The Debt

Sheena looked at the clock on the wall facing her. It was 11:30 pm at night and time to call it a day. She yawned and looked forward to cozying up in bed after reading her favourite fashion magazine… not as a consumer but as a fashion merchandiser who wants to keep abreast of the season’s most happening trends in the great big fashion bazaar. Not that Sheena considered herself a great designer, or even an extraordinarily gifted one, but yes, she did have a sense of colour, proportion and an aesthetic sense. Sheena also possessed extraordinary business acumen and had a nose for what women wanted in general. She especially had her eyes on the middle class working woman who wanted feminity with sophisticated business look. Well, she could do that, as she herself was one, a middle end working woman, single, well into middle age and… unloved.

Sheena glanced cursorily through the magazine, flipping through its glossy pages, some how ill at ease. Some how today her mind was not at work. It was not that the pages filled with anorexic models in way out clothes were trite for her, but she seemed not to be there, to say the least. There was a striking looking calendar from Vogue next to the clock
on the wall. It displayed a seductive model in a Prada evening dress.

Somehow, Sheena got up from her settee in the room went across to the wall and looked uneasily at the calendar. It was the 28th of September. The date seemed to be of significance, and with a sinking heart she remembered that it was Arvind’s birthday today.

Arvind. How could she have forgotten Arvind’s birthday? Her Arvind. He with the kindest and the gentlest eyes in the world. Her Arvind. It was really hard to overlook the slightly stooped gait, the spectacles and the windblown hair that seemed always to be in an urgent need of a thorough combing. The intellectual tone that he emited, his rendition of the arts, of the classics, of philosophy and of spiritualism, made him conspicuous in a particularly commercial and materialistic world. His views and dialogues sometimes seemed to be at odds with the giddy headed and superficial world according to Sheena. To use colloquial language, he seemed to be square. The real world as was perceived by them, required you to be hip, wear heavily marketed brands, follow the latest trends, sport the latest hairstyle, to speak in the language that ought to be spoken and to do the things others did. If you didn’t, you seemed not to ‘fit in’. you were a nerd.

Arvind scoffed at the world. His attitude seemed to speak volumes about it. It seemed common, small to him. He never went with the world and he never would. He would always live by his own rules.

Sheena went out to the balcony of the apartment. From there, her gaze drifted across the Mumbai landscape as the lights flittered on and off, the inky haze of the late evening settling on the skyscrapers and buildings, with only their profiles visible now, dark and looming ahead. Arvind seemed to belong to a different past, a past that seemed to have been separated by an eternity.

Sheena sat down on the cane chair on the balcony staring at the darkness ahead, her mind swimming, lost. Arvind had been her professor in the fashion design college. The professor of historical art. He taught the history of fashion and art through the ages. Attending his lectures in the beginning, Sheena in the beginning thought it was another forced fashion subject; forcing the study of fashion even into irrelevant fields of study.

She soon changed her mind, however. When Arvind spoke, she listened. It was not as if he was speaking merely on a theoretical perspective on fashion and art through the ages, but seemed to in some way live the times he was talking about.

As Sheena’s thoughts raced, raucous noises, taunts and jeers of her then fellow students invaded her brain. Laughter of girls, smans of boys and the careless whispers of people all around her.

For Sheena had been different. And her college appeared to make no bones about reinforcing it in her mind. She knew it herself… she knew it in the out dated clothes she wore. She knew it in her lack of confidence, her awkwardness, in her want of eye contact and her complete self abnegation.

Her physical appearance seemed to give it away. In her hair, which was not styled, but which was pulled fiercely into a plain ponytail. In the sunken dark eyes and the tired face that rarely smiled. She walked with a stoop, frightened of the world and conscious of her madness. The white depression that had steeped into her very core making her shun the world.

Still the world is the world. She had to obtain an education as was required of society. Sheena obeyed docilely the constraints of the very society that had defeated her.
Her intelligence had stood by her, in order that she understood academics.

In such a life, she had come across Arvind. Arvind, who was so settled, so normal. For her colleagues life’s problems were not a priority while for Sheena living was difficult. All around, Sheena sensed coldness and cruelty, disdain and abjection. She felt an alien in the planet she inhabited, strange and aloof.

Arvind’s lectures were interesting and as he spoke, every syllable flowed into her brain, her sense of hearing heightened by her disease.

As days went by, Sheena felt all the more ill. She became immersed in a pathos that seemed to permeate every living cell of her body. She hated herself, and thus hated the earth. She seemed a stranger to herself, a cursed creature, which she herself despised. Thus slowly Sheena relegated to a universe that was bizarre and where silence was the only language spoken.

Sheena journey back in time was inexorable and relentless now as the night carried on its date with time.

It had been a windy and a slightly leaden Thursday morning. Sheena, robot like had walked around the whole campus seeing with unseeing eyes. The college building was a really modern façade. An avant-garde construction of glass and concrete, there was a concrete open air auditorium and an airy passageway overhead that looked out over it complete with rounded concrete pillars criss-crossing it on both sides. It was a beautiful windswept place, one that seemed ideal for love struck couples to get romantic and tender. Life and love were far removed from Sheena‘s mind as she slowly paused in her saunter on the college campus in the passageway. She seemed totally oblivious to her environs as she slowly stood near the edge of the passage way. She was lost; her head was reeling with thoughts that seemed to be utterly disparate, flooding her mind disobediently.

