The sour drug
When loneliness and addiction shape your life
The dwarfed young man from the kitchen behind served lunch to the men and women there. His humorous way of talking had always engaged them all in loud and exciting conversations that filled the Cafeteria. Although short of time, they took delight in sharing this moment of the day before they would go back to their cubicles and work.
The irresistible aroma of Biryani filling the air was not that tempted Akshay to sit there, even when he rarely ate outside; he stared at his colleagues and the server chatting. Likely, he stared at everyone who entered the Cafeteria. His gleaming eyes were, as though seeking a much better world than his own. He passed a quick glance on his wrist watch and then back to the people around.
His only female friend, Anu, had always given him the change of mind when he needed it the most. His face turned bright when she sat in front of him, on the table where he sat alone. Looking at her caressing her short hair and hearing her speak in her rough tone, Akshay had for an instance forgotten that it was a woman speaking.
“Aren’t you done seeking out what you want?”
“I was waiting for Ibrahim,” he said, “Do you think he’s on leave today?”
“You remember he talked about his government exam results appearing sometime in this week? He must be on leave for that,” she said. She then got up to greet other colleagues who she checked on time and again.
“Chotu feels someone has got eyes around here. It makes him and others scared,” a man told her. His winking and the other’s staring in her direction had not made Anu feel good.
“How could he do that? Why didn’t he inform me that he wasn’t coming?” Akshay said, when she was back to the table. His disappointment was apparently her disappointment as she put her hand on his, even as he seemed to be childish.
“What would you do if you knew he wouldn’t come to office today?” She asked. “Nothing actually,” he mumbled bluntly, “I could have_”
“You wouldn’t be alone. I’m sure,” she whispered, then laughed at him.
A meaningful life as it meant to him, was when he surrounded himself with friends, colleagues and all known and unknown people, but himself. His almost negligible self-reliance had ever made Anu wonder how shallow a human can get.
“I hope to go to a movie with Ibrahim this Saturday. Don’t know if he’ll be free,” he said, and his hazel-brown eyes dimmed upon the mere thought of a lonely weekend coming ahead.
“Well, I think he would not have qualified for the exam. He is not that intelligent,” believing to himself, he spoke again.
It was a day like any other. Coffee breaks after lunch were not unusual. Anu was not astonished when Akshay would not sometimes respond while at work. His hands on the keyboard and eyes on the computer screen, focused, and yet she knew how restless he would be the moment when he could not find her at her desk.
She was, as though sure she understood very well how Akshay’s mind would drift back and forth to seek even the smallest of the events around him, to alter his personality and bring him in a world where all the personal self was left behind. His child-like innocent dependence, despite being known, she wanted to be sure of how it felt to be who he was. This left Anu pondering, even as she sipped on her coffee, trying to relax.
Anu glanced at the calendar with the hope to finish her project as soon as she could. And she was able to do so, sometimes irritated at this talkative friend in her team, who needed not the fancy words in return; a warm smile, a wink or a short laugh was all that mattered to him. However, this was not seen the same way with the other team mates.
“Can we talk about the space magazine a while later and fix these syntax errors now?” Ram Babu said, adjusting his spectacles with a big frown on his face.
And the four of them then stared back on the screens, focusing on what was of significance. Ram Babu and Divya were two lousy team mates, who were ignorant of the rest of the world, he would often tell Anu. He likely felt the same with his other colleagues in the department, and Anu could not just think of all of them.
He must have been a little odd at the workplace, however, everyday, she had come to realize that it was the office alone that kept him in the highest spirit. Evenings, it was the time to go to his own world; a world, which did not seem to her as his cocoon.
“It has been a day since you last met Ibrahim, and you don’t look like you are sad anymore,” she said, while gazing at this attentive friend helping her take her bike out from the parking place.
“My day here is always good,” he said with the slightest smile, “it always has to be good.”
“On the weekends and work-from-home alike.” She only wanted a humorous environment before they parted their ways and went home, however, he did not respond back.
