Apathy and Ecstasy: August 2010

Past continues

20. True colours...

Maliha moved to the side of the room and watched as all her friends recovered from her melodramatic speech… helping themselves to a drink to speed up the process. She smiled, and touched the glassy bits of her necklace, a habit she had when she wore something she liked, always checking to see if it was still there.

She moved to the balcony, an odd thing to do considering her experience in this part of the house not so long ago. But she did not feel nervous and although she expected the sequence of those events to come rushing back to her, they did only a little differently than one would imagine. She had forgotten those dark days, she had worked hard to replace all those memories…with ones from her now ever changing life. She had forgotten how deep the wounds were before she rushed to cover them instead of leaving them to fully heal! Why she was choosing to have these morbid and disturbing thoughts on the evening of her birthday party was not clear… but special occasions call for some reflection…and recovering from a head injury caused by a semi hypnosis driven jump off the ledge of a balcony is a better trigger than any.

Losing her parents had been almost as though she had lost herself. Her entire world had been taken and tossed upside down and shaken so badly that any sort of recovery seemed unrealistic . But like anything, with time, it got easier to live with, easier to deal with.

The story of Maliha’s disturbing past dates back to when she had just lost them. Her parents, both in business had left behind a sizable fortune. Of course this was enough to attract the exaggerated sympathies of some distant and unknown relatives in the hopes of receiving monetary gifts for their acts of kindness. Maliha saw right through most of them, except an uncle, who seemed genuine at first. He had a completely different agenda it turned out. He knew that she being an adult and only heir, would have complete rights to her inheritance. Unless he could somehow show that she was being cared for by him, as she was mentally unstable. Farfetched though it was, it was not an impossibility, after all she had been under a great deal of stress, and the traumatic incident could have had alarming results on the young girl’s mind. Slowly but surely her uncle began gaining evidence of her alleged mental instability quoting her out of context, collecting recordings or writings from her , conveniently omitting rational explanations for them and soon he had built a case of her ‘insanity’ from nothing. Somewhere during the course of this plan, Mali began to realize her dear uncle had greater interests than her well being but by then she was already outnumbered, the world against ‘Crazy Mali’…”Oh poor girl..she’s been through so much..look at her eyes…yes they look empty..shhh…don’t provoke her” comments whispered like this became common, and soon everyone had labeled her disturbed!

Her uncle would soon have control over how Mali spent her inheritance and that would mean it would be his to use… the atrocities people will commit for money. Soon enough the air turned hostile, his gentle scolding’s , turned violent and cold, and he eventually resorted to force, keeping Mali confined. All this while Mali should have been attending college…

What her uncle did not know is that Mali had always been bright, and she always kept an escape door, a backup plan. She had started to move around some of the money, and ensured that every bit of paper work was duplicated and air tight, the only claimant could be her. So she would escape the clutches of her greedy uncle, it was only a matter of time. She decided to give in to her supposed insanity and provoke her uncle, but that made things worse. He locked her up, afraid of what he had gotten himself into. Then she calmed down, only to be locked up again. Her uncle, so overcome with desperation for this wealth, decided to take the extreme step…he would kill Mali and make it look like suicide.

As all such stories go, the night that happened turned disastrous… for her uncle. Maliha had opened her large home to her uncle, again by force. Her uncle had picked one fine evening to commit this terrible deed. Luckily Maliha was one step ahead. She knew his plan…she had just sensed it. She had decided it was time to run. To get as far away as she could from any family she had left and lead life on her own terms, make something good for herself. She packed her things, hid them from view and waited till her uncle came around to ‘check’ on her. He had decided to go the old movie way, poison her, making it look like she took the drastic step herself…She smiled, played along…but later in the dead of the night, she made her move… she would throw her bags out the window, get out and take a train out of the city. Of course uncle came knocking , he had to check if the deed was done.

When he found Mali, poised to run, he did not know how that could be. Overcome with fear and rage, he chased her…and she ran…through the house, down the corridor, to the room on the left…but in reality she could not jump out of the window.

There she was face to face with a real life villain, faced also with the choice of running or fighting. She fought. And that is how the letter opener on the table by the window, ended up a few inches inside her uncle’s chest… killing him.

