on a mission.

“Come, my dear, let us go play with the other children,” he said, and smiled.

She shook her head and clutched her aunt’s dupatta in her hand.

“All the children are outside,” he repeated.

Shrinking further behind her aunt, she shook her head again. And because he wouldn’t stop smiling, she looked at his teeth. They looked like wolves teeth, she decided. The next time he came, she would tell him that.

His name was Gokulnath V. Konda. Sheep identified him as the man who lived next door and made a lot of noise in the mornings. She heard him when she was on her way to school, rinsing his mouth, talking on the phone or generally waking up, for he would leave his door open all the time.

Sheep’s mother distrusted him because of that. Leaving a door open all the time! Shameless! , she would exclaim. Vulgar! Like people who do not draw their curtains across at night.

Sheep did not understand what ‘vulgar’ meant, but she understood shame. Try as she might, however, she could not imagine what was so shameful about letting others catch a glimpse of warm, yellow light from outside.

She had seen Dolly pause, sometimes, in the middle of a game to look into homes that had open curtains. Why are you looking? Play your turn, na, she would tell Dolly, but a few minutes later, Dolly would turn again to look at the curtain-less windows.

Dolly had an older sister who wouldn’t play with them because she helped her mother. Rincey did not like to see Dolly looking into people’s homes. One day she even slapped her and yanked her hair. Sheep had been shocked; both the sisters were crying. She had wanted to ask, again, what is wrong with looking into homes?

It was shameful for girls to sit with their knees apart, that she knew. Or to come to play without bloomers. I don’t like my bloomers, she had told Sister Clarita, they have flowers on it. Sister merely looked at her and said, you will get used to it, and Renita had started a game.

Sheep had always been fascinated by Renita’s long hair which she wore in a braid. How lucky she was to have a religion that did not allow her to cut her hair! Sheep’s mother always said little girls should have little hair, or they don’t grow tall. Renita was tall; maybe little girls of Renita’s religion grew despite the hair.

Sheep liked playing at school, but Gokulnath V. Konda uncle didn’t think much of that. He wanted her to come out with him and the other children and play tag and pitthoo at the playground in the colony. He never asked Dolly, though, and Sheep and Dolly usually slipped out together before he came calling.

One day, however, Neela and Nabir appeared, and threw his routine out of whack.

They appeared in the middle of the summer break, a girl and a boy, sweating from the heat. The girl was as tall as Sheep, and had curly black hair. She was carrying a battered suitcase decorated with stickers. The boy had a suitcase too, and was peering uncertainly into Gokulnath V. Konda’s open house. Ma had seen them waiting and had come out to ask if she could help them.

It turned out that they were Gokulnath V. Konda’s niece and nephew. Mother was shocked, as were the others in the building. Somehow they had all assumed that GVK, as the older people called him, had no family. In a way the presumption was not too far off the mark, for GVK’s only brother had died many years back. Neela and Nabir were his only living relatives, a fact he had obviously been pleased to hide.

They had come to stay for a month because their mother was unwell. GVK was reluctant to play uncle, and stayed away from home as much as possible.

The two of them kept to themselves. Nabir was a silent boy, who stayed indoors and drew all day. Neela would stand at the balcony every evening, staring into space, until she came to be friends with Dolly and Sheep.

The two girls would play Gil Stapu every evening and fight just as often. Once, in the middle of a particularly heated argument, they found Neela grinning at them and promptly called her to arbitrate. Surprisingly, both Sheep and Dolly accepted her verdict.

Soon, the three of them started spending all their time together. GVK and his strange, dual missionary zeal to unite the colony children and be a nasty relative seemed far away, and they did not know where time flew.

Neela had told Dolly and Sheep that everybody thought her Ma would die soon. She had been sick for a long time, and they had now brought her home from the hospital.

“Doesn’t that mean she is getting well?” asked Dolly.

“I thought so, but Nabir said no,” said Neela.

“What will happen to you when she dies?” Sheep had asked.

“Nabir said that is why they sent us here…” Neela grew silent.

She picked up a twig and squatted on the ground. With deep concentration, she drew a face in the soil. This is my mother, she declared; and I look just like her. Dolly and Sheep looked dubiously from the drawing to Neela’s face.

“You don’t wear earrings…” muttered Sheep.

“Your nose…” said Dolly.

Neela continued to crouch on the ground. She looked at Sheep and Dolly thoughtfully.

