The Homing Pigeons... (18 page)

Radhika

I
t was the ninth month of my pregnancy and the monthly visit to the doctor was scheduled at eleven that morning. Abhinav had taken half-a-day off and was in the bathroom when the phone rang. I wished to ignore while I sat snugly on the lazy boy rocking chair. Maybe, I’d just let the call go into voicemail. I hardly got any calls and it was too much of an effort to get up from the comfort of the well-cushioned chair.

On instinct, I answered the phone. I instantly knew that it was Aditya. We had spoken too often on the phone for me to not recognize his voice. My heart skipped a beat. He had found my number.

“Hello,” I said.

“I...I...
I  just  wanted  to  tell  you  that  I  got  promoted,” Aditya said.

“Congratulations,” I said. I was so happy for him. I was happy that he had achieved what he aspired for.

“I love you…,” he said and his voice trailed off.

As if it were pre-planned, the door to the bathroom unlatched at exactly the same moment. The small studio apartment could hardly afford any privacy and even though
there were a billion things I wanted to say, Abhinav’s presence only made me say, “I don’t know what to say”.

“Say, I love you too,” he implored, begging me to say what
he wanted to hear.

Abhinav was almost behind me when I said, “I have to go, bye,” and hung up.

“Who was it?” Abhinav asked.

“Aditya,” I replied, almost whispering through my choked
throat.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously, watching me when I lumbered back to the softness of the lazy boy. I could feel his gaze on my back. I sat down hoping that he wouldn’t carry on this interrogation. His eyes hadn’t left me for a moment. He raised his brows, as if to repeat his question.

“A friend; you met him,” I said dishonestly. It was difficult for me to keep a straight face. I could feel the muscles of my face tighten.

“When did I meet him?” he asked. He just stood there, with only a towel covering his thin, slimy body.

“At Citibank Delhi, remember?” I was struggling to keep up this conversation. I wanted to break down and tell him that Aditya was the love of my life, and just like now, you
– Abhinav Chandra – had intruded my life to take me away from him.

“Oh! That fair, tall guy?” he asked.

I just nodded and turned my face away to look out at the boats on the Hudson. They had returned with the spring.

“Does he call often?” he asked.

I wish he did but I shook my head and turned away to face the window. I knew that my eyes would give me away.

“Are you sure you’re not doing anything that you’re not supposed to do?” he said.

My patience broke down. I had had enough of this nonsense. Yes, I did not love him and yes, I hadn’t told him the entire truth and yes, I had a past. But in the nine odd months that we had been married, I had never cheated on him. I had
Aditya’s number memorized and I could have made phone calls when I wanted to but I had never ever done it. And despite being the dutiful wife, he was suspecting me! I did something that was extremely uncharacteristic.

“What do you mean by that?” I
asked a trifle louder than I should have.

“Nothing,” he said in an attempt to avoid a conflict.

“Abhinav Chandra, explain that last question.  Don’t fucking nothing me,” I shouted.

He was visibly taken aback, for he had always seen me as a docile, peaceful doormat that would try her best to avoid conflict. And here, right now, that stereotype was shattering with my loud pitch. He tried to avoid the question again, but I wouldn’t let go.

“I want a fucking answer right now.” I was shouting loud enough for the neighbours to hear us.

“Calm down. I just wanted to check,” he said, visibly on
the defensive.

“Check what? Do you doubt my fidelity?”

Maybe I was over reacting, but the rush of adrenaline and the months of misery that I had undergone and kept within myself came to the fore.

“I never said that,” he replied meekly.

“You son of a bitch! What then did you mean by your statement?” I said, livid and angry.

I think he took offence to his mother being called a bitch and he lost his temper.

“You  have  no  interest  in  sex;  you  just  lie  there like  a corpse. I know you don’t love me. Then why am I wrong in suspecting that you’re having an affair with someone else?” he shouted back.

The volley of abuses continued until I felt a blow on my cheek. It was surprisingly hard for a man of that shape and size. In that instant, I understood why the Americans had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Second World War. Sometimes, harsh methods bring about a peace, and my peace started or ended when I slipped into nothingness – a black hole that I travelled through. There was nothing else but darkness in that tunnel. Not even a light at the end of that tunnel. Just when I was getting accustomed to the darkness, a flash of light revealed that I was a little girl on my third
birthday. Another flash – I was in Solan. Another flash – I was in Chandigarh at YPS. Another flash – I was in bed with Aditya and then there was darkness again.