Self defense. That’s what it was. The legal system agreed.

She could have jumped…and run…but she had to honour her family…she had to cause him pain…she did…but she had hurt herself too.

In the end that was how Mali got free, got on her feet and started to live again. But she had not forgiven herself for what happened that night. She could have handled it differently, she felt…she had defended herself, but she had not forgiven herself…

That may have been why she was overcompensating by helping everyone she ever met and also why she moved, never staying too long, because her memories always had a way of catching up with her!

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One girl, two realities

19. Epiphany

It is known that Manu was happy the week leading up to this party, surprisingly so. Not to say that he was insensitive to his friends, but because he had gained some much needed clarity for his play from the shock of this incident. It would be interesting to see how this all happened.

In the short time that he had known Kit, Mali and even Raghav, he had become very attached to the three, like they were family.

He had been taking turns with Kirtana, visiting Mali in the hospital, giving her company during the tests and routine examinations that were conducted to ensure Mali was okay. They had met some others in the hospital. Netra , who was having her appendix removed. Her husband, possibly the most devoted man on the face of the earth, hardly ever left her side. He had been worried sick about his wife, and took care of her every need. He would have chewed her food for her if he could. Was there such a thing as too much love? It was amusing to see them together.

Then there was someone else Manu had been observing. She came in to meet with a physiotherapist on the same floor every day. She seemed to be in a great deal of pain, although from the looks of it she could not feel much from the waist below. Manu felt a strong urge to go up to her and give her a big hug…

Manu often dozed off while waiting for Mali or Kirtana to come and takeover ‘Mali’ duty. And each time he slipped into a bizarre dream… a version of what he had.. ‘one girl, two realities’.

It was a occasion like this where he woke up, with a start, only to quickly say bye to Kirtana, before running back home, to put pen to paper and write his idea before it became diluted by second thoughts and distracting conversations.

Here was his latest idea. The play would open with a man, a man who wrote music. He would be at a point in his life, where fame had left him, and he no longer produced work that could earn him his daily bread.

He moves to a more modest dwelling and begins a routine life of early retirement, fed up of trying to work hard to make a living all over again. He goes to a park one afternoon, as he did often these days and meets a girl…the girl is a dancer, she says.

A few days later he finds that the girl he had met, could not have been real. She could not be…for the girl had died years ago. There had been several conflicts in this area that was now a civilized town, but once upon a time, a girl had lived here, where this park now stood… The girl had been a dancer, that was true, but in better times . Her dreams were killed when she survived a landmine accident, with no use of her legs… she was hurt inside and out. She lived a few years before she passed on...

He visits the park again. And there she is…waiting for him to come. She comes to him, she is not crippled. She speaks little, as though preoccupied or in a trance…she is just dancing, moving to unheard music. The writer of music would at first think that he has gone crazy…how could he be seeing the dead? Soon his doubts on his sanity are replaced by fear..at which point he begins to confide in a neighbor… a young man. A blind man. The man does not judge him, he believes what the writer appears to be seeing.

Soon the writer realizes that this girl is as real as she wishes to be…she has come to him to fulfill her dream, without which she would never rest…to dance to the perfect music and be applauded for her grace.

The story would be one of eerie beauty. The writer, with the help of a few struggling musicians would work to compose, the perfect music for the girl…and she would finally have her song and her dance.

One night, she would dance to that on a rooftop, as though to an audience, and she would appear in both her forms, for her spirit knows two realities. Of happier innocent times, and of hardship and conflict. She would find her peace at last…and the writer would find his success again with a beautiful new composition…a happy ending…

Manu scared himself a bit as he wrote down this concept. He would have to create some moving music, not to mention have some skillful dancers in his cast. The part of a blind neighbor was all Raghav…a bit of very obvious inspiration.

The play would have to be constructed tightly, for an abstract concept like this, would not be easy to portray. One could easily get lost in fluid plots and melancholic music. It would need a modern approach, to a bittersweet story. He had his work cut out for him, but at least he had direction. He wanted this play to be a commentary on how harsh realities like death and conflict cannot crush a person’s dreams, and how your spirit is tied to that dream, and you can achieve it against all odds. it also would serve to point out the hardships of the physically challenged… blind, crippled…

Manu… back at party, smiled, and sipped his drink…this play would be a feather in his cap…he thought.