A wonder, as it would have seemed to her, seeing his transition, when she pointed towards the other side of the road, where Ibrahim stood. Akshay looked no more indifferent to what she uttered a while ago; his brown eyes lightened up, the dimples deepened. His joy to see his friend there seemed unending. They were two friends, who knew each other not for a long time, meeting each other only after a day. It was an experience to behold as she looked on at Akshay.
“Go, ask him if he’s free for the movie this weekend,” she added as they went over to meet him.
“Couldn’t have surprised you any better, right?” Ibrahim said, in the heavily accented tone, which Akshay always found to be entertaining.
“Do you know how long I waited for you in the lunch hour?” Akshay asked, and it seemed as if it were a direct charge.
“I have good news, Akshay. I came here to say that,” Ibrahim said, sighing over his friend’s continuous childish remarks as he did not let him say it.
“You should have informed the night before. Don’t you still understand how empty I feel? You keep treating me like you have not known me this year.”
And he shut himself the next instance, realizing where his emotions were dragging him into. It did not seem correct to call it childish anymore. His overwhelming joy to meet his friend was, as though gone with time. The emotional outburst inside him was a sign of how the world he created around himself was in contrast to the world within.
“Stop talking like I owe you something. It is this school-boy behavior of yours, which not just me but so many people hate, I’m sure,” Ibrahim said. And Anu wondered if it were right to say those words to a person, who never for a moment ceased to smile.
“Save your words for somebody like you, because yesterday was my last day. Glad that people like you will not be there,” Ibrahim added, and all this while it was not nice to hear him speak in the accent as the drift between the two friends further widened.
“That’s wonderful news!” Anu quickly came in, pretending as if nothing was offensively spoken, “I will miss the lunch hour with you so very much.”
“The place where he made me feel so awkward every day.” Word after word as Ibrahim pointed out, Akshay heard it believing it to be real, until when his work was questioned.
“Do you know what it takes to work here with dignity? I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“You can’t doubt my work,” Akshay said, without a smile, without the spark that lit everyone around with joy.
“Doubt? No professional here would ever bring their talking to this level like you do.”
How come you judge when you were on a different floor and department? Loud in her thought, Anu asked not Ibrahim but to herself, thinking how easy it had always been to quickly put a label onto others. But who would not have known Akshay and his power of speech?
“You should probably see a psychiatrist before you get kicked out of here,” Ibrahim said very easily, sitting back in his white car; a farewell so sudden and desolate as there was nothing left to hear, nothing to speak.
“If you had all this in your mind about me, then why had you sympathized with my talking? Why hadn’t you tried punching me on the face, telling me to stop?”
Holding himself intact from the voices rising inside, Akshay let out his final words to his dear friend, expecting not a response from him, since he had already started his car.
The sun had gone down. Darkness was taking over. An evening resembling so much like any other day, but only this time with more thoughts and the absence of his chatting. Going back home and being surrounded by the inanimate walls and the utter silence they brought was inevitable. And he forgot Anu standing there for him.
“Wait! You’ll just leave like that? Not a word? I’ll drop you home today. I need fresh air. This traffic here!”
The smile looked lively, yet she could see that his eyes had lost the everyday sparkle. Was it for the merest reason that he did not want to lose Ibrahim, or did he hide something from her?
It was not more than a rough drive through the busy streets when he said nothing at all sitting behind. His calm posture then resembled that of naughty children who were always healthy looking with their chattering alone.
“Stop the bike now!” He said with a soft touch on her back.
“Do you want to walk all the way home? A kilometer and a half still left. Now don’t say you’re good to go by foot,” she said.
She was not a second late in grabbing his wrist when he pointed towards the tobacco shop across the road.
“Didn’t you say you quit smoking already?” She asked, raising her voice and still gripping on his hand. “I need it, Anu!”
Not one packet, not even two; he filled his bag with as many as a dozen cigarette packets, escaping from the sharp stare of Anu, who was looking at his despair. He could have reached out to her for his calm. He could have spoken the way he always did, with his eyes full of life. But the day had seemingly changed something as he rather chose to go.
The excitement she had, days on end, to soon be able to go to her town, by the side of the pond and from which she liked to fish, was not felt anymore when she reached her shared apartment. Had it been not the worry about Akshay, she would have packed her clothes. But the much awaited trip was, as though, blurred suddenly as she only saw Akshay’s eyes turning emptier than ever.
