Hummingbirds
Kanchana Doraiswamy
8.46 on a Tuesday morning
in June, Vidhi’s world dies without warning. A world which, like a stubborn
parent, has dictated what she makes of her mornings, afternoons, evenings and
nights. A world she has taken so much for granted. She has followed its
biddings and in turn, like a selfish child, extracted a reward for each
one.
But there have been no
demands or rewards today. Almost 12 hours since the great demise, the hour hand
of the Ajanta on the wall lies undecided between 7 and 8 pm. Vidhi empties the
cold beer can in her hand with a swig and sets it down on the heavily stained
sofa. She checks her mobile. Nothing yet. She retraces her day mentally,
wondering what she has missed.
Today she woke up as usual,
getting out of bed at 5.30 to the
sound of the alarm on her bedside clock. It sounds less like an alarm and more
like a kitchen timer, but nevertheless works the desired effect on her. She
walks to the hall and sits in the dark, face lit by the touchscreen in her palm.
Twitter’s first on her agenda. No new followers since last night. But she is
sure to gain a few by end of day if she keeps a tight watch on scoops and
tweets early with some sassy opinions thrown in. Today her timeline seems more
peaceful than normal. There are barely a few new tweets, mostly from the local
newspapers. Completely vegetarian Indian menu for PM in China. Ghulam Ali
concert canceled due to security issues. Madman apprehended trying to enter
CM’s residence ranting warnings of doomsday. Click, scan. Click, scan. She
reads each of the articles in the links briefly, trying to extract the most
information in the least possible time. The madman link deserves a retweet.
Will being vegetarian (or not) remain a matter of choice anymore? #ilovemysteak,
she tweets next, with several exclamation marks and a link to the vegetarian
menu in China. A couple more tweets protesting the beef ban, protesting the
introduction of Sanskrit in schools as compulsory third language. A few new
followers guaranteed, she hopes to hit the magic hundred that she has been
praying for. She has already crossed a 1000 friends on Facebook, but Harsha
says Facebook is for the frivolous. Your followers on Twitter determine the
extent of your intellect he gloats, pointing to 939 under FOLLOWERS on his
phone. Harsha neither has nor cares for a Facebook account inspite of her
regular pleading. Facebook is for the frivolous, he reminds her.
She loves being frivolous,
so she will share parts of herself on Facebook. She makes a mental note to
spruce up the weekend selfie and upload it today. She will have to wait for
Harsha to leave first, he gets irritated when she is twiddling with the phone.
Do something worthwhile with your life, he has told her a million times. That
conversation has always ended badly. I keep telling you this for your own good
no, what’s in it for me? he screams as their fights touch a crescendo. For my
own good huh, then let’s adopt, that’s what I want! she screams back. Her
bruises scrape against freshly slammed doors, bubble up at their sixteen year
old marriage, and eventually subside in the repeated silence. She hides the
scabs under expensive clothing.
She must awaken him and
make coffee, it is almost 6.Vidhi walks back to the room but Harsha is not on the bed. At
the sound of a tap gushing from the attached bathroom she assumes he has an
important meeting at office.
She has her coffee in the
kitchen, turning the pages of a Sanjeev Kapoor recipe book disinterestedly. She
never buys recipe books herself as she doesn’t believe in dressing up something
that ends in the bowels anyway, but this was a gift from Harsha two years into
the marriage. Male chauvinistic, sexist, were words that would have come easily
to her in college. But that time, armed with her new understanding of love, she
had hugged him for his gift.
He finishes his coffee while
tending to office emails on the laptop. She picks up his empty mug and places
it in the kitchen sink beside hers. A quick furtive check on her phone reveals
no new notifications. Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, all stare at her
stony-eyed, unresponsive. Never mind, I shall wake you all up soon, she tells
herself as she pops bread into the toaster. She hands him a plate of scrambled
eggs on toast and he sets down the laptop. You have shaving cream in your right
ear, she says. He nods, pushing a spoonful of egg into his mouth.
Might be late, don’t wait
for dinner, he says, heading out for work an hour later. She hides her
annoyance and waves a practised goodbye at the door. It is 8.30.
At 8.46, her phone
buzzes. She has held it in her hand since he left, busy deciding on an
Instagram filter for her selfie. Finally, someone has posted she exults,
looking at the WhatsApp notification pop up on her screen. 1 message from 1 chat. She
clicks on it. Happy Anniversary, sorry I forgot. Harsha’s profile picture is a
collage of the cartoon boy Calvin. Calvin stretching his eyes out, Calvin
barfing, Calvin jumping on his stuffed tiger Hobbes, Calvin this, Calvin that.
Men never grow up, she sighs. Thanks and wish you the same, she types in her
reply and quickly deletes it. What do I mean, ‘wish you the same’? she asks
herself. We are both in it together. Love you and wish us many more, she types
in next. She erases that too as it doesn’t feel true. Thanks, can you come back
early? she types in one last attempt and lingers a moment imagining the
consequences before deleting it as well. She abandons a reply altogether and
heads back to Instagram. She settles on the Perpetua filter for her selfie. She
posts it with a click and checks to see if it has appeared on her profile.