With eyes that seemed to speak of nothingness, Sheena looked down at the auditorium below. Not far downwards, the white concrete was almost satin smooth, glistening opaquely in the diffused sunlight. Tiny pinpricks of tears broke in her eyes, and the whiteness seemed to enter her, seeming to call out to her. All round her the building spoke, the structure seemed to resound with voices that only Sheena could hear. “Come down, jump!” they said and the chorus became louder and louder, Sheena did the needful... That was the only way of silencing the voices that were haunting her.

The wall clock in Sheena’s room read 12:30 pm. It was well past the time, that she was used to retiring in bed. Her mind was however, not on the racing hands of the clock but in the bygone times. Sheena’s eyes were glazed, the moisture causing a thin glistening film over them, as her thoughts raced by...

After her fall, she had recovered, slowly her body had healed, as young bodies do eventually, but it was her mind that also made the journey from the far back. She had settled and amidst the figures that came and went, the advice, the guidance and the opinions she received from all and sundry… After the hospital, her widowed aunt took care of her. The aunt, whose wizened hands nursed her, gave her medicines, changed her dressings and with the help of nourishing food repaired her body and mind.

As she recovered, her body, her mind and spirit was trying to bond together to a cohesive whole. After three weeks of recuperation, Sheena had taken her first steps, and a second shot at life, albeit falteringly. In these three weeks, being a sort of mottled miasma in her mind, one figure stood clearly amidst all the others: Arvind. As she had regained consciousness in hospital, racked with pain, there were many who came and went, many voices spoke, some chidingly, some angrily and some plainly enjoying her discomfiture.
Arvind was regular visitor, at least initially, but Arvind rarely spoke. Sometimes he did, but she could not really fathom what it was. His voice was gentle, as always his eyes tender with an inexpressible emotion. Sometimes, as voices debated on her past, her future and her depression, she could discern his eyes on her watching her cursorily, almost perplexedly.

Sheena’s psyche too was going through a transition. The demons that seemed to live in her mind had subsided; had quietened down at least for now and she was struggling to find her moorings in a world in which she had never really lived. She was conscious of Arvind, his visits and his silent gaze. Somehow, she felt Arvind understood. Understood all that went inside Sheena’s brain, her pain and her disturbed psyche. She felt comfortable and secure with him, knowing instinctively that Arvind never blamed her for her actions, unlike the rest of the world.

Sheena had finally finished college. She took her graduation papers from the comfort of her aunt’s home... Her aunt had stood by her, but the occasional sighs that she escaped her told of her weariness. Cognisant of her aunt’s age, Sheena felt she could not impose on her any further.
Arvind too seemed to have moved on... to a different land, a branch of the college in a new country. All that remained of Arvind in her mind were his indelible memories.

Sheena ‘s clock now racing by, and as slumber seemed to be finally catching on, Sheena was glad of her job after college, her workaholic life, her dedication towards work and her reasonable earnings. She felt that she had made it in life… that where she was today was a journey from hell and back.

The next morning, Sheena awoke with a slight headache. She had had a disturbed sleep, in which Arvind materialized again and again. She had envisioned a kaleidoscope of images in which the college, the white open air auditorium and she appeared again and again. She screamed in some of the visions. Arvind seemed to be there somewhere, if his presence was palpable, the slightly stooped gait, his profile; his gentle brown eyes seemed to lurking everywhere. She tried to rum towards him, as she caught him looking at her from behind a pillar, and she almost reached and tried to grasp his hand when there suddenly remained nothingness. She ran around but Arvind appeared to elude her everywhere...

Sheena woke up suddenly, in the grip of a headache. Another day at work would begin soon in her life. A life which was bare, just like the tree whose leaves have begun their autumn foray, the tree hangs on... naked and wistful.

II

Work had had proved to be exhausting that day. Work which Sheena usually enjoyed, but today had become a hindrance to her thoughts which were almost totally occupied with the times gone by. As the office closed down for the day, Sheena walked out of the office building slowly her mind in almost a stupor, flooded with thoughts that seemed to awaken the sleeping demons.

It was late evening, dusk was settling in on the city horizon, with birds and humans returning home for the day. Feeling weary, she thought to herself “this can’t go on! I’ve got to distract myself! I can’t run after a chimera.” Thinking to her, Sheena decided not to take the office cab to the apartment but to complete her weekly duty at the nearby cancer hospital where she worked as a volunteer.

Walking down the street on the left to her office, Sheena for the first time noticed urban life. She noticed busy people, nameless impassive faces, walking fast all the time. Glittering shops, offices juxtaposed with cobblers, beggars, hawkers, tiny tea stalls and stalls selling eggs and cheap food to all and sundry. Sheena was in no hurry, she didn’t want to go home to memories, and she wanted to explore something, anything that lay around her. As she walked, the dirt and dust entered her shoes, getting between her toes. She turned as the street turned and to her left appeared a tall white building simple and austere which marked it out as a hospital.