“There’s probably no time to talk today. You look like you’re still at the office,” said Disha, pulling Anu’s socks away and helping her change.
“Maybe she dreams about what you both are going to do there in the trip,” Sri Priya said, coming out of the kitchen and smiling jubilantly at her thoughts; her white shorts with red roses and black barbed wire made on them eventually distracting Anu.
“Not unless her prince Charming goes away from her mind,” Disha said, murmuring to herself.
“Prince Charming, who?” Sri Priya asked, feeding sliced pieces of strawberries to Anu.
“A guy from her team,” said Disha, and Anu looked up at both of them, straining at the word ‘charming’ again.
“A guy?! That’s surprising,” Sri Priya said, making Anu question what she dwelt upon.
“He is not really charming,” Anu said, finally getting up from the bed and speaking in the authoritative tone the two roommates were as though waiting for some time to hear.
“He’s not what I told you he’s like. Something holds him back.”
“Then what is he like?” Disha asked, grinning, “Is he like us?”
The two roommates mocked Anu even more as the latter opened up sharing her softer side for him. Anu expressed all that she thought about, regardless of the hard criticism she knew she would face by them, especially by Disha, who refrained from pursuing that, which was not a part of her identity. Her idea of oneness was at once faded away the day when Anu described Akshay’s eyes as beautiful. Since Anu now hoped to relieve him from his thoughts, there was nothing that mattered to her, to be in her own bubble.
“Maybe this trip would help you stop thinking about him,” said Disha, holding Anu’s hands, calm as she was. However, to her surprise, there was no comfort to be seen in Anu’s eyes.
“Not this time. I would rather be better going to work,” Anu said.
“I think you have forgotten all our plans for the trip,” Disha said with a sigh, yet she still looked intently in her eyes.
“How can you just break her heart like that for that man,” Sri Priya added, tying up her hair in a knot.
She had never spent a night like that before defending her mere thoughts with her own ones. Her idea of who she was and what was meant to be her way had left her in a conflict, even as she worked in the comforts of the office. The cubicle of Akshay, despite being decorated with pictures of him smiling and laughing, she forced herself thinking what happiness had meant to him, and she could not help reminding herself the purpose of her own joy. As she stood there in his absence, she knew where she intended to go with this feeling rising.
“My part of the project is done, and so must be yours and Divya’s. We cannot further delay it if Akshay isn’t responding. It has been two days without any information. You know I have to report to Mr. Sunil,” Ram Babu paused talking as he saw her lost in thought.
“Has he contacted you?” He asked, lowering his voice.
She looked up at him suddenly, bringing herself back to where she was; in the Cafeteria, with a plate of hot rice lying in front of her.
“Did you talk to him or meet him?” He asked again. “I will_”
“Only you can tackle a person like him,” he said, taking a deep breath, “Why does he bother you so much when you know his over-exaggerated talking doesn’t equate with the working ethics here.”
Everyone seemed to know at least something about Akshay, she thought. His talking had passed around fluidly, with delightful listeners on the other side, yet they regarded him as a lunatic. Her temper rising, with her nerves tingling, she could no longer sit there with this colleague whose blabbering was indeed unbearable.
“If only you knew what it felt like running away from your own shadow and seeing everything with different eyes, you would have seen that he wasn’t being personal at work.”
The rest of the day at office was spent with the overwhelming want to see Akshay and drag him out of the zone where he was likely hurting himself. There seemed to be no involvement with the environment around as she strictly worked; her eyes focused on the computer screen. The clicking sound of keys and voices from across the office floor were not the only things filling her mind. She did not want him to remain a puzzle to her, regardless of the growing insecurity felt by Disha. Thus, as the evening came, she darted towards Akshay’s apartment.
She knocked the door reaching there and found it to be slightly jammed. After she pushed it open with a creaking sound, she had only hoped for his well being. Where else could he have gone leaving the door unlocked, she thought to herself, considering her negative thoughts as absurdity. However, a strange, pungent smell filled her nostrils as she moved further inside the apartment, where portraits of his family members were hung on the wall. The happy faces were here too. And on the floor, there laid many cigarette stubs. But before she could think anything about it, she turned around towards the room from which the strong smell was emerging.
