Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (15 page)

They were talking as though I wasn't there.

“Is it because of the letters?” My dad asked me.

I shook my head. It really was not.

“Even if we burnt it, we did the right thing. The letters have no place in her life,” said my mother.

I did not know what to say. My hands had now turned icy. The soles of my feet felt cold too. My heartbeats had multiplied. It felt like some giant speakers had been attached to them, with an amplifier inside my head and somebody had turned on the volume at full. They seemed to be booming into my ears now. Thud-thud-thud was all I could hear. The room seemed to be closing in on me. I just wanted to sink into the earth and disappear. I did not want to hear anything. I did not want to listen to them discussing about me.

From some place far away, I could hear my mother's voice asking me if I felt better.

I could not respond.

I closed my eyes willing whatever was gripping me to go away. I felt my dad's hand on my back. He was rubbing my back, trying to calm me. He was saying “There is nothing to be afraid of. I am here now. Don't worry. I am here.” He kept repeating it and he kept rubbing my back.

I so wanted to believe him.

“Take deep breaths,” he said.

I did.

“In and out, inhale and exhale,” he kept repeating. I remember thinking that he was sounding like a yoga instructor on TV and was surprised that even in that state, I could make an association like that.

I breathed just as he had told me and gradually the panic subsided. I began to feel a little better. I opened my eyes.

I saw my mother's worried face. I could see that my dad was worried too but he was trying to hide it.

I felt better now. There was no fear or panic anymore. There was only a very sick feeling—the kind that you get when you have not studied for an exam and you know that the exam is going to start in ten minutes. I was still not completely calm but it was not uncontrollable now. I could think and focus.

Dad and mum could see it on my face.

“What happened?” asked my mom. Her voice was a bit unsteady.

“I don't know, ma.” I answered.

“Do you have any exam or test tomorrow?” she asked. Perhaps she thought it was a panic-attack or an anxiety attack. Perhaps she had read about them and had felt that what I had just undergone was a manifestation of stress.

After all, we had just moved to a new town and I had joined a very demanding academic course which would lead to the award of a coveted management qualification, the magic tag that would open corporate doors. It had always been my ambition, like the ambition of most young people those days—to get into a good management institute and then have a corporate career, earn big money and to make a name for myself

What none of us had anticipated was the long nightmare ahead.

My mom thought that it has just been an anxiety attack.

She could not have been more off the mark or more wrong.

Blackness now descended around me like a cloak. I seemed unable to look beyond it. The fear was gone but it was replaced by a depressing feeling which made my heart feel like it weighed a ton. It was a sinking feeling, a feeling that something was just not right, a melancholic, miserable feeling that hung around me now.

I had classes at college the next day and I did not want to go. My parents did not force me.

“You take rest today. Maybe you have been working too hard. You will feel better tomorrow” said my dad, when I told him I did not want to go.

I hoped he was right. I spent the rest of the day in my room, just lying on my bed. I did not feel like reading, I did not feel like making notes, I did not feel like running or writing poetry. Everything that I used to fill my hours with earlier, I did not feel like doing and so I didn't. P erhaps dad was right and maybe I had been driving myself too hard. I decided to try what he suggested.

But the next day too I did not feel any better. Again I stayed at home.

Joseph called up that evening to find out why I had not come to college and my mother picked up the phone. She said I could not come to the phone and I was not well. When I felt better I would come to college and he could speak to me then. She also told him that there was no need to call again. I heard her and now I did not even have the strength to stand up to her. I quietly had accepted her rule of “No boys are allowed to call you on the phone.” Even though I was doing a management degree, this rule still seemed to apply. It was archaic but that was my mother. If it was a present day setting, I would probably have received ten text messages from Joseph and my parents wouldn't have been any wiser for it. But in those days, telephones still came with dials and not even push buttons, therefore means of contacting each other were truly limited, unlike today.

In any case I did not feel like speaking to him too. What could I explain? That I stayed at home because I felt an irrational fear and a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach that refused to go away? It sounded so stupid and so unlike me. It was easier to avoid him and I was too beaten to take anything but the easy way out.

By the fourth day, when I had not gone to college, I knew something was wrong. My parents too sensed it. But none of us were willing to face it. We hoped it would just go away.

On Friday, my dad said “Look Ankita, you are fine physically. Just force yourself to go to college. You will feel better once you meet your friends and do your course work. There is so much you are missing by staying at home. Four days are over now. You listen to me and you go today. Then tomorrow and day-after tomorrow you can again stay home. On Monday you will be fit as a fiddle.”

I felt he had a point. So I took my books and left home at the usual time. When I reached the bus stop, the same attack of fear which I had earlier came back. There was again no logical reason for it, just like the last time. Everything outside was just the same as before. This was the same bus-stop that I had caught the bus so many times before. This was where I had come every single day ever since college started. Ye t it did not feel like that today. I tried rationalising with myself saying nothing had changed. But logic and rationalisation had no place inside my head like before. The traffic, people and other things around me were going about their usually business, just like before. But for me, the world seemed to have stopped. I was paralysed with fright.