Success. She then checks for a simultaneous post on Facebook. Success.
Ravishing at forty, she tells her seductively smiling self on screen. The blue
sari she wore in the photo lies in a crumpled heap at the bottom of her
wardrobe, waiting to be taken to the dry cleaner.
She stays on her phone for
the next two hours hoping to catch the “likes” as they pour in. Usually her
photos, and consequently her posts, gather no less than 300 likes and comments.
Usually the activity starts within minutes of her posts. But today there has
been none, not even one on Instagram or Facebook. Has no one seen her posts
yet? She chews on her thumb and browses aimlessly. Surprisingly, there are no
new posts from anyone in her network since the morning. Could there be a
problem with the notification mechanisms, she thinks, and checks Nisha
Madhavan’s Facebook account. Nisha never misses a day, posting pictures from
her plush home, her gym, on her way to work, in her office, sometimes from
inside the toilet even. Her last update is a day old. Nisha poses for her
husband, kissing their dog on his snout. Hubby dearest has no jealousyyyyy,
screams the photo. 467 likes, 89 comments. Vidhi had wondered if Nisha’s hubby
would actually be relieved if his wife had an affair and let him move on. But
she had clicked “like” and commented, How sweet Nishu. Nishu has gone silent
after placing a ‘like’ on each one of the 89 comments. That was yesterday
evening. Umm. Something quite unexpected must have happened, Vidhi
infers.
Maybe the mobile apps are
malfunctioning? She flips open her laptop lying on the bed and heads to the
Facebook page on the browser. Nothing changes. She opens Twitter, Instagram,
and after some tinkering, even WhatsApp on the browser. Facebook confirms
Nisha’s silence. Twitter is near dead, her morning tweets floating topmost. She
is the last person on her Instagram timeline. And Whatsapp, nothing there either.
It is 11 and no one has appeared online. She
checks Harsha’s WhatsApp account, curious to know when he chatted last on his
network. Harshavardhan, last seen today at 8.46, it says right beside the Calvin collage.
She eats her breakfast of
cold eggs and toast and heads for a shower. Perhaps everyone has been silenced
by an unexpectedly bizarre weekday, she consoles herself as the soothing heat
from the water hits the top of her head.
There are groceries to be
bought today, but she has stopped going to a flesh-and-blood store since
months. Harsha had discouraged grocery shopping, calling it a waste of ‘time
and effort’. Why wait at long billing queues and lug back heavy bags when
someone else can do it for you? For free? he said, claiming his lady colleagues
from office swore on the benefits of online grocery shopping. She had silently
rebelled, reminded of the bling hairband she once found in his backpack. But
these days, she understood his lady colleagues a bit better. Online grocery
shopping freed up so much of her time for more useful work – like connecting to
other people online. And with her virtual friends, small talk was not frowned
upon. It was glorified. She could post a picture of her cold scrambled eggs and
toast and get a few hundred likes. She could post a selfie of hers with Harsha
taken years ago and people would comment saying how they were ‘made for each
other’. She could paste a piece of borrowed poetry and people raved about her
wisdom and great taste in literature.
Suddenly Vidhi has an idea.
Okay, so what if Harsha is not around for their sixteenth wedding anniversary,
she would make it a full blown celebration for herself. She rummages in her
cupboard and brings out a hard disk labeled “Photos Backup”. She connects it to
the laptop and retrieves their wedding photos. There are 156 photos in all and
it takes her close to two hours to get them all up on Facebook with the right
titles, but her memory is razor sharp and she remembers something unique about
each one. By the time she is finished with the last one, she is exhausted and
drifts off into a deep sleep.
She is now in a vast field
with hummingbirds all around her. The hummingbirds poke her in focused turns as
they whizz by. She screams in pain, a green bilious fluid scream rising from
her gut, but freezing into clear green marbles as soon as it touches her
throat. I need to run or they will poke me to death, she panics. She looks down
at her feet that won’t budge and all she can see is endless dark nothingness.
Am I a flower? She shakes her head vigorously hoping to scare off the birds,
but they catch the green marbles flying out of her mouth with their beaks and
seem to relish them as they whizz closer for more. I am stuck, she tells
herself and goes silent.
When she wakes up, the room
is dark and dead. She flicks on a bulb. The hour hand of the Ajanta on the wall
lies undecided between 7 and 8 pm. She checks her phone. No human being known to her
has stirred since 8.46 that morning.
It is too late to go
grocery shopping she thinks.
Kanchana Doraiswamy passionately pursues art and literature as
she believes it can help humans in remaining humane. Through fiction, she hopes
to rekindle some of those sensibilities which are buried under our rapidly
changing social structures.Having been trained as an Electronics engineer, she
loves technology and the advantages it can foster when used well. She currently
works in the Healthtech industry and lives in Bangalore with her husband and
son.
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