The darkness broke with a blinding light on my face and then there was a calm – I was floating. Maybe, I was dead. Maybe, this was heaven. Maybe, God had chosen to relinquish my wretched life. Everything here was white – the people, the walls and even the sky. And then the whiteness gave way too, to people who were dressed in blue, a pale blue; a familiar blue of the uniform of the hospital – they looked like doctors and nurses. I was still alive. Abhinav’s contemptuous face came into my line of vision and that confirmed it – this was hell.

Dr Jill Fonda looked at me and smiled but she didn’t look happy. My mother-in-law was there too. When had she come? Was I still dreaming; maybe hallucinating? What was going on? My hands were numb, almost porous from the multiple injections that had been thrust into the vein to draw blood. On instinct, my thoughts moved to the baby and despite the numbness, I could feel the void in my belly. It had to be out. Who did it look like? Was it Aditya’s? Where was he? Or was it a she? There was no crib and there was no howling. There were no answers. A mother’s instinct took over. I tried to leap out of bed in search of the infant, but the body doesn’t work on instinct, it works on strength and I was devoid of it.

I looked back at Jill hoping that she would tell me; she would  explain  what  had  transpired  since  my  argument with Abhinav. Instead, she pushed another syringe into the intravenous drip that brought about another bout of floatation. Another dark alley, that became white and then blue to wake up into the darkness of Abhinav’s soul.

I didn’t know what date it was but it seemed like a beautiful spring morning. The tree outside the window of my room in the hospital was beginning to get back its leaves. Very similar to my situation, as I was beginning to regain strength. Jill was there and today, she wasn’t pushing a syringe. She was willing to brave my questions; to answer them despite the complications of postpartum depression. There was no one else in the room – no Abhinav, no mother in law.

My mouth was dry, parched from the pipe that had been pushed down the oesophagus. My tongue was sore and I could barely rake out the words. But in garbled gibberish, I asked Jill, “What happened doc? What happened to the kid?” “Your blood pressure shot up. It causes a complication that
we doctors call Eclampsia. It’s a situation where the baby has to be delivered speedily through a caesarean. Your husband got you here but it was just a little too late. We couldn’t save the child.”

She was compassionate, holding my hand as she spoke to me. A mother who knew what I had been robbed of. I sobbed, slowly at first, progressively increasing in intensity until it was a cry. My child had died. Irrespective of whose sperm it was, the egg was mine. No matter how it had been conceived and who his father was, I was his mother.

“Was it a girl or a boy?” I asked. Abhinav had let it be a secret, specifically requesting the sonographer to not let me know.

“A boy.
Very fair and tall too, given that it was premature,” she replied.

The mouse had killed Aditya’s child and I had killed my own. I grieved in silence. I mourned everything. I just lay on the hospital bed staring at the ceiling and questioning the God who had
written my destiny. The One who had robbed me of everything – of parents who I had thought were my own, of love that I thought was forever, and now, of motherhood.

At some point, Abhinav entered the room with his mother, but they didn’t perturb me. I looked at him and there was only contempt in his eyes. There wasn’t a hint of compassion for what I was going through. To his mind, I had robbed him of his child. I wish I could tell him that it was never his. Maybe, he knew already.

I didn’t know it then, but I had spent five days in the hospital and I was discharged. We reached back home, the three of us to the confines of the studio apartment. The air that hung over the apartment was heavy. It stank of the unsaid story of a terminated pregnancy.

It remained like that until a couple of days later Abhinav broached the topic, “I think we should look at separating for some time. I am not sure if this is going to work out.”

Hadn’t I known all along that this relationship was never going to be the same again? We would never ever be able to erase the memories of what had transpired. There was no regret; why even regret the end of something that I had built on a foundation of deceit.

He booked my tickets for two weeks later when the airfares came down. Always mindful of expense, Abhinav was living up to his reputation, even if it meant tolerating me for the extra two weeks. I don’t know why but I sen
t an e-mail to Aditya after that conversation.

Aditya

I
lie in bed that night thinking about where my life is going. I have not only degraded myself but now, I have also involved Bhatoliya into this nefarious profession. I am feeling a little lost because I don’t know where this will end. It reminds me of the time when Radhika had left me and gotten married. I felt lost those days, rudderless and demotivated.

Those days, I would often tell myself, “She left you. She doesn’t deserve you”. It didn’t make things easier. I learnt that repeatedly stating the truth does not make you believe that it is true. It had been over three months that she’d been married and I was still having trouble standing on my two feet. She had left me with an indelible void when she had married the mouse. Despite my musings, the hole refused to fill. I thought that I would be able to get over her, but I didn’t. I had even attempted to start off a conversation and flirt with another woman.
All in the hope that if I could delude my brain, the heart would also be deceived. I tried, in vain, to get over her.

