“Mrs. Roy?”
The old woman asked, calmly wiping her spectacles clean with the corner of her saree.
“Just Nidhima, actually”
Nidhima scratched at the edge of her eyebrow, one hand still furiously typing on the desktop in front of her. She was slowly losing patience, and she had very little of it to begin with.
“Ma’am, I have said this before”, the young insurance agent continued, “without proper documentations, how can I validate your insurance claim?”
The elderly woman sitting across her blinked up in surprise.
“What do you mean,” she said to Nidhima, who found her annoyance increasing with every ticking sound that escaped the Disney themed table clock.
“What I mean is, half of your vehicle repair bills have not been reported here, while the ones that you have produced lack credibility.”
Looking at the beautiful black curls that curved down Nidhima’s pale forehead hiding the deep caves that had once been her eyes in more mystery, or at the almost evil redness of her rosebud lips that eclipsed over white anorexic cheeks, one’s first thought of her was always a question: was she young but not so beautiful, or was she regal but yet immature? Irrespective of which answer you arrived at, one thing could be agreed upon – Nidhima was ageless.
So when she ran her frail bony fingers through her thick black hair, and frowned increasingly, the old lady fidgeted in her seat, intimidated by who she was talking to.
“…lack credibility…” she repeated dumbly.
“Yes, ma’am” Nidhima said, “Meaning, you did not get servicing from the authorized centers. Moreover, there are various parts of the vehicle that have been changed, or in some cases, completely removed.”
“My husband must have….”
“Oh, no, ma’am, our insurance doesn’t cover what your ‘husband must have’. Our insurance covers what’s written on the manifesto, which if you had been so kind to read, you wouldn’t be here eating my head with all this. Look, I am here to help, but I can’t help if you keep lying on your insurance claim.”
Nidhima said all that through gritted teeth and a raging headache. The elderly woman looked hurt, but the younger woman had sat in that desk for four years now, listening to clients complain and find ways of extorting company money; tears were hardly an original tactic and honestly, Nidhima had had enough.
“Ma’am, please calm down.”
“This was my late husband’s car. He loved it, and if I had my own way, I would never be here. That car is one of the few reminders of him that – “
“The car you crashed while using your phone?” Nidhima asked, viciously.
“Look,” she continued to her elder, “I don’t have anything against you, but I can’t just pass your claim, I am sorry. For Christ’s sake, your proof of loss has the wrong date! I circled it here,”
“That just can’t be!” the woman protested, instantly moving for the many documents spread over Nidhima’s table to find for this proof of loss. Her client was old so it was very plausible that, amongst all the white papers, the cup of coffee, also white, had somehow camouflaged. Before anyone could rectify the mistake, the cup tipped over and spilled coffee all over Nidhima’s pristine white shirt.
“Ow!” the hot coffee burnt her skin, and she was instantly on her feet.
“Out!” she shouted. Her terrified client left quickly enough. Even as her headache reached new peaks, the grinning Mickey Mouse in her clock kept on tick-tocking in the background.
*
It was an hour or so later when Nidhima could be found outside her cubicle again. After making several trips to the washroom and consulting the chaiwala outside the building for the winning combination of coffee and cigarettes – the former failing to cure the stains on her shirt, and the latter failing to cure the ache in her head – Nidhima dejected herself to her cubicle once more. Presently, she stood right outside, her hand levitating over the door handle.
She couldn’t do this anymore.
She could see the reflection of her eyes widening in the glass pane on her door that read “Nidhima Roy”. In four years the thought hadn’t crossed her head before.
She couldn’t do this anymore.
Nidhima rested her heated forehead on the cold glass that read “Nidhima Roy”, as it had done for four years now. She just stood there and no one paid any attention to her. There was no one to pay attention to her; Nidhima had isolated herself from friends and family alike, and she had done it not to push them away or because she thought herself inadequate. She had done it just because she could. Being alone had always served her purpose well – she had never required friends when she was a teenager, she had gone through her college years alone and happy, and she had married knowing she would never need anyone else. One person was enough for her, Nidhima laughed to the glass bearing her name, enough for a lifetime.
Amidst the constant noise of phones ringing with that same old dull ringtone and her colleagues arguing with raised voices with their clients, Nidhima stood there, unnoticed, staring at her name. No one saw how her fingers lingered over her last name “Roy”, no one noticed her heart tearing apart, in that abstract meaningless sense, sure, but still very real.
It had been four years and she couldn’t do this anymore.
The coffee stain on her shirt had faded already, but the damage that her husband’s death had left – when would that fade? Nidhima entered her office space and plopped herself on the chair. Before the first tear could escape though, the phone on her desk started ringing violently.
“Have I reached Mrs. Roy’s office?”
“It’s just Nidhima, how can I help you?”
“I am calling from Dayanand Public School; it’s about your son. Ma’am?”
“I’m listening.”
“He is in detention. We would like you to come here and talk to his class teacher, if that’s alright?”
I can’t do this anymore.
“’kay”
*
Akash waited, sitting on that steel bench outside the staff room. He waited as the corridor became empty and attained a shade of blue as the evening steadily approached. He waited, even as the music blasting through his earphones slowly faded.