I broke into a cold sweat. My palm went cold and again I could not breathe. I sat for ten minutes in the bus stop trying to get my mind into some kind of order. The other passengers around me were blissfully unaware of my inner turmoil. Everything was normal for them and it was just another ordinary day. But to me, it felt like the end of the world. Finally, in a daze I made my way home, somehow. My mother opened the door to my frantic ringing of the doorbell.

“What happened? Are you all right? She asked, worry writ large over her face. My dad had already left for work. My mother looked anxious. She wanted me to assure her that I was fine.

I could not.

I was not fine.

It was the first time I realised that there was perhaps something very wrong. I had hoped badly that whatever it was would become fine when I went to college.

“Look Ankita. Just be strong. These are simply thoughts inside your head. You can just snap out of it by controlling your thoughts,” said my mother.

Oh how I tried! I wanted to snap myself out of it. I willed it to go away. I tried thinking of happy things. I tried calling back my giant creatures and elves with musical hooves. They refused to come to my aid. All that was left now was a huge void and blackness.

When my dad came home from work, I overheard my mother telling him what had happened that morning. Dad came to my room immediately and tried talking to me. He asked me how I was.

I felt I had let him down in some way. I started crying. I could not seem to stop the tears.

My parents did not know it at that time and neither did I that it was something much larger than any of us had envisaged, anticipated or foreseen.

It was the beginning of a sharp curve, a painful detour, a journey that would lead me completely away from my destination, to the edge of a cliff. A journey that would almost take my life, destroy me completely, suck the life force out of me and then toss me away as an empty shell.

And the worst part was that it had just begun.

16

The ink blots

W
hen I shifted to Bombay with dreams in my eyes and hopes in my heart, trampling over love and other such trivial things that young boys and girls of that age normally indulged in, the last thing I had anticipated or foreseen was finding myself at the door of a psychiatrist's clinic.

I had tried to fool myself and fool my parents as well, assuring them that I was fine. I had told them I would be okay in a few days. They had believed me. I too had believed myself. After all, it was indeed just what I felt and it was all in my head. I thought I would be very strong and shake it off. I tried my best to force myself. But things only got worse.

I stayed at home for a week more and by then it was clear to me that I was not in any position to go back to my course. I did not tell my parents what I had realised. Unknown to them, the same panic attacks that came earlier had happened two more times, when I had tried to think about going back to my college. So I pushed it aside and refused to think about it. I did not want these terrifying attacks to come back. My parents did not know what to do. They were at their wits end. When they asked me when I would resume my studies, I told them to give me just a few days more.

My father called up the college and spoke to the Dean. I don't know what he told them. I did not want to know. It was like I wanted to shut out college and anything to do with it.

The blackness was now a permanent thing. It surrounded me all the time, refusing to go away. The void was a permanent feature. It was like I was dead from inside. Earlier I had been experiencing a deep sense of pain. But now it seemed to have been replaced by a bottomless pit. I was totally the opposite of what I had been a few weeks back. I did not feel any inclination to run. I felt no interest in my management books. I felt no interest in anything. I just wanted to lie in my bed and go deeper into the vacuum which was now my mind. I looked at the poems I had written earlier. I tried to make myself feel some passion, to stir in myself some kind of feeling, to push myself to be what I used to be. But I failed. Miserably. No words came. No thoughts came. It was a horrible place to be trapped in. I did not want to be there. But there seemed to be no escape.

The last straw came when I tried to read. I picked up a book which lay on my table, which I had bought, a long time back, while I was in Cochin, intending to read it. It was Arthur Hailey's
Hotel
. I opened it and tried to read it. It gave me a rude jolt. I was shocked to discover that by the time I reached the end of a sentence I could not remember what was at the beginning. I tried again. Then once more. And yet again. I just could not believe it. Along with my words, I seemed to have lost the ability to read and comprehend too.

I tried telling myself that it was because I was distracted and I could of course read. I had devoured so many books, that too far heavier than this. Besides, this was something I would enjoy reading too. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, I just could not do it. The more I tried, the more I failed.

Then, I opened my file of colour coded notes that I had so meticulously made. I tried reading them. I could not read even beyond a paragraph. I had no idea what they meant. I would read the same sentence over and over without comprehending a single thing. It was as though my mind could focus only on one word for a very brief period, perhaps a few seconds and the next second, it had forgotten it. The words vanished from my mind like the chalk writings on a blackboard being wiped clean. I seemed to no longer have any control over them. Then I opened the Kotler book and a feeling of nausea flooded me. I looked at the marketing jargon and felt sick. The sinking feeling which was now a permanent fixture rose higher, drowning me. Frustration, rage, tears and helplessness welled up inside me. I closed my fingers again and my nails dug deep.

I tried one more time. It was simply no use. It was like somebody had switched off some important part of my brain which controlled reading, comprehension and even thinking. I felt like a broken toy. I felt a deep sense of hopelessness. The helplessness of the situation that I found myself in was too much to bear. I did not know what to do. Life, as I knew it, had vanished, handing me in its place this mockery to make sense of. Everything I had taken for granted had disappeared. It was simply unbearable. In a fit of pure frustration, I swept the file containing my notes, the Kotler book and a few other sheets of paper off my desk.

They went crashing to the floor along with a reading lamp that the book hit while being swept off. The bulb of the lamp broke and I felt like it was my life. My parents came running into the room hearing the noise.

“What happened?” asked my mother.