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Shades of grey...

18. Feather in her cap…

Her head ached… it ached so badly she thought she could feel her brain hammering at the inside of her skulll…the ache made her irritable and everything was beginning to make her already bad mood worse. Why was this happening today..not today!?

The guests were arriving and soon everyone would be here, Kirtana felt a wave of nausea. What timing? She took a deep breath, and let the moment pass. She would be okay if she stopped thinking about this.

Tonight they were celebrating the birthdays of Manu and Mali, two weeks late. Maliha had returned from the hospital a week earlier and she had come up with a unique way to invite guests to this party, she was going to do something interesting she had said. Well who was surprised, this was Mali, head injury or not.

Maliha had called three people she knew, Jagan the guy she had bumped into at the art store, who also happened to be the assistant to Manu; Kit’s neighbours who she had gone to the play with and Netra, a girl she had met the one week she had spent at the hospital. Netra was in for appendicitis, and they had met when they shared the two bed ward together during their respective ‘recovery’ time.

Maliha had invited them on the condition that they in turn invited three more people. That way everyone at the party told three other people and so the crowd would be a mix of everyone they all knew. Kit’s house was going to be full.. but there was another ‘catch’, everyone had to come wearing a hat… “no hat, no entry” she has said.

All dressed up, Maliha was looking great especially for someone who had fallen two floors off a balcony .She was pulling off an arm in a sling and a head injury with such ease. She had on a black hat and wore a beautifully fitted electric blue dress made of crushed silk, one of her ‘good’ outfits she said. She was wearing jewellery she had made herself, blue green glassy bits, strung together in a linked chain, which on its own looked strange and incomplete, but on her just fit. She wore a peacock feather in her hat… she really looked dressed for the occasion.

Needless to say Kit was just as well dressed. Looking amazing in a hot pink tunic type dress, she wore a belt around her hip, with a shell buckle, and she had improvised a bit on the hat and wore a band around her head instead, making her look like she was at some retro party. Kit had called her plus three. Anish, Roxie - her friend the painter and Rita, who worked at one of her favourite boutique’s (also happened to be Rita of Manu’s play). Manu had called Max, and two other members of his cast and brought Monkey. With everyone at her house, it was clear that the world could indeed be a small place, there were so many familiar faces!

Manu had had the best week, considering everything. He had made a breakthrough on an idea for his new play, and through all this ,shows of his play (Who’s got my knife) were still running successfully. Raghav had gotten over his guilt of the experiment gone wrong and that could have had something to do with Mira having come to the party, as his guest. Plus there was the fact that there is nothing like a good scare to shake you out of a rut.

Mira had brought Nisha. And Nisha was not happy.

Everyone else looked happy and the mood was perfectly complimented by the ambience in the house. It was breezy night, not cold, warm and yet somehow cool. The rooms had been lit entirely with lamps, and the smell of jasmine incense wafted through the house. Food and drink were in abundance, Kirtana had spared them all the head ache (funny because she actually did have one) and catered…she had set up a mini bar, and even the bartender wore a hat, she noted. This party was not inexpensive…but small fortunes could be spent for good friends. And that was what Maliha had become in the one month she had known her now.

Maliha let all the guests arrive before she called for everyone’s attention. She walked to the middle of the room, they had set up a small wooden stage at the centre of the room, there would be some drunken performances tonight! Mali carried a pouch in her ‘good’ hand. It had different types and colours of feathers.