“Can you keep a secret?” She asked.

They nodded.

“You have to swear that what I tell you will stay between us,” said Neela.

“God promise, I won’t tell,” swore Dolly, pinching her throat with her thumb and forefinger to seal the oath.

Neela shook her head. “No, that swear is for babies. You have to swear my way.”

“You have to spit on your hands (like this) and hold it out in front of you,” she said. “Then we count to three and slap our hands together. Everybody seals big oaths this way.”

They counted to three, slapped their hands, and that was it; anybody who broke this oath would have all their teeth fall out in a day. Dolly was impressed; it sounded a lot more binding than ‘God promise’!

The secret was revealed as Neela slowly inserted her hand into her pocket and drew out a piece of crystal. It was a magic crystal, she said. Nabir and she had found it outside their home.

“This stone,” said Neela, holding it up against the sun, “acts like a magic mirror.”

“My sister says ki there is no such thing as magic,” said Dolly, but Sheep shushed her.

“Whenever I want to see what Ma or Nabir are doing, all I have to do is concentrate on this,” she said.

“Can I see?” asked Dolly, still sceptical, but Neela shook her head. Carefully, she put the crystal back in her pocket.

“If Ma dies, this is how we will see each other,” she said, a little quietly.

———-
It was the empty streets that put the idea in their heads.

“Let us find the tunnel!” exclaimed Dolly.

The tunnel? Their eyes glowed with nervous excitement.

Local myth and legend had it that back when this part of Delhi was an undeveloped jungle frequented by thieves and bandits, a tunnel had been dug to create three escape routes out of Delhi. One led to Meerut, famous even now for day light robberies, and another to Agra. As for the third, nobody knew where that one led.

How true the legend was is debatable, but the reputation of the tunnel was filthy. Every parent in the neighbourhood had forbidden their children from even approaching it.

A few of the less obedient ones had tried, but all they had to report was a crumbling entrance that could have been the mouth of the tunnel and a snake or two in the area.

Dolly’s restless soul had longed to be one of the disobedient ones, but she had been too scared of Rincey to try. Now, however, emboldened by Neela’s presence, and the hot noon that kept most people indoors, she suggested the tunnel.

Neela was delighted. Any excitement was good, she declared.

Sheep was a little doubtful. “Shouldn’t we ask Ma…?”

“She’ll never say yes!” cried Dolly.

Neela pulled out her crystal and turned it over in her palm. For some reason, that did the trick. Sheep relented, and off they went.

The directions to the tunnel were pure hearsay. They followed the path by the playground that went around the Pump House to the boundary wall of the colony. They made their way to a broken bit of the wall which had created a no-man’s land of sorts. There was no line to define where the slums ended and the colony began. It was an unkempt patch of land, grown wild with thorny bushes and weeds of all sorts.

At first they couldn’t spot anything that looked out of the ordinary. Then Dolly found it; a crumbly arch, four feet off the ground.

“That does not look very much like a tunnel to me,” said Sheep, doubtfully.

Dolly and Neela approached the structure and peered in. It smelled musty. Gradually their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and they beckoned to Sheep. There was a raggedy blanket inside, a mug and stubs of several beedies.

“Do you think bandits still use this place,” asked Sheep, wide-eyed.

“Don’t be silly,” said Neela. “Look, the passageway has fallen in, some way ahead.”

“Where do you think are the three exit points?” asked Dolly, excitedly.

They didn’t know, but it was fun to guess. Now that their curiosity had been satisfied, it would have made sense to find better smelling places to play in. The mystery and allure of the tunnel, however, was too strong, and they found themselves returning to it almost every day.

——
Half a month after the arrival of Neela and Nabir, Sheep woke up one morning to a lot of commotion downstairs. She heard shouting, curses and many angry voices. Running to the balcony she found a crowd of people gathered below her building, gesticulating at each other. She spotted GVK in the crowd and Dolly’s sister. Neither Neela nor Nabir knew anything about the matter beyond the fact that their bell had rung early in the morning, and GVK had gone out.

It was from Dolly that they came to know that there had been a burglary in the colony the previous night. There had also been a murder in the slums behind, and the same person was suspected of both crimes.

From Rincey they learnt that the Colony residents were accusing the slum residents of harbouring the suspected criminal, which had the indignant slum residents pointing out that as the suspected burglar was a suspected murderer for them they had a greater interest in finding him!