At work, my promotion didn’t seem like the certainty that it had been a few months ago. It was early November, which meant that there were only five months left for the
promotion and two months to bring in the results that would get translated into figures on the income statement. My boss had attempted to threaten me, coax me, cajole me, motivate me,  demean  me  and  yet,  the  slumbering  salesman  inside me refused to wake up. It was almost like I was hell bent on ruining my career.

Perceptions are formed when people are ignorant or know half the truth. The truth was that I was too emotionally hurt to be able to work without feeling naked. I felt that everyone I met knew my story. When you are self-piteous, you don’t love yourself. When you don’t love yourself, you can definitely not love your work. When you can’t love your work, there is no way you can work with passion. Client after client rejected my sales pitch and the products of the bank. Actually, they rejected me.

Each rejection made me a little more self-piteous, a little more complaining and a lot grumpier.  My manager only knew the half-truth, so his perception of me was that I had a bad attitude. I needed a Guru, a spiritual healer that could get me out of the mess that I was in. I had weird thoughts, of leaving the job to go to Rishikesh; maybe even to the higher reaches of the Himalayas in search of this anonymous healer.

Bhatoliya was the only other person, besides Deepika, who knew what had happened. He was the only person who I had been able to tell. Even as a child, I would sometimes be fearful of stating the truth. This time, the fear of being ridiculed was much larger than the fear of telling the truth.

Bhatoliya had been patient, letting me wallow in the mud of my grief for over three months now. He refused to encourage me, and refused to demean me and just heard out everything that I had to say. Not once did he pass a judgment on either one of us, never telling me what I should have done or what she should not have done. He knew that I was struggling to keep my job and I was struggling to come to terms with my loss, but he didn’t utter a word. Not until today.

He entered after work, looking a little distraught, and I
asked him, “What’s wrong?”

“Just work. I don’t have anything else that makes me happy or unhappy,” he said.

“My work sucks too. I haven’t sold an investment plan in nearly a month,” I said.

I was attracted to grief. Anyone else’s grief would bring
out my own.

“Let me refresh your memory,” he said, “It’s been over three months that you’ve sold one.”

I almost began to counter his statement but I hadn’t sold as much as a savings account, let alone an investment account. My last sale had been made to the lawyer, just before Radhika’s news had struck me. Bhatoliya was right.

“And it’s about time you broke out of your misery, because the world doesn’t care. It doesn’t care if you loved her or if she loved you. You
r company definitely doesn’t care a fuck. They pay you a salary and they expect you to bring in the money. Three months is a lot of salary that needs to be paid off,” he said.

They were harsh word, but they were true. They were severely practical words that brought me crashing down from my search of the Guru and the Himalayas.

“I can’t get over her,” I almost cried.

“You can’t fucking
get over her until you fucking stop sounding like a fucking wimp,” he shouted, louder than my cry, “Goddamn it! You’re twenty fucking three years old fucker and you have a fucking life ahead of you, son of a bitch.”

He continued, “And the next time I see you here when I get home, I will
fucking blow your head off. Go do some fucking sales calls.”

I thought some of those ‘fucking’ words didn’t fucking fit in, but it was from the heart – loud and clear. I suddenly wished that Bhatoliya hadn’t had a bad day at work. I wished that the inertia that had so engulfed me over the past few months wouldn’t break. It was a change that I was beginning to get used to. I was beginning to enjoy seeing myself as the scapegoat and the underdog. Either it was that lecture or another incident that marked my turning point, but it came.

The next day, I walked into work a little confused. One part of me trying to improve after Bhatoliya’s hiding; another refusing to leave the quicksand of inertia.

My manager summoned me into his room and handed me a letter. I read the contents of the letter, unbelievingly. It hurt to be even thought of in that way, but I had been put on a Performance Improvement Plan – a rare compliment given to some of the most incompetent that the bank had ever hired. I was being told that I was one of them. A ruder shock than when she had left me and ruder than when Bhatoliya had given me the verbal whiplash. I was ashamed.
Period.

I realized that the resurrection of a broken career is more difficult than making a career. I was finding this out the hard way. When you are on top, you get to cherry pick. When you are on top, you can afford to cancel some meetings. When you are on top, you get credit for meeting clients that were sold on the product in any case. I was nowhere near the top. In fact, I was the only one,
amongst the hundred MTs hired last year and the ninety-nine that still remained, to have been given a performance improvement letter.