“So how many people in this room have ever been afraid of the dark? Sorry Raghav, but you know what I mean... come on; I’m sure everyone has been at some point; as a kid at the very least? So why fear the dark, it’s the fear of the unknown right? Of not knowing what’s ahead of you or being unprepared to face the thing you can’t see? Well, it’s all of that and more. As you can see, I have a feather in my cap tonight, and I’ll tell you why. Tonight I am celebrating an achievement; funny though I have yet to achieve the thing I want to. What I have done though is to identify the ‘darkness’ of my life that I so fear. And no it’s not the head injury talking, tonight I celebrate an achievement I am positive to make this year, to conquer a fear that I’ve been living with. Tonight I have you all in a room, the people I care about and the people these people care about, I felt that it be on this night that I make this resolution. I usually make one on every birthday of mine, but this time it seemed as though the resolution itself is so big! So I decided to make it in a big way! I want all of you to join me in this… add a feather to your caps, make a promise with me! Let’s toast to that!!” she held up her drink and smiled at all the faces she could see, and took a sip. She had meant every melodramatic word she had just uttered. The guests looked at each other. Glances sideways and behind, the crowd was wondering what to understand from all this. But then, finally, in a collective attempt to see their friend happy, few gave in, and soon the entire group followed.

Mali handed out the feathers, and one by one each person had one on. It was a sight to see…Manu was amused.

Manu’s great mood was not just because it was also his party… but because of what had happened the day before…his entire play had come to him. It was again in a half dream and would be better and that much more difficult to make. a feather in his cap... in the making!

Kirtana wore her feather. As she did, she thought about what she would promise herself to achieve this year…what could she do, what fear could she finally put to rest. She could not think of anything and it was mostly because her headache was not any better, but the idea Mali had just given the crowd had provided her with some distraction…she had been so tired lately, she needed a vacation or a few days of uninterrupted sleep! …She had finally said yes. Manu had at least one actor for his play… she achieved this much off late. if only she had been in a better mood that night.

That evening many things happened, it was an evening that would certainly be remembered by every guest, some for all the right reasons…and for some, all the wrong ones…all was not as well as it seemed… especially for girl with the peacock feather in her cap. For the first time, Mali would need some saving, and it would come from a person in the party that night…someone no one would expect!

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Experimental accident..

17. Blotches…

She ran quickly past the statue, taking a sharp turn at the bend in the corridor. She was running barefoot, and the floor was dusty.. the poor lighting did not help. She reached the end of the passage and saw two doors, one on her left, the other on her right. She looked over her shoulder… he had not yet caught up… she went left, and ran to the window… she looked down, the fall would be at least 10 feet, could she make it? She heard his steps grow louder, there was no time to think. She bent over and got her legs over the ledge of the window… and jumped!...

Maliha woke up with a start! She found herself on a hospital bed… and could not remember what had happened to her that got her there.

She saw two people sitting at the foot of her bed. They were on two plastic chairs, and her eyes were blurry so she could not make out who they were…she brought up her arm to squeeze her eyes… only to be restricted by the tubes sticking out of them. The sight of blood, her own blood, made her slightly dizzy, and she took a deep breath. She summoned up all her energy…”Hheelloo..”.

Kirtana was the first to jump. She had been sleeping. Long hours of waiting and watching had been exhausting. And as such she not had any proper sleep… She rushed to Mali’s side..”Maliha..you are awake! I’m so happy.. wait let me get your doctor..and Raghav? Raghav.. wake up!!!! She’s awake!”

Raghav came to Mali’s side as Kirtana ran off to get the doctor. She returned with Manu, looking equally sleepy and heavily bearded.

The doctor cleared everyone out, to make some quick checks on Mali. The three of them waited in the hall outside, and mixed with feelings of relief were also those of fear and anxiety. Would she be okay?

The doctor came out… She was everything one would want in a doctor, so as it turned out Kit got what she had asked for. “ Your friend has survived a bad fall, and lucky for her she has only a few broken bones and bruises. What did worry me was the swelling in her brain, which is why we induced the coma. I believe she is out of the woods, but I would like to keep her in the hospital for a few days for observation. I want to make sure she has not suffered any serious injury to her brain. Maliha has no recollection of the events of her fall, and it is possible that she may have some lapses in memory, but you should know that it is normal, as she has suffered some brain trauma. Please go in to speak with her, but not too long, as she needs her rest. I hope you will understand.”

They took in the doctor-speak, and painted smiles on their faces before they entered Mali’s room. She looked tired but under those bandages and hospital clothes was the resilient Mali, rearing to find out what had been going on. “ So…guys…What exactly am I doing here?”