The row continued for a few hours. The Police came in, took down complaints and eventually came to the conclusion that a disreputable old man and his teenaged grandson had committed both crimes.
The excitement faded, and the colony resumed its inertia. No sooner had the afternoon stupor set in than the daily exodus of the children began.

Sheep, Dolly and Neela went, as usual, to the tunnel.

They were there several hours and Neela was playing with her crystal when Sheep suddenly gave a start. Drawing her finger to her lips, she gave a warning glance to the others and pointed towards the tunnel. Soon, they saw what she had seen; a sense of movement within the darkness, and faint sounds from within.

“Is it a dog?” whispered Sheep, half hopefully.

“Only one way to find out…” replied Dolly and made her way to the entrance.

“Nothing!” she called out in relief, and Neela and Sheep joined her.

All three of them peered inside, blinking against the sudden darkness. Sheep’s eyes again caught sight of movement. Their eyes adjusted at the same time, and they found themselves looking at an old man and a boy, half covered by the blanket that lay there.

The old man and the boy that everybody was looking for.

They stared at each other, not sure what to do. The man was drunk, and his eyes were bloodshot. He tried to say something, but he slurred his speech and subsided. The boy was blinking his eyes rapidly. He must have been about Nabir’s age.

Minutes ticked by, and the figures on this run-down patch of land, claimed by neither the colony nor the slum, or by both, when it suited them, seemed to have been paralysed. Finally, the boy hung his head, and the man yawned.

“Shall we leave?” asked Sheep quietly. Neela nodded, and the three of them made their way out.

The girls sat in Sheep’s home, wondering what to do. Should they tell Sheep’s mother? There was little reason not to tell, and yet…

Their decision was soon made for them. GVK overheard Neela talking to Nabir after dinner and he wouldn’t let her alone till she told him everything.

The news was all over the building in seconds. GVK was all for dragging the man and the boy out of the tunnel then and there, before they ran away, but the others calmed him down.

You don’t know if that area is safe at night, and they might have already run away. Besides, who knows if they are actually the culprits? One can’t trust the Police anyway…

They went to bed that night with a strange sense of foreboding.

Early the next day, Dolly came to see Neela and Sheep. The Police had gone to the tunnel but it was empty. Everybody was very angry. They had taken away the blanket and the mug, she said.

That afternoon, they made their way to the tunnel again. Neela, as always, carried her crystal, Sheep carried biscuits and Dolly, a sombre expression.

“Biscuits?” asked Dolly. Sheep shrugged.

The area near the tunnel looked disturbed. Stones had been kicked about and weeds flattened under booted feet.

Neela stared hard at the entrance.

“They are not there anymore, are they?” asked Dolly. They looked at each other.

Slowly they approached the tunnel and looked in.

They were back. The old man and the boy sat framed against the dark hole, stinking worse than the day before.

“Why are they back?” whispered Neela, in dismay. Why are you back, she asked them.

The boy looked like he was about to answer but the old man stopped him.

Sheep took out her biscuits and nervously extended it to them. The boy took it eagerly, but the old man spat at them.

“What is your name?” asked Neela,again, but she got no further.

Gokulnath V. Konda appeared suddenly on the scene, frothing at the mouth. He was furious with Neela for having slipped off and knew immediately where to find her. His fury climbed up a notch when he discovered that his neice was actually speaking to the criminals.

“How dare you!” he screamed, although Sheep wasn’t sure if that was addressed to Neela or the man and the boy.

He tried to drag Neela off, but she pushed him away. The old man laughed, and something snapped in GVK.

He screamed for the colony security guard as the boy crouched deeper inside the hole. GVK yelled at the guard for not doing his job, accusing him of being in cahoots with the criminals. He yelled at the mute guard till spit sprayed off his tongue, cursing him for standing there and not calling the Police.

The old man made a move to get up. GVK panicked, and snatching the baton from the guard, began to rain frenzied blows on him. Again and again the baton fell on various parts of the man and again and again GVK hit him. The boy tried to stop GVK, and he rained blows on him as well.

Neela and Dolly were screaming, Sheep was shaking with fright.

Finally the noise woke up the slumbering neighbourhood and drew out the children from the stairs. The slum dwellers came too, and they all surrounded the scene and watched with a fascinated horror as a middle aged man beat a drunken old man and his companion. There was blood everywhere, blood and spit, and GVK was sweating. Somebody finally took the baton away from him, and led him away from his victims. Twenty minutes later an ambulance arrived to carry away the old man and the boy.

