Stuck in a Loop
Bharath Kumar
My wife sits on the edge of the bed facing me but looking past me in the direction of the window. The marigolds are in full bloom outside. She has her phone in her hand but hasn’t looked at it in a while. I'm sitting on my chair in front of my laptop. I am bored, almost at the end of a YouTube rabbit hole. I am ready to give up but not sure what else to do.
‘Edi,’ I say. ‘Are you, okay?’
She catches my eye and then looks at her phone.
‘Ya, da. All okay,’ she says without missing a beat.
Our separate worlds were squeezed into this small apartment when we decided to move in last week. Is she ready for this? Is she frightened of what she will discover?
‘Are you sure?’ I ask again.
‘Ya,’ She says with knitted eyebrows, slightly assertively, ‘I am okay.’
‘I was just asking,’ I say, ‘You let me know if something is wrong.’
‘What could be wrong, da? I am just chatting with my reading group friends,’ she says. to mean that it is none of my business.
‘I only asked because you seemed upset.’
‘Upset?’ She raises her voice, ‘This is my thinking face, da.’
I feel like a child when she raises her voice. ‘You sure, di?’ I ask, just to make sure I haven’t done anything wrong, but she does not give me what I want. What I am truly looking for is not a blanket ‘I am fine’ but an assurance of ‘you haven’t done anything wrong’.
‘Eda, what is happening?’ She doesn’t seem very upset or angry anymore, her eyebrows are relaxed, and her shoulders are rolled forward. Is it disappointment?
‘I am sorry, di. Have I done something wrong?’ I stammer and she looks at me incredulously.
My phone rings. It is Appa.
‘Appa is not doing well,’ cries Amma. ‘He couldn’t get out of bed this morning and is refusing to go to the doctor.’ I don’t want to ask her if he is still breathing. ‘Is he talking?’
‘No. He is mumbling something. Will you ask him to get up and have this coffee I made?’ She gives the phone to him. He refuses it but I can hear him scold her. My heart rate eases up.
‘Amma!’ I scream. She takes back the phone. ‘Let him be.’ I can hear Amma’s breathing as she moves away and cuts the call.
‘What happened, da?’ All okay?’ My wife looks at me. I turn away.
‘Yeah, false alarm, di.’
She shares a smile and returns to her phone.
‘I am sorry.’
‘Pssst! What are you apologising for?’ she says. I can’t tell if she is still disappointed.
*
It has just rained. It is dark and everything moves slowly, trammelled by the wetness.
Appa is supposed to pick me up. I get off the bus, tiptoe around the potholes and take refuge in a tea shop. The tea shop where Appa usually smokes.
I am twelve. I’ve just finished school in the city. I call Appa using the yellow coin-box pay phone tied to the electric pole outside the shop. He doesn’t pick up. I call the landline at home. No one picks up. I am tired and hungry. The tea shop Anna offers me two very oily banana bhajis and I devour them.
Appa comes half an hour later and slips and almost falls when his Bullet comes to a halt. I inspect him carefully for signs of drunkenness. He walks into the shop, without saying a word to me, and pulls out a cigarette. Gold Flake Kings, his usual. I am too afraid to ask him if we can leave.
He tosses away his cigarette and kickstarts the Bullet. When I sit behind him, the stench of alcohol hits me like a brick. The bike jerks forward and backwards for a while. I hold onto the back handle with everything I have and as far away from him as possible, I bend like a gymnast. I am relieved, at least, that he isn’t going as fast as he usually does.
A young man in a veshti and chequered cotton shirt is on his Splendor. He accidentally cuts us off. Appa throttles behind and catches him. He parks his Bullet in front of the young man, shoos me away from the bike, gets down and slaps him. When the young man tries to get up, Appa is all over him, swinging like a desperate boxer. The young man falls off the bike, then gets back up, and pushes Appa toward me. Appa slips and falls, and I catch him. The young man dials a number and asks his friends to come beat up a drunk bastard.
I pull Appa up and hold his face in my palms.
‘Poyidalam, pa!’ I want us both to leave but he doesn’t listen to me. The young man catches hold of Appa’s shirt collar. Appa tries to evade, unsuccessfully. I run to the nearby fertilizer shop where Periappa works. Periappa brings a few others and they beat up the young man. After a decent thrashing, the young man flees on his bike. Appa shouts at the people who are holding him up and asks everyone to leave. They do so without protest. Appa picks up his Bullet and tries to start it. It doesn’t. It takes a few more kicks. I am standing close to the Bullet not sure what to do. He asks me to get on the bike. I do. We go home as the bike jerks forward and backwards.