At the hospital, she was allotted duty to a new terminally ill patient who had come in just that morning. Cancer patients moved her so; their suffering touched a raw nerve, maybe akin to her own raw wounds. She had resolved to do her bit to alleviate their agony in their last days. She saw death every time she visited the hospital; saw it looming about like mist in the corridors, in the rooms and in the patient’s eyes.

The new patient was resting on the hospital bed in the ward room with his back towards her. He seemed slightly elderly, the grey in his hair quite visible against the rest of his dishevelled dark hair. An odd familiarity instinctively struck her heart as she walked towards him of her own accord. As she faced him… a chill ran down her spine… it had to be. The gait, the eyes, the face... now sunken... but it was...still. It was HIM. It was her Arvind.

As Sheena stood rooted to the ground, she gazed at Arvind. Her mind was a motley mix of conflicting emotions. She had found him at last. She had found him, she could touch him, and he was real lying before her… he would no longer vanish as she sought him out. He was no longer the effervescent bubble who would burst as she touched him... he was here to stay.

Arvind was no longer the same. The sunken body, the dark circles, the pale skin, the cancer was on its killing journey. No he was the nurse told him that he was suffering from cancer of the blood and he was terminally ill like the others. Sheena did not cry for the tears seemed frozen at the back of her eyes somewhere where they added to the ache in her heart.

Arvind stirred, and opened his eyes slowly. The eyes, which Sheena had never forgotten, possessing the unaffected softness and piety. Arvind did not speak; but his eyes did. His eyes told her that he recognized her, and a spark lighted up in them, just for a fraction of time. It was gone in a trice, pain had engulfed them quickly.

III

Days passed by in quick succession. It seemed to Sheena that as compared to earlier, time had run haywire, run amok and over speeding in a world that didn’t require it to. She wished time was just a little tardy in its duty, being human once in a while.

At the hospital, Sheena opted for daily duty instead of her weekly allotted time. She was at the hospital, promptly everyday for her service and she saw the same patient everyday… Arvind.

What could she do for Arvind? Could she turn back the tide and wish his cancer away? Sheena nursed him; served him, and talked to him even though it was a monologue most of the time. It was as if she was trying to turn back the clock that seemed to ridicule her from the wall like a sadist. Sheena read out his favourite books to him, quoted his favourite poetry and talked about religion and philosophy and anything her heart desired. She felt he same comfort level and freedom she used to feel when she was with him, as in the earlier days. Nothing had changed between them.

The tables had turned. Now Sheena spoke and Arvind listened. Sheena could feel from his intent gaze upon her that Arvind listened, even when he was in great pain. Sometimes she would be quiet and there would be silence around them. A silence, that spoke a thousand thoughts that seemed to be floating in the ether around them. A solitude which did not require words.

Sheena felt relaxed in Arvind’s presence. Arvind was suffering and dying, but for Sheena he was there for her.

IV

It was again overcast Thursday, as Sheena set about to look after Arvind in the hospital.
As she entered his room, the pristine white bed sheets almost sparkled; there was a decidedly strong smell of antiseptic in the air. The bed looked clean and bright … clean and virginal… and ominous to Sheena. Her heart exploding, she ran out to the reception.
“Where is Ar…? Arvind?” she ejaculated. The nurse behind the counter looked at her sternly.
“Arvind who?”

“The patient in room no 6” Sheena was almost gasping now.

“Oh, Arvind! Well sad to say, he expired last night… I am really sorry.”

Are you Sheena?

“Y... yes I am...” Sheena stammered.

“In his last moments, as his breath was faltering, he held a diary in his hand and repeated your name again and again… slowly. We guessed he wanted us to give this to you…”
The nurse handed out a small brown diary, old and wizened like a hand. Sheena took it and sat down on the bench near the reception. The pages were yellowed and it had prose in Arvind’s handwriting. Slowly Sheena turned a page at random. What she saw astonished her. There was a faded photograph of her from her college days. And there was something inscribed below it. Sheena drew the book closer to her face. She read…

“A mighty pain to love it is and ‘tis a pain that pain to miss; but of all the pains, the greatest pain is to love, but to love in vain.”—Abraham Crowley.

The next few lines read, “Sheena is like a beautiful flower which I want to protect from the ferocious rain and thunder and from the visccitudes of life. I wish I could tell her that maybe someone may have robbed her of her dream when it was still fresh .her anger grief and resentment against the world is but natural. However life wants you to heal yourself and go on… I love her so... her flower like sensitivity moves me... But …”
The sentence was incomplete, hanging into the unknown…

The tears that had since been dry all these weeks now broke into a silent stream down her face. Love had come full circle. She had found her love again. She had found Arvind’s love for her. She had always been in his heart, just like he had been with her.

That night Sheena sat down in the darkness in her apartment balcony. The night had become clear; the stars were spread out glimmering in the black veil of the night. Some where Arvind was out there today, watching her…

She felt a release of tension, a strange peace and tranquillity, the ache was receding as the reflection that their love and they had come together in death.

A short story by:

NIVEDITA MALLICK