The three girls were still there, shaken and terrified. Dolly was weeping, Sheep was crouching behind a boulder and Neela was looking at the blood that was mingling with the loose mud around the mouth of the tunnel. She extended a finger and touched the mud, and started crying. I have lost my stone, she said.

————
The incident was never much talked about publicly. It had shaken up the society. One was used to hearing of violence and murders being committed in the slums beyond, but here was a member of their own society who had wantonly taken up a weapon and beat to death an old man. It was a collective secret that everyone seemed to have spat on their hands and sworn not to share.

Neela and Nabir disappeared the day after the incident, and GVK left his quarters soon after. Neither Dolly nor Sheep had seen or heard them go, and the last memory they would always have of that friendship would be of that hot, summer afternoon, when they had returned to a tunnel that now justified its reputation.

Dolly moved away too. She had been soundly thrashed at home for everything that was and was not her fault that day, and her sister had suggested to her mother that they find work elsewhere. There had only been time for a hurried goodbye, because Rincey would not let her stay.

Sheep was now all alone with the memories of that day, and they began to play tricks on her. Had the boy smiled and said shukriya just before GVK appeared? It was all a blur. Neela’s arrival, Gil Stapu, and the first afternoon when they decided to go adventuring. She remembered the smell of the man and the tattered clothes of the boy. She remembered Dolly and Neela walking up to the entrance, she remembered the first thwack of the baton falling on the man. She remembered the blood. She remembered Neela touching the crimson earth and crying because she had lost her magic stone.

That afternoon had forever entered her sleep. Who knows, perhaps Neela and Dolly shared her nightmares.

She dreamt of the guard, she dreamt of GVK and she dreamt of the old man who now walked around saying I am not dead, they burnt the wrong body.

One day the man was joined by a mud drawing that wore earrings and had a lop-sided nose. “I am not dead”, said the drawing, “they burnt the wrong body.”

She woke up, then, because Neela no longer had her magic mirror and now Neela’s mother was dead.

Taposhda had called me to a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere.

“Hullo, Sandip, how are you. There is an atrocious structure that has come up in-. Come there at three, we shall mock it together.” That was his style; abrupt, unexpected and assured.

I was surprised to hear from him after so long. The last I had seen of him was in college, an eccentric senior given to sporadic flashes of brilliance. We were in the same department, but it wasn’t until the last term of his final year that we spoke. He came up to me in the library, put his feet up on a chair and asked me what I thought of Godot.
“It defines my life, you know,” he said, not waiting for a reply. “Come to the window, I want to smoke.”

I had complied, because he clearly expected me to. From Godot, he went on to air his opinions on television, street lights and public transport.

“Oh, I’m out of smokes. See you around, I’m Taposh.” That was it. He left as abruptly as he had entered, and from that day on, he seemed to lay a sort of claim on me. It wasn’t exactly a friendship; it was more of a symbiotic relationship that we had. He liked bouncing ideas off me, he said, because I was such a good listener. On my part, I liked him and the shape my thoughts took after every session with him.

Taposhda graduated with top honours and disappeared off the scene. Some said he had gone off to study theatre in London, others claimed he was on a tour of the country. I would get an occasional cryptic message from him, on my phone or sometimes via email. ‘I am looking for my Mountain of the Moon,’ said one. ‘What do you think of education? Does it make sense to get another degree?’ asked another. In a few years, even those messages stopped. There was no way of getting in touch with him, wherever he was, he evidently did not have a cell phone of his own, nor did he ever reply to an email.

I finished my graduation, and then my post-graduation, and Taposhda faded to a memory.

Imagine my surprise, then, when my phone beeped that day and I read his message. Typically of him, it was unsigned. However, as nobody else called me Sandip (with good reason, for Sandip was not my name), I knew at once it was him. I debated my reply, for I was at the other end of nowhere, and with a disposable income that vanished sooner than I could make it meet my ends.

It was Taposhda, however, and I hadn’t seen him in four years. So there I was, sitting in a glass house, drinking filter coffee and waiting for him to arrive. He was late, even by his standards. I was one of three patrons, each sitting at a round mahogany table, watching people outside. It is not easy being an observer when all the walls are made of glass. For every person I fixed my eyes on, three others turned to look at me. I was surprised at how crowded it was. Each plane of the hexagonal structure was obscured by the people who constantly moved to and fro outside of it. Growing slightly claustrophobic, I decided to train my eyes on the ceiling, also made of glass but thankfully free of motion. It didn’t really help; I felt those eyes continue to bore into me.