I looked down at my diary – the leather bound organizer that had been my faithful servant on the field. The one that would help me keep a track of my appointments. Today’s page was empty. I turned the page, it was empty, too. Another, and then another; all I saw were blank pages. No appointments lined up. It was apparent why I had been given that letter. In a business where one in ten leads actually materialized, I was looking at no meetings and it wasn’t surprising that I had no sales against my name in the last three months.

I went back to the pages from three months ago, a week before 29 July, when she had been married. I looked at the sea of black – scrambled up logs of meeting, follow-up lists on what I would need to do to convince the clients. I flipped over the pages, slowly and the black marks on the pages reduced until I reached today’s date. The page was empty. I had a sudden urge to go back to my self-piteous avatar. The one that said, “Isn’t my life empty, too?”

I fought it like an addict on his way to recovery fights the urge for drugs. I wanted my glory back. I wanted back everything, and that included her. I wanted her back. I would get her back. I did not know how, but I just had to be better prepared when she did come back. I had to be seen as an able suitor and again, an irrational, unrealistic, impractical voice in my head said, “
You have to do it for us”.

I picked up the phone and started making phone calls. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t have any half-baked leads and there was no one willing to drop a free lunch in my kitty. I started with people who had rejected me in the past three months, the people who had thought that I and the bank’s products were unworthy. They were the most difficult to convince and the most difficult to get appointments from.

Driven by belief, I spoke to them, begged them and coerced
them to grant me another meeting.

I  ran  into  more  rejections  and  little success  but  I  was adamant. The first cheque that finally broke through the darkness was for a meagre sum of twenty thousand, but it broke the drought. It was like the first drop of the first monsoon shower that bestows life to the parched earth.

By the end of November, I had three sales – just enough to be able to get a tick mark on my performance improvement plan. December was marginally better with about seven sales. My peak had been twenty sales in June and I was still severely short of that figure. Somehow, I didn’t feel as naked. When I spoke to a client, I didn’t talk to him as if I had left my clothes at the laundry. I was on my way, a little slowly, but fast enough to have my manager stall the performance improvement plan. It would still not guarantee me a promotion though.

The Y2K issue turned out to be a non-issue and while most of the world partied, ushering in a new year, a new decade, a new century and a new millennium, the technicians heaved a sigh of relief. I didn’t have anyone to party with: Bhatoliya had gone back to Himachal for a few days, the other two, Sameer and Kunal had taken their respective girlfriends out.

I sat out in the balcony, alone, thinking about how life would have been different if she hadn’t left me. For one, I wouldn’t be here alone with a bottle of whiskey for company.

On the positive side, the New
Year’s Eve is a great time to introspect and plan, especially when you have nothing else to do. I sat on the balcony, thinking how wonderfully the year had begun – the job offer from Citibank, our training where I had met Radhika and the romantic times that we had spent.

I wondered what might have happened if July hadn’t come the past year. It may have stopped the turning point: her
marriage, the heartbreak that followed it and the dip in my performance.

The year had been a see-saw. I prayed that I had hit the ground, the lowest point of the veritable see-saw. I prayed that the next year would be better.

Through the inebriated recesses of my brain, I gave my sober self a challenge for next year: Go get a promotion, and go get her back!

The problem was that I still didn’t know how to get her back. At the back of my mind, I knew that I would somehow have to woo her back, but I could barely afford a train ticket to Chandigarh, let alone buy an airplane ticket to court her. Hell, I was so poor that I couldn’t even afford to make a call; long  distance  international  was  exorbitantly  expensive  for my flimsy pocket. That I didn’t even have her number was inconsequential. In the absence of an alternative, I would just have to wait. Until then, I would just need to strengthen my credentials and awaken the salesman that had chosen to die.

The whiskey brought about an exothermic reaction. Despite the severe chill and fog, my body was warm. Sometimes, the cool wind would bring about goose bumps on my naked arms. Very similar to that evening in July when we had first made love.

That moment had to be the highlight of the year gone by; not because of the sex, but because it had bonded me to her. It had made us one. It had brought about a union that a million candle light dinners would have never achieved.

It was almost yesterday that she had whispered sweet nothings into my ear. It was almost an eternity since I had felt her fingers through my hair. It had only been yesterday that her smooth skin had brushed against my hairy torso. It had been ages ago when I was inside her.

The frivolous people of Delhi weren’t romantic and they had no place for a jilted lover to relive the moments of his love. They broke the calm with loud fireworks forcing me to abandon my thoughts and return to bed – alone, except for her thoughts that refused to betray me.