When Nidhima came out of the staff room, she did not bother looking at the teenager but just kept walking with her head held straight. Akash took that as his cue and followed. It wasn’t until they both sat inside her car that the silence was broken.
‘What was that about, Akash?”
The kid never replied, choosing to look out the window to stare at the orange-blue sky instead. Nidhima started the car and drove away. Neither liked the ambience the school had to provide.
Once Nidhima had parked outside her apartment building and both reached the small dark flat on the third floor that they lived in, the teenager immediately made to his room. She busied herself with making a sandwich for Akash, and he just lay in his bed staring at the ceiling.
“hey,” Nidhima called from outside his room. The door barely opened and a disgruntled black haired kid peeked out.
“Here”
And that was all. Nidhima was back in front of her laptop, a cigarette in her hand. Akash, on the other hand, had already unlatched his bedroom window and before the night winds could catch up with him, was off, once more.
He couldn’t do this anymore.
This, where they pretended that everything was normal, he couldn’t do this anymore. His right hand still hurt from the fight he had gotten into in school, but that pain had a therapeutic way of numbing him. He liked the pain, he enjoyed it even. If fire could be used to defeat fire, why couldn’t pain be used to erase pain? This philosophy was working fine with Akash Roy, and if the teachers thought he was ‘self-destructing’, well what was there to it? It was just a fancy term used by people who had never really lost anything, really. Akash hated people like that, people who always smiled and laughed and seemed to enjoy the life they had been given. It felt as if the happiness that should have belonged to him had somehow been stolen, and then distributed to all the people around him, like a sick joke of an evil robin hood.
But then, looking back, he couldn’t remember the last time he was happy. Was it the time when he was born? Maybe. He was sure his mother and father would have been joyful that day, and that gave him slight happiness too.
But no, that was not it.
Maybe it was the time his father taught him how to play snooker. He had never seen his father be so passionate about anything, laughing as he called it ‘A man’s game’. But Akash was horrible at the game, laws of physics often escaped him, so he hadn’t played with his father often. Now that he was dead, he regretted that.
But no, that was still not it. It was a happy memory, but now it was toxic for him. There was a small panic in Akash now. Why couldn’t he remember anything happy, pure and unadulterated? Surely, everyone has happy memories. So where were his?
Now he raged through his mind, not knowing where he was walking, desperately searching for a memory. Images flashed by, most of them of his father, but then one image stuck and Akash didn’t know why. It definitely wasn’t a happy memory. In fact, he remembered not feeling at all the day his father brought home the beautiful woman.
Akash didn’t remember his mother at all, who had died of cancer when he was still very young. He remembered asking his dad about remarrying quite a couple of times though. Still, he had been very shocked when Nidhima entered their home, with her black curls and pale cheeks that didn’t know their gauntness yet. For some reason, Akash had never expected his dad to act on his requests, and although he didn’t gel well with her, for his father’s sake, he made countless efforts to befriend his ‘new mother’. Being twelve back then, he had been asked to be way more mature than his age. At sixteen now, and being asked to move on, he felt the sensation of déjà vu.
Akash had walked some way from home now, without him realizing it. He stood at the opposite side of the road, looking at an old faded building, the same one he always came to on days like these. He remembered setting the torch on his father’s pyre. He remembered Nidhima wailing loudly, a little distance away from everyone else. He remembered being alone for a long time after.
Looking around he realized it had been four years and he was still alone.
So he sat down on the footpath, looking at the building in front of him, smiling from end to end lest the tears escaping his eyes be seen by the night.
Through blurry eyes, he couldn’t see the girl who had come out of the building, carrying a flashlight. She maintained some distance from him, until his tears became apparent and she took one more step in his general direction.
“Oi, what are you doing here? It’s late, you should leave.”
Akash laughed.
“I really should,” he replied.
The girl stood there, confused. Akash half expected her to leave, or shout for other people to come and for some reason, neither was a desirable option to him. But what she did was something he had longed for, and not realized it until this moment.
She sat down next to him. So Akash sat there with that strange girl, crying and stopping himself and then crying some more. The girl, in a courageous spur of the moment, held his arm and let him cry.
“I have seen you come here before” she said once he had calmed down.
“look,” she pointed at a window, “that’s my room. I see you come here at night sometimes.”
Akash squinted at her.
“You’re an orphan?” he asked bluntly.
“Well, this is an orphanage, and I did just say that’s my room right there.” She pointed again then smiled. “So you do know this building is an orphanage. I remember a group of kids came here thinking this was a haunted house. Can’t blame them, the building’s kind of spooky.”
She eyed him. “Why do you come here?”
She had long brown hair and a dark golden tinge to her skin. Her eyes looked deep, but apart from that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the girl. Strange. Akash had thought there would be something different about her; he had thought he would be able to tell an orphan from a normal person by just looking at her face. But there was nothing to suggest so.
“I sometimes feel like I belong there”
The statement was so absurd that he felt stupid saying it out loud, especially to the girl in front of him.
So he asked her the only question he wanted an answer to, something that just maybe she would have an answer to.
