Never Again

Authors Note -

This is the second in four part series of short stories both independent & inter related to each other.

******************************** 

Her wrist watch made a distinct little click on arrival of every new hour. Whenever a Cosmo magazine questionnaire, on ‘Who is the right man for you to grab?’ asked, “So, What makes you tick?” her first thought invariably would go to the Gucci replica she had bought in her Beijing trip last year. But nowadays every click seemed like a reverse countdown. T+1, T+24, T+72.

‘Well, whopdy fuckity dopdy’ she thought. Not realising that she had banged the car horn in tune with her thought. Her clock made another click.

‘So, What makes you tick?’

She looked at the watch with its delicate curves on her wrist, which she thought was less delicate than the watch but more delicate than the wheel of the car. The white backlit digital clock on the dashboard agreed with the mechanical arms of the watch with fading golden hue, that the time was indeed 1:00 AM.

The newly constructed elevated freeway was like everything the government does. The road was good and smooth but didn’t lead anywhere anyone would normally want to go. But seeing that Rasika wasn’t really headed anywhere in particular on this particular night, the road itself seemed like the perfect journey.

“You know… I think…” She forgot. ‘Well, whopdy fuckity … what was that last one dumbity.’ She was growing frustrated at losing her train of thought every five seconds. The gathering, Witches Coven would best describe it. That was what she wanted to forget but couldn’t.

‘This is the first time I am driving since I was raped’ she thought, ‘Is this how I am going to measure everything from now on. The first time I have eaten Butterscotch Ice Cream since, drawn an illustration since, had my birthday since…’ While doing a steady 90 kms an hour, her thought trailed to scenes of the meet she just escaped.

In a moment of what she thought was complete clarity, Rasika decided to make the speedometer in agreement with the clock too. 101…102…. 104…

Whatever the reason was, after about 105, she started to scream in her little hatchback, banging the horn slightly less this time.

“I don’t want to be that girl. Fuck that girl.” 106……. 107

“A girl in my position? What position? He held a position. Fucking lazy ass missionary fuck.” 108….

“A girl in my position? What am I even called? What do you call someone whose vagina is violently invaded by a ummmm” a lot of seconds of ummmmmmm later, “BHENDI.” 110…

In her search for more insults, she didn’t see the slope nearing. She also didn’t notice that a small moped was climbing up the elevated highway.

“MH-01-FR-4109. What was that?”, she called out. ‘But why would there be a moped inside the labour room of Dr. Ingle’s Mahalaxmi Maternity Hospital.’ She checked her wrist for something. She couldn’t remember what. Something to do with …

‘I hate this baby. No wait my hubby gave me this baby. I love this baby.’

“Its alright, Rasika maydum. You’ll dilate enough in a few minutes now.” A nurse around her mother age and with a grandmotherly face, in her pink & white checks uniform, assured her. “It must be a boy. They take their time.”

‘Why was this woman…?’ Rasika thought. ‘Oh ofcourse, she wanted a bakshish; after I push this baby, I love, out of me.’

A clean shaven, short & stout old man entered the magnificently lit labour room of his hospital. A bald crater in the middle surrounded by bushy fencing around the scalp made it seem like he was donning a crown. ‘A perfectly reliable man to expose your funny parts to. I Promise…You Deliver.’

“I bet he even put Q.C. tags on the baby and woman’s belly to assure his services. Uhhhhhh. That advertiser’s mind. Plugging taglines even in my thoughts.” Rasika, at this point, neither realised nor cared that she was thinking out loud.

“So where are we now?” Dr. Ingle said in his nasal voice with heavy Maharashtrian accent. “Five & half” replied the nurse.

Grunting a low “Hmm” with his right brow hooked up, he smiled in her direction while walking out hurriedly. The door opened and the sweaty & worried face of her dear hubby flashed from the outside corridor; before he walked out behind the now-jogging doctor and her mother leaning on the wall opposite the door, as it closed. Stiff necked & smug smile on her face plastered, as always.

The nurse carefully soaked the sweat of her face and neck with her soft towel. She set a few of stray hair sticking over the side of her face loose and produced a yellow scrunchie from somewhere to fasten them.

‘Only if those stork delivering babies were true. Then we’ll.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Fuck. What is that bastard doing. No, I love him.’

The slow hum of the AC. The slow breathing of the nurse. The slow & muffled kicks of the baby. It just seemed to her that even the earth too had stopped its rotation. ‘Why has everything stopped. Lets make today, his birthday. So everybody can come together and eat cake, some light snack like Samosa & Wafers and exchange gifts on this day for the next atleast twelve years.’

“Do something. Get him out. Aaooooooouuuuuuuuuu”

“Calm down maydum. They are discussing the options out and they are other ladies in next room.”

The nurse started to spray a purple coloured lavender air spray. Flying the bottle around the room like a poorman’s action figure. The smell activated her gag reflex which threatened its arrival for the longest time but went away with a queasy feeling of Coming-soon-in-a-mouth-near-you kind of way. The refreshing smell was anything but for Rasika. But why was that.