Before I sleep, I imagine many scenarios where I save Appa. I imagine using the jump kicks and butterfly kicks I learnt from Hollywood movies to fight the drunkards and criminals who fight him. I cry silently.
*
My wife doesn’t like the fact that I spend many hours on the internet, chasing rabbits. I like it because I like learning. I’m addicted to the hit I get at the end of a four-hour journey when things become clearer, patterns emerge, and the mind wanders to places it never knew about. And it doesn’t have to go to places close to my life or anything practical. It can wonder about rockets or the latrines in the Roman Empire or an almost extinct language. It yearns for the moment when the veil is lifted and, with a blink of an eye, I see a new dimension.
I don’t know how I ended up here. I try to imagine the face behind the green apple in ‘The Son of the Man’ but that leads nowhere. I read all about it and accept that that’s kind of the point. But I do learn a new word in the process: hyperempaths.
‘Edi, I think I am a hyperempath’
‘Hmmm?’ she asks, looking up from her phone in the middle of a smile.
‘Hyperempaths. It's a thing.’ I regret bringing that up. I know what her response is going to be – hypochondriac; obsessed; paranoid.
But she doesn’t say a thing and gets distracted by a text. She smiles again. I look at the time and realise that I am late. I fetch my backpack.
‘Okay, I am going out.’
‘Where, da?’ Her focus is back on me.
‘Just outside. Ashwin is in town.’
‘You’re drinking?’ Her body is stiff.
‘Maybe a little. For old times’ sake, you know…’ I give her a half-shrug and walk away. As I walk through the door, I hear her say, ‘Just eat a lot, da. No matter how much you drink.’
I drink a lot and don’t eat properly. I get back late and throw up the little I ate – chicken chilli and prawn pepper fry that Ashwin and I shared. I pass out.
Amma warned me of this. In my mind, I am the furthest thing from my Appa.
But I wake up, hungover. I am sure I have gas trouble, chest congestion, dehydration, and add to that, the Vitamin B12 deficiency. Hair loss is one of the most common symptoms. I look out for a few strands stuck to the pillow. They look like fallen soldiers on the shore. There is a sharp pain in my gut. Fatty liver? Cracked lips. Starvation of essential salts too? I am sure. I am breathing. I am breathing.
I lift my head, squinting my eyes, to see my wife. She looks concerned.
‘Don’t drink so much, da’
I rest my head on the pillow.
‘Nee paathukko,’ Tamil comes out of her Malayali self when she wants to say something important or loving, and sometimes when she is angry. Malayalam usually comes out of my Tamil mouth when I want to make fun of her or her language.
‘You were grinding your teeth all night. I could hear it from here.’
‘Yeah, di,’ I say. ‘I’m glad it’s a Sunday. No more drinking.’
*
I like butterflies. Especially the black and red ones because no one else likes them. Others like the yellow ones or the blue ones because they are pretty. I like them too, but I like the black ones more.
When I ride my cycle to school through my favourite lake ridge that is filled with pimpernels and hibiscus and marigolds, they flock towards me. They bounce off my arms and face, give me little kisses, and follow me to school and back.
I think they like me too. I once stopped for them thinking they wanted me to stop but nothing happened. They kept circling me and I got late for school. So, I don’t stop anymore.
My friends say it's the Ponds powder I apply all over my body. That the butterflies like the smell. But I don’t believe them. They are probably jealous because butterflies like me and not them.
When I told Appa about the butterflies, he had a disappointed look on his face. Without saying a word, his focus shifted towards the banana in my hand instead.
‘Where did you get that banana?’
‘Muthu anna gave me this banana, Appa.’
He flicks the banana from my hand and throws it out of the house.
‘How many times have I asked you not to take anything from strangers?’ He gets up from the chair.
Muthu anna is not a stranger. After all, he belongs to our village and no one is a stranger here. But I don’t dare tell Appa that.
He slaps me across the face. I twirl around three times like a top and fall face-flat on the ground. He asks me to get up and kneel on the floor next to him. He sits in his comfortable chair and watches tv for the next five hours. The floor is never swept properly in our home, so the sand on the cement floor feels like tiny needles against my knees. I cry but not so loudly, so as to not distract him. In the five hours that I am on my knees, I try to understand my mistake, but it isn’t clear to me. In any case, I submit. I take a vow to never make a mistake again without really understanding what a mistake is.
After a week of taking the bus, I am back on my cycle on the lake ridge. I take a deep breath.
I am surrounded by swarms of butterflies of all shapes and colours. I feel like I am levitating. But a butterfly smashes into my nose and falls dead on the ground. I stop the cycle. I feel a sharp pain in my nose and upper lip. When I touch that part of my face, I see yellow powdery liquid on my fingertips. I remove my tucked-in shirt and wipe the disgusting stuff off. What if it is poisonous? I look around me and see hundreds of butterflies fluttering at very high speeds.