The staff seemed impervious to the heightened visibility. They were all impeccably dressed and courteous to the point of being obsequious. One of them now came towards me with my sixth coffee in an exquisite cup made of bone china. I looked at it nervously as he lowered it off the tray onto the table. Do you have anything that is less easy to break, I wanted to ask, but he smiled, said enjoy your coffee and gracefully walked away. Rather on the edge, because of the eyes, Taposhda and all that caffeine in me, I jerked the coffee clumsily, and nearly dropped the saucer. For no reason that I could fathom, my cheeks grew hot and I surreptitious looked around to see if my awkwardness had been spotted. The waiters were at their stations, polishing other elegant cups, and my fellow coffee drinkers did not look my way. I was about to sigh with relief when my eyes shot to the wall on my right. A little girl with straggly brown hair stood grinning, her feet apart and her hands on her waist. I recognised her; she had offered to sell me a pen with a torch, ten rupees only!, as I came in.

“Sandip!” came a voice, just as I was about to push back my chair and leave that horrible place. It was Taposhda, and four years or not, I was furious with him.

“What kind of a place is this? “I began.

“I know! Delightful, isn’t it?” He chuckled as he slid into a chair and looked expectantly at me. I looked at him incredulously, and pointedly shifted my coat to my other arm.

“You’re wearing woollens? Is it winter? No wonder my feet feel cold!”

We both looked at his feet. Taposhda was wearing a dhoti in peak winter. I laughed and sat down again. It was Taposhda, what did one expect?

“Are you having that coffee? Thanks, I don’t mind one.” He pulled out a biscuit from the pocket of his shirt and looked at me. His smile was warm, and as I watched him drink from that exquisite cup, I ran my eyes over him. He looked much older than when I last saw him and I told him so.

“Wiser, too, do you think?” He asked, and pulled out a pipe. “This is how I burn my tobacco now. Much more aesthetic, don’t you think?”

“I like the concept of a pipe, more than the execution of the concept,” I said.

“True, true,” he nodded absently, as he held it between his teeth. We sat in silence for a while. I was never much of a talker, and Taposhda seemed busy admiring his smoke rings. Suddenly he sat up.

“Three hundred people died yesterday.” He said, and lapsed back into a brief silence.

“If a bomb went off right now, what do you think will happen?” he asked.

“What kind of an answer are you looking for?” I returned.

“I don’t know!” He cried. This was an unfamiliar Taposhda. The one of old never said I don’t know, and never looked anxious or uncertain.

“What have you been doing?” he asked abruptly, in a customary way, jumping from one topic to another.

“Playing.” I replied. “Still trying to make sense of my education. Working a job, as I wait for my eureka moment.”

“Ah. I never did get another degree, you know. My papers will always say-Taposh. B.A. (Honours) only. Traveller.”

“That’s exactly what I am. That is all that I am.” He said this with some violence.

“After my graduation, I decided I needed the bigger picture, and hopped onto a train. I’ve been everywhere since then, but what sense have I made of anything? I can’t seem to get off that train. What use am I?”

“Sandip, if a bomb were to go off right this minute, if six bombs were to go off right this minute, can you imagine what will happen? The blast will take place outside. We will see the flames, we will see the dead, and because it has all happened before, we will go on drinking coffee. We will crook our fingers around the stems of these ridiculous cups and make ridiculous small talk. We will occasionally glance outside, casual eyes will move from one writhing figure to another. And then we will look at our coffee and discuss its origin. Or perhaps we will push back our chairs in fright and run outside to help. We will ferry a few bloodied men and women to hospitals, but in effect we go on drinking our coffee. This ridiculous glass house, my dear Sandip, is an exaggeration of many things. You and I, we are on the inside.”

I scratched my head. On my right, the girl with the straggly hair was back. She stuck her tongue out at me and gave me the finger. My jaw dropped open.

Taposh jumped up and my eyes swivelled back to him. I have to go pee, he said, and disappeared. That was the last I saw of him.

Two days later, I received a short note. Sorry, I forgot I left you waiting, it said. I ran into Collector Cama on the way, and he had something new for me. I am not a bleeding heart liberal. What do you think of Godot?

