Thursday 23 July 2015

"Schizophrenia"


Thinking deep takes up a lot of me. As much that I feel breathless. Sometimes I wonder what good is a mind to disrupt a smooth sailing life? Everything was perfect. A steady going career, a charming husband with his caring family, a set of beautiful parents and lovely sister to share my life with. My wedding was a dream. Until a few years back, there were no long term ambitions and no unrealistic realization about having done something or not having done another. It was all about going up the ladder and earning a bit more than today. It's only time that unleashes the reality, that as you grow and spend more years mapping your life, everything around you grows too. The problems, the complications, the expectations and the doubts. When you're dealing with humans, you can trust no one you know. Truth is difficult to express as well attain.

I grew up like everyone else. I had issues. But I was lucky. I eventually found the truth.

Lately I had started seeing things around me that wouldn't appear to be true to other people. I had visions of people and things being around me constantly telling me what I ought to do and who I should trust. I was a true believer in science - although I studied it pretty briefly. I understood the chemical bonds, the physics and the quantum, the mechanical and electrical functions, and the anatomy of plants and animals. I was not untouched by the adversities of life, so as my grandparents died, whom I undoubtedly adored and was attached massively to, I comforted myself by assuring that death comes to all. It separates and unites at the same time. Its only for one to lead a certain part of their life entirely independent of influence of any kind. I appreciate that fact and have so long endeared everything life ever since brought me to.

The other day when I was getting ready to leave for my work when I saw the bedside table moving on its own. As I looked closely into the mirror I saw it move an inch forward and again backwards. I ignored it at first. I often experienced moments of dizziness because of a constant dearth of energy in me. I turned and moved towards the door constantly gazing at the table and to my shock, it moved forward and dropped a business card from on top of it. I went closer and picked it up to see it was a hotel in Indore where my husband stayed for the weekend. It was a work call. I almost forgot about the strange movement of the bedside table as I noticed a pinkish stain on the card that appeared to be of a lipstick. At the back, there was a phone number written in a running hand. ''Bad idea'', I thought to myself, but kept the card in my purse. I didn't think about the table after that.

Back at work, I became almost mechanical. The students, the fellow staff were all the same people I saw everyday. It was the same subject that I taught over and over. And all across the world, there were innovations and experiments and researches happening every second. Every second a theory was getting rejected and another being accepted. Every one learned had understood the necessity of being a skeptic - and yet again I read the same subject over and over in the same form and meaning and blurted out in my lecture. Someone should have invented a superlative for monotony. I could think of none!

In the staff room, I heard a strange noise growing louder towards the end of work day. It was the fan. I was trying hard to ignore since a couple of hours and suddenly a peon passed across the corridor giving me a strange look moving his gaze to the fan. I stealthily looked up, and among all the dirt on its wings, I noticed the third wing constantly stopping at one of my colleagues Cyrus at every circle it took. I knew there was something wrong about him. He never looked like a genuine person at the very first instant. Yesterday I was watching a couple of British students caught travelling to be a part of ISIS in Syria. With the long beard he had in spite of it being a rule for the gentlemen to remain clean shaven in their lectures, I always felt he had some kind of a disregard to the larger civilian laws. Well, I wasn't in the hiring committee else I could have done something about it, but then I promised myself to be on a look out of one reason to complain against him. It is a college with young vulnerable minds and we don't need a fanatic misusing it. 

The number at the back of the card I picked up from the bedroom was constantly eating up a piece of my mind. I took it out and dialed it. As expected, it was a woman. I disconnected. No wonder this was a result of my being so concentrated on kids and students at work. Praveen was a good man but this was his way of getting back at me. Fine. It was time I told myself that I didn't need a husband. Well anyway there was nothing I could do about it. I had no authority or access to his work life as he has always been a private person. It's only that he had placed his mules strategically around me that I found myself worried about. Like his driver who dropped and picked me up everyday. The logic was that he cared, where now I feel it's more supervision than care. He doesn't want to get anything back at him for his deeds. 

I got back home drunk. He was waiting in the living room with his regular drink and children asleep. I entered trying to stand up straight and walked inside and crashed without saying a word. I hadn't changed and was inebriated. But I saw my husband coming in, switching the light off, cover me with a blanket and leave. As he left, I saw the bedside table swiftly move towards me as if expecting a pat on its back.

I smiled in my dream that night. 




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