You adore Padma, the girl next door. She shares her sketch pens, Cadbury’s Gems, comic books and you devour them all, one after another, till you see the one book Padma was reading last night on the writing table. The voice in your head is soft, like a feather’s touch, urging you to flip through the pages, read the story about the girl who made a hundred friends in her summer break. Instead, you wriggle in your seat, and bite deep into your nails as Padma shares it with Geetha. You scrunch your nose, stomp out of her house, run back home, only to find it locked. You resist the urge to knock because you know the tone. The same one you heard on the day you wanted fifty rupees to pay for your school picnic. “Are they taking you on an aeroplane or what? You stay put and help Amma around.” He had said. You linger a bit more when a crashing sound sends shivers down your spine. Later that day, when Amma tucks you in, bends over to kiss you, you trace the roughness of the plaster on her forehead. She winces. Calls it an accident. Even your ten-year-old heart knows she is lying, but you plant a kiss on her cheek, wipe away her tears, and think about Padma, Geetha and all the noises.
The man in that orange Polo T-shirt has been at the same corner for over a week, watching you, trying to catch your attention. He has taken pictures of you without your knowing. So when he approaches you, asks to share your charging cable, you unhear the voice that threatens to raise its head. His heady scent works its magic, and he charms you with his wit, style. You join him on car rides, weekend getaways and even decide to share your life with him. It will be awhile before you learn the man who weakened your knees is always in need of charging cables. You sulk a bit, battle a bit, until the day he shows you the door. You pick up the pieces of your marriage, including your daughter, Lisa, and limp out into the open.
On PTMs, you make your coffee stronger and add five teaspoonfuls of sugar because Lisa’s teachers have a long list of things she should be doing. You listen without any rebuttal and end the day with an outing. Over dinner and ice creams you ask Lisa to pay attention. But her homework continues to remain untouched, her tests come back with red ink, but you laugh them away and smother the voice that warns you to set boundaries.
The shrill ringtone of your favourite song disrupts your breakfast ritual of orange juice and toast. You pick up, expect to hear Lisa’s bubbly voice on the other end. You dash out, wave-stop an auto-rickshaw and give directions, blinking away tears and wiping drool on your dupatta while your brain processes the words of a stranger on the other end. As the wind hits your face, you ponder over your choices, about letting her drive away with her friends instead of asking her to study for exams, about the second hug when she squeezed you tight, her last words, her touch, her warmth but all you smell is the citrus liquid that is slowly forming a map on your kurta.
The first year after you turn the big five-zero brings in a sense of dread. Amma’s conversations circle around broken marriages, dead people’s appearances and your peace, seems like a ragged piece of cloth. You want to run, hide and get away to the hills. You stop calling, messaging, and refuse to even look at the Good-morning pictures she sends. On that fateful summer evening, when your phone rings, your finger refuses to click ‘answer.’ You’d much rather have the company of strangers from your TV screen who don’t care about the drink in your hand. And you will go back to this day for years to come because the only words that reverberate in your ears are the ones you sent in response to her final call: “Too busy to talk.”
The voices in your head roar like waves. It rises, mellows, shifts shapes and ebbs. When it echoes aloud, and you run out of the house screaming in your wafer-thin nightgown, much to the annoyance of your neighbours. They complain, gossip behind your back, and scrunch their noses when they see those piles of empty bottles. You should seek help, they say, take the pills those doctors prescribe and not buy the pink ones you get online. But what they fail to see are the ones you do—of people, of events that appear real, lifelike. Some of the best moments are the ones when you can almost touch Lisa. The past week, she has visited you at the stroke of midnight and led you by her finger to the topmost floor and helped you up the ledge from where you can see the lights of the city. The hum of the traffic and the light breeze make you hysterical. Twice you have swayed, and a cat saved you with her screeching meows.
The day before your big sixtieth birthday, you feel fresh. You wake up from a dream of Lisa asking you to flush down the pills and empty the cabinets off alcohol. No more complaints from neighbours, she makes you promise. As the first order of the day, you get to work and follow Lisa’s advice. You then send Padma a stash of comics, the ones you had saved from your childhood, with a note of apology for not returning her calls. You fill your appetite with freshly squeezed orange juice. You march out, knock on your neighbours’ doors, hand a bunch of flowers and make small talk like you have done this a hundred times before, but you don’t miss their bewildered eyes. When the evening sun sets, bringing in a pink hue, it reminds you of Amma’s wedding saree—the yellow Kanjeevaram with a pinkish border that you wear only on special occasions. You pull it out of the almirah, run your hands over it. The smell, the touch haven’t lost their magic as you drape it over your tired body as the screams, shouts threaten to emerge from your gut. You remember Amma’s plaster on her forehead, Lisa’s final hug, and you know you can do this no more. You bend over, kiss Lisa’s picture, mother’s picture before climbing up the stairs. The cat watches you, meows, brushes her eyes but stays away. She doesn’t follow you like she always does and is nowhere near as you climb up the ledge, fill your lungs with oxygen and look down. The city wears a brilliant hue of pink twinkling lights. You think of every twist and turn, the options, traffic lights, blinking, egging, guiding but the path you chose, silencing that small voice, unhearing it every time, pulverizing your broken heart. On the final day, you count the moments when you could have embraced love, found someone to share a cup of coffee, celebrated friendships, but you will see your life pass in seconds. And finally, before stepping off the ledge, you look up, smile at the blinking star and wink.
Sudha Subramanian lives in Dubai with her husband. She was a columnist in Gulf News for over fifteen years. Her articles and opinion pieces have been published widely in many newspapers and magazines. Her short stories have found space in anthologies and in many Indian and international literary magazines. In 2023 and 2024, her flash fictions were nominated to be included in the Best of the Net Anthology. Sudha is an alumna of Write Beyond Borders, a prestigious mentoring project for emerging writers of South Asia. She is an amateur birder and a tree hugger. A complete list of all her publications can be found on her link tree : https://linktr.ee/sudha_subramanian