She couldn’t remember. So she just drifted away.

Her hands & arms were Mehendi-fied by the two little Muslim girls that came in three days ago. They had taken Rs. 150 per hand for all other women and Rs. 550 for the bride; which in the current case, was her. ‘It isn’t drastically different from the other women’s design’ she thought ‘But there must be something my professional illustrators eye is missing that two illiterate Muslim girls can see. Or maybe they are just out there looting anxious brides-to-be.’ The later made much more sense to her.

She agreed that the design had a certain earthiness to it & fused modern with hertitagey stuff. But worth four times its actual price, it most definitely was not.

She was wearing the heaviest lehenga available in market. The golden bangles complementing her mehindified hands. An ear to ear smile stretching across her face and 1000V light with their diffusion filters around her.

A faux royal throne made of cheap furniture which reeked of newly applied Fevicol was standing behind her and next to her was a tall man with sweaty and dumbfounded expression applied on his face. Holding her hand like he owned it, he was wearing a golden brown Sherwani and the Fevicol smell was definitely bothering him.

She saw him whisper something in someone’s ear and her eyes wandered into the wedding party. She was staring at a large hulk of a woman. Her massive behind sliding awry the neatly arranged rows of chairs. ‘Why does she even bother with chairs, here take the big couch in front’ was the first thought Rasika had.

The woman she was eyeing with a scorn to match that of Goddess Kali was somebody she now associated with any number of unladylike phrases; but used to call Badi kaki. The huge woman may seem slow but Badi kaki’s shrewdness was as big as the size of her parachute size underpants. Memories of that dreadful family gathering that night flashed before her.

Her widowed mother minus her smug smile, Badi Kaki minus her rapist son and Rasika minus her virginity.  They sat down in complete silence and Badi Kaki began her plea which her mother didn’t disagree with. There were many ghastly acts of pragmatisms suggested by both of them; some involving a lot of slapping, some involving monetary compensations, some involving lot of pilgrimage travelling. They all had one thing in common, they all never failed to make Rasika lose control of her muscles and her brain seem like mush. In classic Bollywood style she had fled the scene of injustice to the safe environment of her car. The urbane, just & controllable hatchback.

Getting back to the current current scene; she took her eyes of the Godzilla, who had by then knocked a dozen chairs in an effort to sit. Her breathing became heavy and the rounded brackets of smile were shrinking. She was trying her best to make the photo with different sects of relatives & friends, worth their while.

A perfect mix of rage, guilt & helplessness engulfed her with the addition of the X ingredient. The purple coloured lavender air spray. A man with the purple spray bottle in hand ran across the stage several times. The photographers clicking away. The man still running around. The next group approaching. The newlyweds describing the guest’s relationships to each other. “Oh these are my uncles & her unmarried sister, their sons & that short petite women is his wife” “Oh honey this my best friend, who stole my pencil when we were nine” “This is my asshole colleague.” “This is the woman I like to bang one day behind you back.” “Oh how cute and she is so young with firm boobs and tight...” “Unlike you, who was ravished by a Bhendi.”

And then she puked. She had expunged whatever little she had gorged down in the afternoon. With her mother & his parents on stage and a long line of irrelevant groups of people trying to get their mugshot with the happy newlyweds, the better half of whom had (As her mother would have put it) ‘6upped herself’.

‘6upped herself? Who uses that kind of term. No doubt she read it in one her stupid Mills & Boons books, which she keeps devouring daily.’ But Rasika hadn’t 6upped herself as she hurriedly got out of the car. That comes after.

Seeing that she was still on the slope and no one else was on either end of the elevated freeway. She parked her hatchback on the slope, a few yards from where the fatal and dull sounding contact with the moped had been made. She forgot to pull up the hand brake before running out the door. The car didn’t rundown the slope like in a Slapstick movie but inched forward like a glacier in fast forward. But a car which was getting away from her slightly was least of her worries.

The elevated freeway was well lit as is the norm of newly constructed infrastructure. The scooty was thrown ahead a few yard down the slope. After tottering half the distance from her car to the mangled remains, Rasika could see something like a very revolting orgy of metal & body. The ‘Metal’ part of the orgy came from what she could guess was a purple coloured scooty, the one with the tagline – “Girls should have some fun”. ‘No that’s not right. But it was somewhere in that area of wordage’ she agreed.

The ‘Body’ part of the orgy appeared to be from a twenty something girl in a colourful Punjabi dress. The dress seemed colourful, being soaked in bright red. Rasika’s legs were on auto pilot mode now, so that the extent of wreckage became more and more clear.

There was no scream, no small cry for help. The way the handle bar had entered and exited her throat, the most she hoped was that it happened quickly. ‘If it happened quickly, she didn’t suffer and if she didn’t suffer, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t decide to maul her down. It was beyond my hands. But the Police might disagree.’