She could not say what it was that he was smoking, sitting down on the floor with those grainy substances in front of him. But his eyes fixed on hers, while smoke was still coming out from his nose and mouth, she could see in him how calm he looked.
He remained there on the floor, motionless, staring at her, as though he had not yet seen her standing there. His eyes were slightly red and watery, and as she sat down on the floor beside him, he grabbed both her hands.
“You should not have told those horrible things to me that day. But you knew I would forgive you, and see you have come here to meet me,” Akshay said, looking down at her hands. And such was the strange sensation she felt sitting down by the light smoke rising and seeing him rejoice.
“What is this? What are you smoking?” She asked. Despite she was now confused by his words, she began to understand that whatever it was, it altered him and brought him to a different place.
“Oh, this? This is my medicine. This helps me be as I want to be. To see everyone smiling and
laughing. And never alone. Like the times at lunch hour. With you. Hadn’t we already talked about it?”
He looked up at her, eventually loosening his grip from her hands. He noted the silver bracelet on her wrist, the perfume on her shirt that smelled of her, the nose ring that he always asked her to wear, and the short wavy hair. To her surprise, he hurried to the balcony and stood there looking at the blue motorcycle parked down. And it seemed to her that it was only then he came to note her presence there.
“I have sent you the attachments of our project,” he said, without making eye contact.
“I know,” she said, standing close behind him, “But is it the only thing you think I would come here for?”
“Will this medicine of yours truly help you in being who you are?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am when it doesn’t matter to the people I know. And, did it matter to Ibrahim at all?” He said after giving some thought.
“To see everyone smiling and laughing doesn’t mean you would live for them. I meant joy with your being, with your identity.”
“Nothing exists to me now,” he said, and tears escaped his eyes.
Nothing could have been more awful to her than hearing him speak in a shaky voice and his eyes showing nothing, but discomfort. She wanted to erase all the thoughts his mind had so much cluttered as she walked out of the place.
His medicine may have brought him to a peaceful place, however, it disconnected him with his own being, she thought. A word or two could not have unaltered him, and she began to think of something when she turned over the page of a book in her room.
As Disha entered her room with a cup of coffee, Anu straightened herself up and looked at her with reverence. It could have been worse, if Disha had not supported her when she had no job. It could have been a simple life living in her town, but her coming had made her happier. And as she was thinking about the conflict between them, of the past two days; taking the coffee, her heart was racing.
“I will soon be promoted in my job role,” Disha said, and she turned to leave.
“And there will be many more happier days,” Anu said, taking her hand and holding her back.
“No, I’m not sure if there will be happier days here anymore.”
“Is it only because I began to think apart from the image you made of me?”
“You knew every time you talked about him with me it was disrespect towards our friendship.”
“Yes, and I’m not sorry, because I wanted to know. I wanted to care_”
“Care for him? Then, you have forgotten what love means to you. You have forgotten everything,” Disha said, turning back and withdrawing her hand.
Seeing her leave the room, Anu could not help remembering the day she had met her, in a shop, and finding her she had indeed realized to have found herself. She could not stop thinking about her, and she could not stop thinking about him, when she followed her to the other room.
“Next week I will be going home. For a short leave,” Anu said, without finishing as Sri Priya too entered the room.
“I’m not as lucky as you two since my manager is quite from another world,” Sri Priya said, and Anu nodded in the silence that came after.
“I’m not going there with her. I’m going there with Akshay.”
Their harsh words that came, she found them to be the truth for, she knew she had brought distrust upon them. She wanted to keep the relation she had made, however, the false sense of happiness she saw in Akshay was a deceit, she thought. And the effect of his medicine she wanted to take away.
“He needs me,” she told Disha the next morning.
“You’re killing the dreams that we made together.”