What did I think of Godot? I wasn’t sure now, and I wasn’t sure all those years back either, whether he wanted my thoughts on the play or the character. It didn’t matter, because we were never to continue that conversation.

Some months later, my door bell rang. I was in the middle of a project, and let it ring a second time before I went to answer it. It was the postman.

“I have a package for Sandip, Madam. D 4/63.”

I stared at him. Taposhda again.

“That would be for me,” I said.

“But Madam, it says Sandip…”

“Yes, the person who sent it is mad.”

The postman remained suspicious, but there was little he could do; the addresses matched, even if the gender didn’t. I took the parcel and felt for its contents. This was a little out of our method of communication. Or rather, his method of reaching me.

There was a note inside, and an old diary I recognized from his college days.

My Dear Sandip,

If you are reading this, it means I have succumbed to the foolish thought of finishing our conversations through a letter. It doesn’t matter that this is not the library, or even that hideous coffee shop; our pattern remains the same. I talk, I ramble, and you listen. I leave every such conversation with a new idea in my head, my jumbled thoughts organising into some form of coherence. I am not going to thank you for that, I am sure my august company must have more than compensated for any hardships thus endured.

This is my diary. Oh, that sentence was a joke, by the way. I have many diaries, but this one will best serve our purpose. Read it, if you will.

I found my Mountain of the Moon.

Taposh

P.S.- I withdraw my statement about the aesthetic appeal of the pipe. Nothing beats the raw beauty of a beedi.

I re-opened the newspaper before I opened his diary. One of the first few pages had a small article about five dead Naxals. The reporter did not name them; by now nobody cared to know. Taposh was right, beyond a point, we just go on drinking our coffee. And now, instinct told me, Taposh was dead. It is hard to substantiate the certainty I felt. I had no occasion to believe that the brilliant, if eccentric, student would take to arms to express his reaction to the circumstances that existed around him.

I try to imagine what it must have been like. Someone would have kept a gun in front of him. A toy gun, that merely asked a question. Would you use me to force away a world that is clawing away at everything you believe in? Taposh would pause, and remember all those places he had been to, an impotent traveller of ideas. He would come to a sudden decision, laugh, and edit his bio data to read- Taposh. B.A. (Honours). Violent traveller only. And then he would ask them what they thought of Godot.

What plans would they have had for him? How did he feel when he first pulled the trigger? Why did he have his diary sent to me? I couldn’t bring myself to read it, not as yet. I kept trying to reconcile the dhoti-clad, curly haired young man who had aged in the four years he left college, to the nameless five who were squeezed in between articles on the Ambani brothers and BT Brinjal.

Unbidden, my thoughts turned to that little girl who sold pens and looked into glass houses to give coffee drinkers the finger. They were both outsiders, even though Taposh was, by default, inside.

In the brief moment before his death, did he feel he had finally got off the train? Would that little girl give him the finger too?

Slowly I reached for the notebook, and turning to the first page, I began to read.

The silver wrapping paper lay like a rejected nightmare in the dustbin. What was Koli to do with it? Ma had told her, take no gifts, we are not beggars, but how could she resist? When the uncle came on his scooter and asked her to confirm the name that lay on the tag, her eyes shone with the promise of what she knew lay in there. The basket.

He lifted the lid, and gingerly drew out a cylindrical container, gift wrapped and shiny. She knew she should have said no, and then delivered the speech Maman had made her practise, but the crackle of the wrapping paper was too much. In a daze she brought the packet in. She wanted to see what lay inside, but decided to postpone the moment so she could share it with her mother.

Maman was not like other mothers, and she had not brought up Koli like other children. Her life had been a battle and she was preparing to send her daughter in as her second. Maman didn’t have long to live, which made her long to live even more fiercely. Koli knew the doctors had found a cyst in her mother’s brain, but she was as yet too young to grasp the full implication of the find.

Maman was alone in the world, physically and emotionally. No, not quite alone; she had Koli. All the same, Maman was alone.

When she came back with a daughter, hushed voices and whispered conversations followed her. When she found a job, the hushed conversations increased. She never gave an account of Koli or her past life, and eventually the whispers became a part of the background noise. Much like the drone and chug-chug of a washing machine, as you sat down to eat, or watch television.

Maman was not that old, but her youthful features stood at odds with her grave demeanour. Koli would tell the neighbours how Maman joked that she was an eighty year old stuck in the body of a twenty seven year old person. Ofcourse they never believed her; Maman couldn’t joke.