The scooty’s headlight was amazingly on, like a spotlight on her masterpiece. After a street light reflected from scooty’s licence plate distracted her, the auto pilot on her legs switched off at about three feet from the point where the wreckage lay. A red carpet from hell lay ahead upto the purple coloured scooty deeply intertwined with the dead girl’s body and Rasika’s gag reflexes finally gave in to the shock. She slouched over the railing bar and let her vomit fall down from the elevated highway to the old road down below.

After she had relieved herself of the undigested food, her auto pilot switched on. She looked around for her car, which was funny thing to do since it was a deserted area at night with nothing else except a mangled scooty and dead girl. The car which she had parked behind her had inched past the wreckage down the slope. She was flying into the car; starting it up; getting it in gear; flooring the accelerator and turning back home.

She parked her car inside the building. She entered the lobby where the watchman, slouching over his desk, had taken a self-appointed time off. She clicked the lift’s button and waited for it while her mind begged for water hose to clear the sour taste of bile from her mouth. The lift didn’t come neither did the water hose but the watchman ended his time off and cleared his throat a little.

“Arre maydumji, the lift’s off during late nights. The on switch is upstairs. You’ll have to take the stairs.”

“Hmfph”

Rasika started her ascend to her home on the 10^th floor. The stairs were long, wide and smelly. The dank smell of moulds and dusty stairs and her sour tasting mouth made her nauseated with each step. She considered sleeping it off in the car, which is when she realised that there must have been some damage to her car. How could she talk her way out of that? Then she remembered what she had been through before that and considered the talking-out-of-part, a cake walk.

“I won’t say anything, won’t discuss anything. Just go about my life. Just like mom said. Somethings are better when buried and forgotten. It’s no good for … anyone. Keep moving forward. Left Right Left Right. Yes that’s what it is. Left Right Left Right.”

She kept repeating the same thing over every step of every floor upto the entrance of the 10^th floor. She tried her key but no real use. The door was chain locked, which meant she had to wake up her mother and see her. She rung the bell and waited with her sour mouth.

Sound of running footsteps came from inside. Rasika could feel her mother watching from the eyehole and smiling that smug smile she always has on her face. Then a bit of clutter as she fiddled with the chain.  

“Oh Rasika, where were…Why are you bleeding dear…your forehead…” she said in an unusually warm voice.

Rasika felt the rough surface of her temple and picked out a few nuggets of dried blood. Tossing it aside, she looked at her mother, woman to woman. Both women hugged each other. They were crying, as if they were consoling and forgiving each other but neither knew what the other was really trying to put behind.

They were hugging each other then and even now, as she lay on the stretcher with the baby refusing to come out. Her mother talking about some sea section.

“Are we going to the beach!”

“Ceee-Section, Caesarean, Rasika are you there.” A far away voice of someone with a foggy outline of her mother standing infront of her. It began again. “Local anaesthesia…. won’t….thing”

She disappeared into the darkness that engulfed the room after that line. She saw that they had put up some green drapes along her protruding belly and with a singular bright light directed towards it, the short & stout little masked doctor was mining in that area. She wondered whether he would put those Q.C. stickers on her belly. Rasika couldn’t say when, but she thought she heard a low cry after certain time; after which she passed out.

****************

Fresh air reached Rasika’s lungs and drowsiness seemed to fade away. It was afternoon and the middle aged nurse was calling out her name with the obligatory ‘Maydum’ suffix. With a smiling face, she was holding her bundle of joy, who she loved. All the family members had gone for lunch and the loving nurse thought that the baby boy may have his first lunch too.

“I don’t know whether…”

Rasika took him in her arms after the nurse pushed the baby onto her. She didn’t know where the warmth came from but it suddenly began to radiate around her. A healthy little boy with big shiny brown eyes and full head of jet black hair smiled back at her. The nurse was constantly insisting that the baby boy’s thirst be quenched by her milk. Rasika resisted at first but gave in to the demands.

A few hit and misses later, the baby attached its mouth to her tit and a feeling of experiencing true magic had taken over Rasika. She started to recount the whole experience. Her life, her wedding, her… well their night, her nine months, the urges, the disappointments, the sluggish delivery; but all of it with a distinct sepia tint for a satisfying nostalgia piece.

She was simultaneously enchanted with her and her baby boy’s ability. She was so astounded by the wonder and miracle of birth at that moment that she blocked out everything around her. The room, the nurse, her low warm voice, nurse’s tale of her family with two daughters, her story of the elder daughter who was around Rasika’s age, who died in a tragic crash, culprit never found and the poor served a dollop of injustice again.

Rasika never having heard it, took a big breath filling up her lungs till her ribs allowed it. Pushing her newly ample bosom onto the baby boy, she mentally decided on two things - The figure of the bakshish and to never again stroll near Dr. Ingle’s Mahalaxmi Maternity Hospital.