Kirtana began the story as she had heard it from Raghav. The story was still not making any sense to anyone… but it was what had happened…

Raghav and Maliha had been talking.. They were having a serious conversation. They had spent all day talking and catching up on everything they had been doing the past few years. But now they were talking serious..and not about Raghav…about Maliha. Maliha’s life was a patchwork blanket of experiences. But there had been some dark patches. She rarely spoke of them…but they were there. Not just her parents death…but other experiences too.

They had moved to the balcony at this point to enjoy the cool breeze, but also ease the tension that had built up from discussing some not so pleasant topics.

Raghav decided this would be a good time to digress. He started to talk about some experimental technique for psycho analysis that he and his professor had been working on. It was something they were currently referring to as ‘Blotches’… it was a technique that would help people remember the raw emotion behind a traumatic event or experience and use that to help them uncover the basis for manifestation of a certain ‘psychosis’ or ‘physical illness’. It would hold a space in psychotherapy between hypnosis and ‘past life transgression’… as it would be done to a conscious person, while only going into the events of the ‘current’ life.

The technique was highly experimental, and they had been working with some volunteers to document the method and its progress. It was in its rough state, but looked promising and involved some methods that could be regarded as suggestive, rather than interpretative. That is to say that a lot was suggested to a patient about how they felt during a session, rather than leaving it to them to articulate. The only condition here is the therapist would have no prior knowledge about the situation the patient was looking at. He would however have a good knowledge of the patient’s personality from previous sessions. It allowed a patient to put themselves in a few situations from their lives that had been pulled from their memory and explore those, while the therapist provided blotches…small emotional blasts, suggesting how they felt or could have felt, and asking them to react to that blotch memory at the present moment…all while consciously visualizing that situation. It would be as though they were reliving the experience not revisiting as a spectator like in hypnosis, but all in their mind.

Maliha was amazed… she was impressed, and of course she decided she wanted to experiment. Raghav was weary at first. He knew Maliha, but would he be able to see small changes in her expression? Besides he had never worked alone with a subject. He had always been with help. He decided to give in, after her pestering, and asked that she make herself comfortable before they began…

Ten minutes later, Mali had picked an awful memory from her past…one that had sent her running.. maybe even running all her life! Manu gave her the first blotch… “act on instinct…what would you do?”…. what he did not see is her slowly rise…she began to physically act out what she was seeing… she got up from her seat…all the while acting on Raghav’s ‘blotchy’ commands… and she spent the next ten minutes acting out things Raghav was ‘suggesting’. She was running, looking over her shoulder, and running some more, till finally, she did what she had not done the last time…”what do I do Raghav? Do I jump, or surrender?”…”JUMP Mali..” he said emphatically , to him he was making a breakthrough…

But for her, so was she! And then there was silence…Mali had jumped alright… jumped four floors! The only thing that broke her fall was the ledge on the second floor!

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How this story works..part two

So in a lot of stories there always is a gradual build up from introducing the main characters, establishing the relationships and elaborating on the plot, before it reaches the crux of the story and then finishes. I intend to keep that formula, but add my own flavour to this.. so read, and yes there will be more character introduction chapters, I'll get deeper into the story soon :)

Apart from this, I have decided to keep the names of cities a mystery. I will probably never mention the name of a city specifically, because when you do that, you have to be factually correct, and that might take away from the story on a blog :) so the only things I will ever write about specifically are my characters and what happens to them. The 'where' part will be appropriately described :) and will leave you guessing ;)

Behind this title...

So if you are reading this (thank you!) you are probably wondering what this blog title is about. Why a seemingly normal girl (if you know me or have read my profile) would choose to title her blog so. Well, I can explain it this way. As I see it pretty much everything and everyone around me , and for that matter you, is driven by one of these two sentiments. So no matter what I will ever talk about, it will always come down to something that was done to go after happiness or satisfaction or just not! It is my idea of simplifying the way I think of thoughts (yes think of thoughts), actions, intentions behind anything. And I am one for 'word plays'. So yes I like that my blog can sound like something (a book) we are already familiar with :)

So in this blog I will share with you a story I am writing.. its a story where the characters , events and situations are all derived from my own life. Enjoy :) and I would like your help and suggestions in building this story.. :)

Understand that this story is not true, its just an escape.. and completely a figment of my imagination :)