'Happy New Year' - A Short Story

Somehow the first coffee of 2016 from my office machine tastes exactly the same ( and exactly as horrid) as the one I had before shutting shop for the holiday season, making me reflect sardonically on the overflowing enthusiasm that takes over the world during the first few days of a new year and has people going overboard with expectations, resolutions and promises as if there was a bearded man sitting in the sky who would now wave his magic new year wand and abruptly change our lives for the better just because a manmade calendar has rolled over and made way for its successor.

Time indeed is the most queer dimension of our lives, a commodity that defies laws of linear progression like other coordinates, at least in terms of perception –infuriatingly stagnant at intervals , blindingly pacey at others . What further amazes me about time is its ability to wriggle free from our efforts to contain it, segment it and classify it with our convenient numeric milestones. Like a rebel who maps her own trajectory and defines her own habitats , time too flows by its own rules – hurrying up , just when we want to capture it and hold it back, and vanishing annoyingly after into some faraway land where the postman never goes . And yet, it somehow manages to retain its afterglow in its own inexplicable designs , carving permanent footprints on the sands of our impermanent lifetimes, taking us back and forth to specific junctures where it stopped for us, led us by the hand and gently nudged us into our next orbit of consciousness.

Like this WhatsApp message for instance, that popped into my phone this morning. I reach for my blackberry, reading it for the second time . For some reason, it manages to evoke a sense of adolescent excitement that has become almost non-existent in these middle years of my life. Maybe this is the afterglow of time that I was mentioning – its ability to generate a sensation that is so translucently distant and yet so strikingly familiar.

It is a simple four-liner from her.

“ Hey A ! Long time ! Happy new year to you. Are you in town next Wednesday ? If yes, please confirm asap so that I may extend my trip by a day & we can have our long pending catch up. Please don’t say you are traveling so early in the year ! I am really looking forward to see you. I shall be staying at the Westin.....Love, M ”.

Like always, her name transports me back to a specific block of time that is now frozen and archived in a designated corner of my heart. In an automated Pavlovian reflex, my mind instinctively travels back and settles down at a point .

Life was changing gears and destinies were taking off . I do a quick mental math. Was it seventeen years already ? Almost eighteen , to be exact .

An untimely monsoon that cut short a ferocious Indian summer, a graduation project on yet another Gulf crisis, a silent hospital ward , a terminally ill man, and two diametrically opposite youngsters stepping into life in their own way – one trying to run into it, the other trying to make sense of it.

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It was primarily my urgency to wrap up my project submission within the weekend, and partially my guilt over my loose tongue , that led me into following M to the hospital that morning. I still remember the torrential rains that were lashing Delhi that day. The weather forecast had predicted more rain in the next 48 hours.

“I think your analysis is pretty okay .In fact – it is quite impressive in parts. I just wish you could have stuck to keeping it as an academic research instead of commoditizing and commercializing it. All we need to do now over the next one week is some data validation and try to trim it down a bit ”, she said, looking up from her glasses and giving me a condescending look , instantly making my male ego revolt in protest and blurt the ‘B” word under my breath. And then I gave it to her, full throttle.

She stared at me blankly for a minute after I was done, lowered her eyes and started walking away. I think my last remark about her being a stuck-up and sorry loner did her in. She did not argue. She just excused herself , turned away, pulled out her umbrella from her bag, opened it and walked out into the rain.

Two months back, I just could not figure out the wisdom of our faculty in assigning me to do my graduation project under her . I mean, if you pitch the two most conflicting kinds of personalities together into a team, then it’s just a dumb idea, isn’t it ? “ Don’t you worry. A lot of thinking has gone into this selection and we are pretty confident that the two of you shall complement each other very well and do us proud with a gem of a project”, explained Prof. Ray ( “Di*khead !”, I said in my mind, resigning myself to my fate of having to work under the most annoying female senior in the campus , someone whose reputation preceded her – super student, super snob and super cold, revered and feared by guys, envied and despised by girls. An academic year ahead of me, M was one of the star students around, someone who was in the process of wrapping up her Masters & was toying with aspirations of pursuing her doctorate at a top university in the US, as the grapevine suggested.

While certainly not beautiful in the conventional 90s sense, one could surely call her attractive in a way. That is – if you had a thing for domineering and aggressive women. She knew she was brilliant and had no pretense about concealing it, not even any attempts at faking populist modesty. As a result she hardly had friends, something she did not seem to mind. She was a day-scholar who could be seen on campus during the week, keeping mostly to herself beyond her classes and disappearing on Friday evenings . If she was in a relationship , no one seemed to know about it. I had sketchily constructed her life from the scattered rumors. She lived with her dad who was a known name in the Indian industry till a few years back, and who had retired as the India MD for one of the largest FMCG companies in the world. Apparently, he was either a divorcee or a widower. No one really knew about her mother. As far as I understood , she was an only child and had no recorded siblings that anyone knew of.