Koli wished her mother would go to school parties like other mothers, but from a very young age she understood that Maman was different. Sometimes she would ask her mother questions, but nobody ever knew the answers because Koli wouldn’t share.

Maman hated the festival season. Too many people pretending to be what they were not, spending money on unnecessary things. If there was one thing Maman hated, it was spending on unnecessary trifles. Money was hard enough to come by without blowing it up on things that often lasted only an hour.

Diwalis were the worst. Maman had no friends, she told Koli. And only gifts given by friends are worth keeping. You know then that the gifts were picked especially for you, with nothing but your happiness in mind.

Maman would pause then, her eyes lost in thought. But, she would add soon enough, I have no friends, Koli; so don’t you ever accept any gift. Koli knew Maman hated the time when the next-door aunty had wrapped her old aqua-guard and gifted it to her mother because she had upgraded to a newer system. Maman had gone deathly still. For two days she sat at home looking like someone had skinned her alive. Koli had quietly hidden the gift and slowly Maman had become her usual self.

Now Koli looked at the silver wrapping paper and trembled. Unable to bear the wait, she had ripped off the first layer to find another wrapping paper with a card on it. Koli did not dare proceed further.

When Maman came in, Koli’s eyes went involuntarily to the dustbin, but Maman’s eyes were fixed on the cylindrical package. She glanced at Koli, and slowly approached it. The card seemed to pierce her concentration; she couldn’t look away. With an uncertain hand she plucked it off the surface and began to read it. Koli’s eyes anxiously searched her mother’s face, but Maman’s eyes were un-readable. She took the package to her room, and for the first time in Koli’s memory, she locked the door to keep herself in.

Koli never found out what was in the package, but Maman took her shopping. For the first time in her life, Koli heard her mother encouraging her to buy fanciful things. Maman’s eyes no longer looked like a shop with downed shutters, and sometimes Koli was sure she saw the shadowy image of a person in there. Maman had changed, Koli knew, but it was hard to figure out how. She would still scold if Koli threw a tantrum for a toy; they would still read wonderful stories at bedtime. No, it was something else. Maman suddenly looked as if she were not alone; when she looked into the horizon, she was looking at a far-away image of herself. And Maman had a friend, Koli was pretty sure of that. The mirror image of her inside, reflected from a distance. Piercing beams of light bouncing off, creating a connection, stronger for its absence. Maman was still Maman, but one day the kitchen wall was suddenly seen to sport an old, weathered aqua-guard.

“Will you come with me, Koli?” Maman asked, smiling. “It is time I thanked aunty for her present.”

The little mouse clung to the underside of the pavement, tiny arms curled about its head, crying ‘No more! No more! It looked with fear at the phone forever tied to its tail, and whimpered again, no more! no more!

Beside it, on the rusty bench by the bus stand, sat an old man, too full of memories fresh and old. No more! he cried, as haunted eyes misted over and his bald head glinted with sweat.

No more! cried the lad, not yet seventeen, wearily accepting seven rupees from a passenger. Stretching before him, condemned rides up and down the city, stolen moments of youth, a cup of tea and hurried pav bhaji.

In front of the hospital, the bus stops, and there is always somebody who gets off. Not rich enough to buy life, not poor enough to stay away. Smells of sharp instruments and futile rubber tubes. An atmosphere so heavy that the sprightliest thought chokes on itself. Gloom and rigor mortis rise like a hideous vapour seeking to consume all in its path. Lonely halls, where private grief is a joke, and the illusion of being the special one is shattered the moment the bed beside fills up. Grieving family, made sour with anxiety. Of illness that pervades the being, and harried doctors and nurses. No more! he cries, beside the bed of his mother who has been dying for years.

She sees the cry, and pursing her lips, just this once, wishes to cancel her rounds, and flee home. But she cannot, she cannot withdraw from the beds and halls, and she must go home to find a daughter and a son, and a husband, all perfectly nice, all perfectly trying. Day after day, year after year, of waking up at the crack of dawn to send her children away, cheerfully, fixing breakfast, heading to work, and coming back to finish odds and ends, till it is again a late night, and the forthcoming dawn, an endless cycle. She wishes, no more!

Like the endless, endless waves of sound, dark turmoil twisted her mind, till she stayed at home, and slept to keep the demons away. No more!

And the mouse stayed right there, under the pavement, a fearful eye still on its tail, keeping the old man unconscious company