In her silent departure to the office, Anu was left with this impression of guilt and regret that she thought she could never repair in her lifetime. It may have been the end of what they had once called it, ‘God’s only way’. She was lost in a sea of doubts while executing her daily tasks at office, and she did not notice how hard Akshay was trying to mend his talkativeness. He was again staring at the people around.
“I wanted to see them happy, but they wanted to see me crying. They’re laughing at my crying,” his lips shivered as he spoke.
“Nobody is laughing at you. And see you look happy, you’re not crying,” Anu said, holding his sweaty palms.
He was not crying. Looking deep in his eyes, she saw that he was not happy either. But how could she bring him to a sane world, when being close to him had meant that she had to distance herself from Disha, she thought.
“Do you like living in a house that has a pond in the front? And the smell of fish in it that never leaves you? And a place where the neighborhood smells of wild plants and flowers all the time?” She asked.
He turned to look at her and found that she was not joking and being stupid when she talked about her family there. The more she talked about the place, indulging him, the better she was able to divert herself from thinking about Disha and her affectionate nature. Sometimes, she thought, how scary it had been going out without her. But only to her surprise now, he was ready to hold her hand; he wanted to go there with her.
“I hope it doesn’t rain over there. I hate rain,” he said, fixing his shoulder bag loose and boarding the bus with her.
The morning, that following week, she knew not how it would affect her being then after. There was nothing wrong with being a different one. There was nothing wrong with being with a different one, who was on a path to self destruct.
“But the rains and the winds that come with it smell great,” she said.
“Not all things that smell good are…” he said, stammering as if there was something awkward he felt.
“Yes. Not all things that smell great are great, right? But when I cook fish it smells great.”
He looked on as their bus passed by the cotton fields. The sight of red soil he seemed to never have beheld before. The mighty hills there in the mist, he was so lost gazing that he had then come to realize that he had not left her hand since the bus started. Every time they felt each other’s touch, it was a different feeling. Of her voice he had made so much fun before, yet as she talked about the fish found there in the ponds, he found it rejuvenating.
The roads they then walked on and the landmarks of the town that came across, she recalled the times when she had particularly described them to Disha. And each corner of the town she now looked at, there were the conversations with Disha she remembered. She wished she could continue to look at things the way she did before, but little did she know that it was too late to bring her back.
When they neared the-much-discussed pond and a one-storied building lying not too far, she could not help running towards and crying. Leaves fallen around from the Ashoka tree nearby and the discolored look of the house did not bother Akshay as much as her crying did to him.
“Bangaram, your visit here has made me so pleasant again. Crying will not only hurt your parents but me too.”
The neighbor who she called Ishwar Garu called out to her from the terrace of a building east to the pond. His face, so alike an actor, she had always thought he was a detective. And even then as she remembered to have imitated his voice in childhood, hearing him from the distance, she knew she was never alone.
She ran to give the old man a hug as he came down with two fishing rods. She wept endlessly remembering her father, her mother and the life she lived here before she changed her path.
“These, I bought when you called me the last time saying you were coming here with a friend. How disappointed I was when you didn’t come on that Monday!”
Anu could not feel anything anymore. She uttered nothing, and went straight to unlock the rusted lock of the house. The man she did not want to upset, neither did she ever want to upset so many people, but to her understanding she was a human first, a woman later.
“Talk to me when you feel like it,” the man said, waving his hand, “Pulihora and fish pulusu coming soon.”
“I can’t see anyone crying. Don’t cry, Bangaram,” Akshay said, trying to smile as she turned to him, seemingly happy to be called by that name.
“Everyone cries. Didn’t you too, when Ibrahim hurt you and when you couldn’t see what you wanted to see in those people?”
“Where are your parents? We came here to meet them, but this house looks like_”
“Yes, yes. This is how it looks like, and they are always here with me.”
“Where are they?” He asked, and his lips shivered gazing around the dust-laden furniture and the darkened room to find at least one thing he could call family and a part of living.
“There’s no one around,” she said, wrapping her arms around his chest, “If you weren’t here today, there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to, nobody to dream about. And I never had any medicine for reconciliation when I lived here alone.”
“So, you need the medicine too now?”
“Not the one you take. Now, I’m sure you wouldn’t need it either.”
Thanks for reading…