As anticipated, it was fireworks from day one. The kind which happens when two Type As clash – Me, being the dominant extrovert and she ( as I learnt during the course of the next few weeks), the dominant introvert. I was loud, impulsive, brash and impatient. She was detail-oriented, methodical, articulate and blunt. But despite the raging animosity, I gradually grew to secretly admire her brains and started picking on it. Little by little, it started making sense why I had been placed under her. A loose cannon like me needed taming under a collected ice maiden like her. Soon, the project started shaping well and we were nearing completion. I desperately needed to wrap it up on that weekend so that I could start my vacation , and I had been working hard on it for that very reason . So when she punctured my plans by suggesting another week of rework, I blew my top. And I let myself go with all the verbal ammunition I was capable of.

It was only when she turned around and walked away, that the intensity of her hurt eyes hit me. I instantly felt terrible at having behaved in such a manner. I wanted to apologize. But by then, she was gone.

Once I was sure that she was not looking back, I (hurriedly borrowing the watchman’s large black umbrella) jumped into an autorickshaw and started tailing her autorickshaw , till she got off and disappeared into that private nursing home in a residential locality inside Sector 42.

We literally collided into each other at the entrance to the last ward from where she was emerging, some reports and papers in her hand. She was astonished to see me and kept staring as I bent down to collect the papers, mumbling how sorry I was for my rude outburst, my eyes quickly scanning the prescriptions - trying to decipher the ailment and the patient details.

She calmed down during the second cup of coffee, and explained. She had been tending to her seriously ill father for the past four months, all by herself . To make matters worse, just before slipping into his current incoherent state, her father had been furious with her. Apparently the opinionated gentleman did not approve of her choice of a post-graduation ( he wanted her to go to IIM- A and pursue a business management career) , and her recent admission to having a boyfriend whom she wanted to marry soon ( who was, as I learnt, working for IBM Corporation in the US). While some relatives would occasionally drop by during the initial weeks after he was admitted and offer their shallow support , the onus of his wellbeing eventually fell on her lone shoulders, something she had been managing single handedly all along. That explained the circles under her eyes, I thought. Or the reason for her distracted mind at times. Or her unsmiling face, and all the pent up rage behind it.

Suddenly I felt so horrid that I wanted to slap myself for being nasty to her. I wanted to throw my arms around her and comfort her. But that would have been too filmy and inappropriate. So instead, I offered to help her in any way that she needed, adding that she could count on me like a very good friend . And anyhow, I added , I was a hostelite with lots of free time in hand since my papers were done, and the only thing that remained was my project submission.

For the first time, she smiled. She had a lovely toothy smile and looked really pretty, wearing a smile and a tear simultaneously . “ That’s so kind of you. But there’s really not much you, or anyone else can do now. It is just a waiting game. How I wish he could have gone out on a happier note..”, she said, her voice trailing off.

“See, these things are not always in our control. I am sure he too respects your wishes like every father does. He is just disappointed at your life choices, and that’s quite human. The best we can do is try to keep him comfortable at this stage. For a start, why don’t you go and take a walk in the park outside ? The rain seems to have subsided. I can watch over him and attend to anything that he might need ? You look like you could do with a break, in order to start thinking clearly again ”.

She considered my offer, and after some deliberation, agreed . I could make out that she was genuinely exhausted and heartbroken. She led me to the room and left me at the door.

In spite of his pale complexion and fragile frame, I could not help noticing how much his features resembled hers. Apart from a catheter running into his lower abdomen, he was pretty apparatus-free. He was awake, staring at the ceiling, mumbling something.

I had never seen a terminally ill patient before that day . I did not know what to say or do . I just went and sat on a chair by his bed. With a lot of effort, he turned his head to check me, his glazed eyes narrowing for a moment, as if concentrating and rummaging his brain to fetch me from his fast disappearing memory bank .

After a few seconds, he whispered something in a raspy voice. I thought he must be hungry. I asked him if I should peel an orange for him. He listened intently, shook his head and again said (or asked) something. This time I could make out. He was calling out to confirm if I was some “Subhodeep ”. Again, I was in a dilemma whether to say yes or no. I just sat still there and held his hand. He kept staring at me for a while, his eyes never leaving mine, till a tear slowly formed at a corner of his left eye and trickled down his temple into his ear lobe. It was awkward for me, but I kept sitting for some more time while he held on tightly to my palm and wept. After about fifteen minutes, he gathered himself and gestured towards the oranges by his bedside.

“What ? You were actually able to feed him an entire orange ? This is a miracle , A ! He has been refusing all kinds of food from the hospital staff, and especially from me. He must have really liked you !”, Said M, beaming at me when I briefed her about my hour with her dad. I smiled and said I was glad if he liked me and I won’t mind coming back again the next day so that she could take a break while I sat with him. This time, she readily agreed, squeezing my arm to show her appreciation. I suddenly felt grown up and useful for the first time in my twenty one years of life.

