pragya-panda

[pragya-panda]

Stoic.

I suddenly remembered the word as I was sitting by the window looking at the windowpane which was translucent from the dew. I sat there looking at nothing. I remembered the word. I didn’t remember its meaning though so I looked it up. These days I don’t remember a lot of things and so the dictionary has become my best friend. The dictionary said stoic meant a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. Yes I was stoic that day. I had been stoic since the day before Christmas. I was regularly reminded that what happened before that has ended and this is a new beginning for me. But does the end ever mean the end?

He was my beginning and my end. He was everything I had expected. After the engagement, the texts and calls were incessant and I was basking in all the attention, who wouldn’t and why not? I was 23 and he was considered the most eligible bachelor in our circle and he had chosen me. Mother had got a call from one of our relatives that his family had been asking around after me and wanted to meet to sort things out. The meeting was fixed for a Sunday and we had all spent the time in between deciding on the dresses and menu and frantic visits to the parlor to look perfect. I had to look perfect for him. Him, who had chosen me. Me, the average looking, moderately intelligent girl who had never been chosen. I was never the centre of attention, ever and now because of him, my world had changed. Everyone wanted to know me. Suddenly, I had become the centre of attention for my whole family and it was a great feeling after being average all my life. And after things were settled and the official roka, he showered me with so much love and attention and those indulging. He got me something at each of our dates and not just me sometimes he charmed the hell of our chaperones by getting them something too. He was charming in every way. You couldn’t meet him and not fall in love with him. I was so besotted that for once I was blind to everything else. We got married within six months and it was like the honeymoon would never be over.

But now that I look back, there was always something about him which I had not been able to put a finger on. I had brushed it aside as a figment of my imagination. It was my subconscious which wasn’t used to everything being perfect. But everything WAS perfect and I didn’t have to worry about anything. Too many thrillers and reruns of saavdhaan india will do that to you, I thought. The feeling still lingered and I ignored it with equal strength. And so it eventually settled.

Right after the wedding, there was lots of documents to sign. He said he wanted to make sure that I am his nominee for all purposes and that I know the whereabouts of his savings and income and stuff. But I wasn’t interested. I was in heaven and you don’t worry about money there. I had everything I needed, more actually so I never bothered. I told him that I know he will always be there. I had plans for eternity you see, but eternity was not going to wait.

There was something though. Something quite not right. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Shortly after marriage, we shifted to our own flat which was a building yet to be fully occupied and ours was the only flat occupied on the seventeenth floor. We got up each day, took a morning walk together, had our coffees overlooking the city on their well maintained balcony and then he would go to work and I will be busy in her daily chores. We never ran out of things to talk and everything was just so romantic when he was around. He didn’t like strangers coming to the house so we did not have domestic helps. There were social gatherings and people always complimented us on being an idle couple. That bothered me subconsciously, the perfection of it all. Not once in our 2 year marriage did we ever fight. There were small arguments but then he will hug me in the middle of it and I would be swept off my feet.

Everything was okay but that day, I saw a paper lying on the table. I glanced at it casually and it said insurance but before I could think, he had already snatched the paper and put it in his bag. That somehow triggered that though again, the one which I had ignored. This was a tiny thing but it stayed in my mind and some more reruns of crime patrol prompted me to open his drawer that day. The one in his study. Had seen him putting the key in his grey blazer’s side pocket and I didn’t think he knew that I had seen it. It was weird though because I knew he never wore that blazer which was a size less than his and was a gift so he didn’t want to throw it away. I understood he was trying to hide the key which seemed unlike him since he made it a point of telling me everything. Anyway, so I knew where the key was and I was curious. I didn’t want to really but I just did because I knew everything was fine and after I opened the drawer and found nothing, I would be sure of it and then all of this will be behind. But what I found out that for everything he owns, his parents are the nominee. But then I remembered, he had changed it all after marriage, had me sign all those documents. Maybe he hasn’t had the time to update those or maybe he has kept them safe somewhere. I didn’t want to think otherwise but doubt is a stubborn friend and once it makes a place in your mind, it’s like a parasite.

But doubt is what saved me. I am not saved though but yes whatever remains of me.