*
Physicists are losing hope in the Unified Field Theory. Poor String Theory might go under the bus. It was so exciting with its twelve or thirteen dimensions. What would the world with twelve or thirteen dimensions look like? Physicists will say we are living in one. Probably only they can understand it. Though they say if anyone claims to understand relativity, quantum physics, or string theory, then they have not understood it. Then who does? Those who claim to have not understood it? No. No one understands anything. What was that interview that I saw many years ago? The one with Edward Witten? As I search my playlists of favourites, watch laters, physics, quantum physics, and interviews with physicists, UFT, and ST, I see my wife moving to the kitchen to cut vegetables.
I was supposed to cut them. Today is my turn. She’d reminded me an hour ago.
Should I ask her? Should I stop her? Is she angry?
I was going to do it. I really was. Why would she do it? Why wouldn’t she ask me again? She must be angry. She is. But can she do whatever she wants because she is angry? I must get up and talk to her. And say something, anything at all. But she is done with the onions and is moving on to the tomatoes. Is it too late? No. I can stop her at any point. I can do something. I have to.
She has crossed a line this time. If this was bothering her, she could have just spoken to me. She is almost done with the tomatoes. She is cutting the last one. The more I wait, the more I feel like my choices are limited.
‘Edi!’
‘Endha, da?’
‘I said I will cut the vegetables, no?’
‘Yeah, da. But it seems like you are busy with something, and I am free.’ She puts aside the vegetables, washes her hands, and leaves the kitchen.
*
I am lying down on a tarmac. It is a long wide road covered on both sides with beautiful trees. Mostly pines. I can’t make out the others. I find it hard to focus on anything else because my eyes seem to move on their own. In the distance, I see a rocket launching station and a rocket that is ready to be launched. How exciting. I’d said in the distance, but it is quite close. Frighteningly close for a rocket launch. There are small huts behind the trees but no trace of humans. Only a few chickens and dogs. That's about it. The countdown starts with a siren. I panic and try to get up. An arm catches hold of me. Appa. Appa is unusually close. He is lying on his back next to me. I have never been this close to him without feeling his presence. Where did he come from?
‘It will be fine. Don’t worry,’ his voice has never been so reassuring.
‘Enjoy the view!’ he says, ‘It’s wonderful!’ I can see that he means it.
I see the wonder. The scale. The magic of this mountain of a thing being lifted off in the air. An all-consuming fire erupts from beneath it like an inverted volcano. I am too close; I can feel the heat above my lips. On my forehead. And in my ears.
Suddenly, the chicken hold made of coconut leaves beside us goes into flames. The dogs and chickens scurry. I panic again. I can smell burning skin. Is it mine?
‘It will all be alright,’ Appa tries to reassure me.
The rocket that was headed for the sky is turning around. It is coming straight at us.
‘Don’t worry,’ Appa says.
It whooshes past as I duck and embrace the tarmac.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Don't be scared,’ Appa barely moves the whole time.
The rocket explodes a little far away with a big boom. I close my eyes, cover my head, and tuck in like a baby. I open my eyes to see if Appa is okay. A large chunk of the rocket swirls around and hits him in the face. He turns away and falls on his stomach. He doesn’t make a noise.
I turn him around and see half of his face missing.
*
My wife moves towards me with a lightness I never knew was possible, places her palm under my chin and lifts it up gently. She sees the tears on my cheeks but doesn’t wipe them.
‘Ennada, Enna aachu?’ She wipes the tears now, recovering from the fact that she saw me crying for the first time.
I swallow the wad of saliva that has accumulated in my mouth.
‘I am sorry, di,’ I say very softly and that makes me wail.
‘It’s okay, da. It’s okay,’ she says, trying to pull my body closer, to embrace all of me.
I turn to the window. I see the flowers outside glazed in sunlight. I wipe my tears and turn to her.
‘I don’t know, di,’ I say.
She pulls me closer and plants a kiss on my forehead. She has never kissed me on my forehead before. This is new. This is different. As she pulls back, I see her eyes shimmer in the sunlight.
*
Response to the workshop:
Had a wonderful time at the Out of Print Magazine writer's workshop at Infinite Souls Farm. Between the beautiful view of Savandurga ... delicious home-cooked food, the birds..., we read amazing stories and saw them come to life in other people's words. Thank you Indira Chandrasekhar for making this possible and being there and encouraging us. Thank you Zui for providing extensive feedback, for being as equally invested in our stories as we are.
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