Though my project report got over and submitted on the 3rd day from there , I stayed back in Delhi during that summer break without taking my vacation . It became my regular afternoon ritual over the next ten days. I would sit by his bedside and talk to him. Sometimes he would interrupt weakly , trying to ask some questions. But most of the times, he just lay still, looking at me, clasping my palm and listening intently to my heterogeneous discourses. He especially liked it when I spoke to him about my favorite books. I could make out that he must have been an avid reader himself. I was reading Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” those days and one day I casually mentioned to him that M reminded me of a girl called Midori in the story . Maybe he too had read the book and hence knew of Midori’s story. Something about the mention of Midori made him sad that day. I quickly moved to Dave Barry’s humor and brought him back to his new found cheerful self. He never cried after that first day , except for a brief moment on the eighth day. In fact, from the fourth day onwards , M started joining us and we tried having a lopsided threesome conversation – a grieving daughter, a dying father and a stranger who had suddenly descended into a deeply private space of theirs.

On the ninth day, while listening to us and nodding enthusiastically from time to time, he abruptly fell asleep. His arm was resting partly on M’s lap while his palm had crossed over and was holding on to mine. We untangled it delicately and placed it back on his chest. He kept sleeping, a peaceful expression on his face.

That was the last time I saw him alive. He died shortly after midnight.

The funeral was a small affair – a few relatives and handful of friends joined us at the ghat. Thankfully , the monsoon had reached its first halt after the initial frenzy . Once all the rites were concluded and the relatives and friends had left , M said she did not want to go home as yet. She asked Abha Tai ( their house governess) to go ahead, adding that she would come back later. We hailed an auto rickshaw and asked him to take us to Connaught Place. Ironically, it was a lovely evening. I still remember the light breeze that wrapped us as we walked side by side from India Gate towards the Inner Circle and right around ( and above) Palika bazaar. Suddenly she said she was craving for a drink. We pooled our resources and saw that we had slightly over three thousand rupees between both of us, enough to get drunk silly. We walked into a bar and ordered Old Monk with Thums Up. We ended up polishing an entire bottle.

When a long suffering family member departs , the sorrow is quickly replenished by a sense of deep relief. I could see that relief in M’s eyes that day. She looked lighter and brighter, as if a huge burden had lifted from her heart. She talked nonstop that evening – about her childhood, her ( deceased) mother, her school in Jaipur, about Abha Tai who had brought her up since she was six ( and who was like her surrogate mother), about her career aspirations, and of course – about Subhodeep , her Bong boyfriend whom she loved to bits. She couldn’t wait to finish her Masters and join him in the US, far away from her wafer thin familial bonds in India. Funnily, her reluctance to introduce Subhodeep to her father over the past three years, fearing an ugly confrontation, came to her aid in the end when he mistook someone else to be Subhodeep and silently conveyed his approval. By an unspoken act , both of us had become fellow conspirators in telling a white lie to a dying man . Curiously , neither of us felt guilty because of that.

When we parted at her front door that night, she came over and gave me a tight hug . I then realized that it was the first time she had cried that day. It was as if she had run out of tears in the past few months and had saved the last few to thank me. Somewhere deep within, she was endlessly grateful to me for easing the relationship between her father and herself during his final hours .

There are relationships that are born out of blood. And there are relationships that are carved out of customs. And then there are some relationships that rise from the most unexpected bends of life and get cemented over time, often emerging stronger than bonds of blood or rituals. These relationships don’t need names. Technically speaking, M and I never had even anything remotely romantic between us. Nor did we ever perceive each other as siblings. I don’t think that the two of us could have become best friends too, given our opposing temperaments. And yet, we are curiously bonded for life, in a relationship that cannot find a mention in books of convention. She is happily married to the same guy for the past sixteen years. I have had my share of run-ins with the establishment called marriage before dropping out of my last steady relationship, five years ago. It is not that we exchange emails, WA messages or phone calls every other day. In fact, I don’t even remember the last time I had checked her Facebook profile or Twitter page. But no matter what, we stayed connected over the years, reaching out to and being beside one another during every important event of our lives – happy and sad. And it has been always unplanned and abrupt.

Like that rainy day in Delhi when I followed her into the nursing home. And like this WA message that lands in my phone on the 1st of January, bringing a smile to my lips just when I was slipping into my cynical existential black hole, questioning the laws of mankind and the conspiracies of the universe.

“Hey M ! That would be super ! Guess what ? I was anyway planning to bunk office on Wednesday ! Do remember to pick up a Glen(18) for me from the duty free, will you ?” – I reply, sipping my coffee. Suddenly, the coffee tastes better.

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(This short story is from my 7-part tribute to Murakami on my personal blog in 2016)

Did you like the story ? Do leave your comments. If you like reading standalone articles & stories sitting on overlapping boundaries of work & life, you may check out my books, 'As You Life It', 'Life-ing It' & 'Once upon a someone', available on Amazon in yo curountry)