He came back home early one day and as I opened the door, he gave me a big hug. He was my personal brand of nicotine so when I hugged him and took his smell, I felt warm. Like nothing could ever touch me. I felt safe. I asked him why had he suddenly decided to come early and he told me that he wanted to celebrate having an amazing wife. It was Christmas eve so I was happy to celebrate too. There was champagne and he wanted to go to the terrace of the building which was 35 storeys up since the weather was so good. All perfectly normal.

As I was falling from the terrace, I wanted to remember that feeling, perfectly normal and the warmth and his face but all I saw was an expressionless face peering down. Worried that I was falling or relieved, I could not at that moment know and then it all went blank.

I woke up under bright light. The light was all there was and the blank. I saw my parents and it took me long enough to recognize them, to remember it all and then I wanted to cry, to scream but I could not. There were machines. Between then and now, its been 2 years and I still have trouble remembering things and I cannot move without help. But like I said the doubt saved some of me.

That day after I saw the documents, I had spoken to dad and though at the time, he brushed it aside as non sense, when he heard about the fall, he had made sure that the husband was made to stay away from the hospital. Off course the husband went around telling anyone who would care to listen how heartbroken he was and how I was so drunk and yet climbed up the wall to pose and slipped and he had tried to save me. But dad has his doubts and they were confirmed when he checked our financials. I was worth ten crores dead.

But I lived, if you can call this as living. I don’t know what hurts more- the betrayal or losing the perfect life. I think my feelings died and only the body survived the fall. That was last Christmas, or the one before. I don’t remember, don’t feel. I am stoic.

[pragya-panda]

THE MURDERER

I have always felt tainted, unclean, and impure. People around me tell me I have OCD or maybe I am germophobic but deep down I know it is not so much about what is on the outside than what is inside me. I remember, back when I was a kid, I would stand in the rain for a long time because they taught us that rain is the purest form of water and I always wondered if it can cleanse the dirt within. I still do. And as I stand there in the rain, I try to breathe it in, the smell of the mud, the flowers, the leaves all wet, all cleansed and all pure once again unlike me.

It was couple of years ago during the morning assembly in our school when it was announced over the mic that our maths teacher had passed. They said that she met with an accident on her way back from school over the bridge and her body was found the next day when some people had gone to the river for fishing. Standing there, I remembered feeling groggy. I remembered a different story.

I was in my regular school uniform and she was in her nightwear. It was really late and the school was empty except the three of us. This was before there were night watchmen and CCTVs. My mother looked from me to my teacher and I think her eyes really wanted to pop out. She asked me what had happened and I told her I had fallen asleep after detention and when I woke up only when she called my name. I think my mom’s eyes would pop out but it did not. With a calm expression which is so like her, she stared at the teacher.

My maths teacher was sitting on the chair she looked so unruffled. She had one of those yellow chiffon sarees on with huge flowery print and her signature mogra gajra. Though the flowers had started wilting but there was a faint smell of the mogra and the coconut oil she had used to plaster her hair into a tiny ponytail. I was almost jealous of how unruffled her countenance was. Almost like nothing mattered, nothing would touch her. She was beyond this world, beyond everything and technically dead. Yes, that part I noticed much later. She looked serene because the knife dug in her back wasn’t visible because of the way she was sitting. Had one pulled the knife, the blood splatter would have painted the clean white board behind her but neither of the two living had any intention of doing that.

I asked mother if I had murdered her. By that age, I knew I had done things and not remembered later but murdering was beyond anything I could imagine. My mother had simply told me with here expressionless face that murder was subjective. I asked her perplexed what is subjective about the murder and she told me whether the person dies or was given a shove is subjective, death is certain. She had asked me to go home and send dad and since I was too shocked to question her or even think about what was happening so I simply obeyed.

I tried telling mom but she sushed me up saying I had a dream. She told me that she had picked me up after detention and that I was too sleepy so I had slept off in the car and she literally had to drag me to bed where I slept without even changing. I did not know whether what I saw was a dream and I still wonder to this day what really happened. We had left the city soon after and for a long time I did not remember the incident until one day while my morning journey in the bus, that smell of mogra and coconut oil had brought back the memory.