“How did you move on?”
She looked at him, that weird smile still stuck on her face. It was as if she understood.
“What’s your name? I am Juhi.”
“Akash”
“Well, Akash, I don’t know what you’re kidding about, but you don’t belong there.” She jutted her thumb angrily at the orphanage looming over them. The single street lamp at the end of the lane was the only light that fell on the building.
“My mother died of cancer when I was young. My father died in an accident when I was thirteen.” Akash said, in a tone that implied she should be impressed.
“yeah, so? You don’t belong there. Don’t joke around. I didn’t know how my parents looked until a nun decided I was old enough to be told the truth. I was ten. When I saw their picture, I didn’t know who I was looking at. I didn’t know what to feel. You have memories of them. That’s more than what I could ever ask for.”
She looked angry, but more importantly she looked sad. Akash regretted making her smile vanish, and yet he couldn’t agree. Was he lucky, or severely unfortunate to have their memories?
“That place,” Juhi said, looking up, “is just a prison for people trying escape a past they had nothing to do with, a past that was decided for them. You don’t belong there.”
Akash understood her a bit more then.
“A prison they are trying to escape, huh? I guess everyone belongs there.”
He thought of Nidhima for a second there. For some reason, the memory of his father’s funeral pyre came back to him. Most of all, he remembered the widow’s cries. Had she loved him too?
“Do you want to escape, Juhi?”
Juhi had stood up when he posed that question to her. She looked at the stranger’s face, but then realized that all the faces she had seen since her birth had all been strangers. Trust was something that wasn’t ingrained in her, but looking at the young man who was surely broken, in different ways than her, she felt some of that strange feeling.
“You should leave” she lied.
“Shouldn’t you?” he asked.
*
Seven years later.
“She was Christian?” Juhi asked, holding her crying twelve-month old close and patting his back, a trick that often worked in calming the baby but today proved to be failing miserably.
Akash and his family looked at the coffin being lowered down. He didn’t know quite how to feel owing to the fact that he knew so little about the departed. He had only lived with her for five years, after all.
The wet soil glistened ever so slightly, and the gravestone that read “Nidhima Roy” had the words “family” written underneath. He wondered whether that was a mockery of the dead.
Juhi nudged him as someone approached them. Akash turned to see a man in his later years, still handsome and tall and carrying only a little grey in his thick black hair, walking up to him in somber silence.
“You must be Akash?”
There was such a pressing awkwardness to this conversation.
“I am. Uncle Daniel, if I’m not mistaken?”
For two relatives that had never met each other before, they shook hands comfortably enough.
“I had such a Christian name that our parents decided to name my sister along a bit more mainstream line.” Daniel’s chuckle was dry, “she was about to be named Evangeline. Can you imagine that?”
Akash met his eyes for some time, before turning away to look at the gravestone again. Juhi whispered something about having to change the baby’s bottle before she left the two men alone.
“Cancer is such a painfully long process. I am sure she is happy it’s over.”
Akash looked at the elder man once more. He was grieving his sister’s death, he knew, and he was dealing with it in his own way. Small talk never hurt anybody.
“I lost two mothers to cancer.”
Akash never dreamt he would be uttering those words.
“The amount she was smoking, I am fairly certain we all saw it coming.” Daniel said.
Daniel’s eyes crinkled just the same way Nidhima’s eyes did. Akash was lost for words again. It had been such a long time since he last thought of his stepmother.
“How was your mother like?” Daniel asked.
“Never knew her. She died when I was little.”
“What about Nidhima? How did you find her – as a mother, I mean?”
How was she like as a mother? She had hardly talked to him, hardly showed up for any of his parent-teacher meetings, had showed very little attention to him. She was probably the worst mother ever, but when Akash looked back all he could remember was closing his bedroom door at her face. He had hated her for crying herself to sleep every night, the thin walls doing nothing to impede those sounds, because every time he heard her sobs, he was transported back in time and he would be standing there again, at a much different funeral. That was probably how his night time excursions had begun, probably how he had ended up fleeing with Juhi seven years ago, haunted by Nidhima’s cries, never to come back to this city. And he wouldn’t have too, had Daniel not contacted him to tell about her passing away.
“She was wonderful”
Daniel nodded.
“In the hospital, I told Nidhima to contact you. I told her to call you before that final operation she had too. She never would.”
Akash was fighting hard to keep his tears in, but Daniel continued, unfazed.
“I told her, call your son. But she would tell me that you would never come, that you had left for that very reason, so that you never came. I don’t think she wanted you to come back. ‘only pain is all we get here’, she said. Ah, but I would have liked to see her meet you before she passed. She would have been happy.”
By the last word, Akash had understood the sole purpose of this conversation was to hurt him, make him feel pain. And yet this was so unexpected, he had never thought he would hurt for Nidhima. He had never thought Nidhima would hurt for him. He had never thought she might have needed him. After so many years, he had hoped she would have found happiness, the way he had. So he did what he did best. He walked away.
“She loved you.”
Daniel whispered cruelly behind his turned back. Akash did not stop. He took the remainder of his family and escaped.
*