ISSUE 52

Mahesh didn’t know exactly when his limp had faded into something inconspicuous, or his nightmares diluted into dreams of more routine things like jumping from cliffs, floating in jelly, or falling into a manhole.

Last Friday, he finally stepped out of the house, taking Golu for a walk. Are you sure, Kriti enquired tentatively, stirring a pot of mutton stew sparingly, the ladle held as if any moment it would crash into the pot. Ever since Mahesh had returned, Kriti’s movements had a cautious thoughtfulness, which was not the same as timidity or nervousness. Something in the way she opened the door, lifted a pencil or spoke, seemed to want to assure her surroundings that things would get better. Mahesh had faintly sensed this. Though to him, Kriti’s assiduity seemed like a sobering residue of pain she must have felt on seeing him.

Three weeks earlier, Mahesh had returned from his first tour of combat duty. His three-page discharge summary said his three bullet wounds, one each to his thigh, shoulder, and waist, had healed. Another sheet, attached at the back, mentioned in red ink, Type#4 PTSD. The documents were tucked in a cheap, green hospital folder which had on its back cover the text, Get Well Soon sprouting from behind a bouquet of bright roses. Kriti had sighed at the garish hopefulness of the image.

She had taken leave for the first two weeks. Though after the first, she wondered, if it was really necessary? Mahesh did not have unreasonable fits of rage, become unpredictably irritable, or tense aggressively in response to the sounds of lawnmowers and lorries. Nor did he show any other symptom mentioned in that list tucked at the back of the green folder.

How should I deal with it, Kriti had asked her mother over the landline. Her voice coiled with panic akin to the way she sometimes wound telephone wire or hair around her index finger. As she spoke, her hands drew arrows piercing diamonds at the back of a cereal box. The box was not empty.

Bullet wounds heal, but how does one deal with this, she asked.

Ever since he had returned, Mahesh and Kriti had not conversed the way they used to – about mortgages and life goals, electricity bills and in-laws, favourite films and weekly menus. We don’t converse, we talk, Kriti had said, to whom, she doesn’t remember. The moustachioed military doctor, who had recently started balding, had advised her to ‘take it slow’. As if he was teaching her how to drive, she felt.

Kriti’s bewilderment and brittleness had surprised her mother. Kriti had supported her mother during her depression. Held her when she wept, listened to her repeat the same accusations over and over, picked, and dropped her from therapy in the grey Vento her father had left them. Eventually, the depression had healed, which didn’t mean her mother had completely recovered. Kriti’s father had come out after forty-three years of marriage. When Mahesh and Kriti shared their life-stories, she referred to it as a dark time. He is bi now, his mother had declared. Now, Kriti repeated, her cheeks burning. Her mother offered comforting platitudes, which were not platitudes. Be patient, she said, before disconnecting.

When Mahesh and Golu returned from the walk, Kriti was ready for work. His face was flushed, sunlight shining from his sweaty forehead. Golu’s tongue hung from his mouth like a red, wet kerchief. Mahesh seemed pleased with himself. She had kept Mahesh’s lunch of rice and mutton stew in the microwave, fixed herself a bowl of porridge, and was eating it while going through her email.

Do you think Golu is limping? Mahesh asked.

No. Is he? Kriti said, still looking at her screen.

Yeah! There is something wrong, Mahesh said.

Are you sure? Kriti said, immediately biting her tongue. She looked up, pointing her gaze towards Golu, who was drinking from his bowl. He made a sound of big waves lashing in a small bucket. He sat with the entire weight of his body bearing on his bum. He seemed tense, like a poorly balanced gunny-bag. Precariously perched poodle, the part of Kriti who had once enjoyed alliterations and palindromes, wanted to say.

Maybe we can take him to the vet over the weekend, she said.

Yeah, maybe we should, he said. She went over where his meds were, where his lunch was, and that he still had to finish his first therapy assignment. While he nodded to her staccato instructions, a blue fly buzzed into the room, settling on the empty bowl of porridge in the sink. She left while his eyes rested on it.

I wonder how he is feeling, Kriti said to her mother, the cell phone wedged between her shoulder and neck. She worked at a company that made prosthetic limbs. She was raising an invoice for three prosthetic forearms, all left-handed.

Give him time, her mother said, a bell ringing in the background. Her mother still worked at the public library.

Yes, I am doing the best I can, but there is a wall of unsaid things between us, that I don’t know how to jump over, Kriti said, sending the invoice to print. Opened on her screen now was a spreadsheet full of numbers in cyan, greens and blues.

Sometimes men need time, her mother said, a little exasperated. Kriti’s eyes ran through coloured numbers, trying to spot the odd, red one. She wanted to ask, time for what? Her father’s angular, ruddy face flashing in her mind.

Yes, she whispered absentmindedly, spotting the offending number.

*

Mahesh had felt an inexplicable relief when Kriti began going to work. Therapy is helping, he had said. It would have sounded believable had he smiled. You have gone for one session, she said.

Trust me, he added a little forcefully, though not loudly. Kriti peered into his greyish-black eyes, trying to spot something resembling a lie, or vulnerability, which were the same things.

In the end, she agreed to go to work for a short while. Most days, Mahesh sat cross-legged on the living-room couch, in a way that both entrances to the room fell in his line of sight. He noticed unostentatious neighbourhood sounds – the honk of passing vehicles, kids playing in the yard, birds chirping. He made nothing of these, but it helped mark the day’s progress. Sometimes he passed the hours counting his heartbeat. One time, he counted to 452. He made a note of this in his therapy book. He noticed a car outside had 254 on its number plate. This too, he noted in his therapy book, though on a different page. Sometimes he felt odd sensations in his shoulder blades, where the bullet had been. Not pain, but as if a blade was slowly cutting through epidermis. He began doing push-ups till it passed. Sometimes, he did push-ups anyway. Then he’d collapse on the floor, listening to his own breathing.

Occasionally, when an alarm beeped on his cell phone, he got up to refill Golu’s bowl. Golu followed him everywhere. He never baby-talked the dog.

The first therapy assignment was an easy one – he had to describe an episode or event that most troubled him. He wanted to tell his therapist, a gaunt woman with wispy hair, who wore business suits, delicately threaded brows, and matching glasses, that his hands shook if he held a pen. He arrived for the second session without his assignment.

I didn’t want to put it on paper, he shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. This made him seem defensive.

She hadn’t been flustered as he expected her to be. Was he expecting her to be flustered? he wondered. His palms had turned sweaty. For a moment, he was shocked at how cold they were.

Later, Mahesh told his therapist he had done something bad. His therapist replied, obviously you think you have, but that doesn’t make you bad.

I can’t undo it, he said. You don’t have to, she said.

Then what’s the point? he said. Please tell me a little more, so I can help you, she said.

But you can’t, he said. Why? she said.

Because I can’t trust you, he said. The edge in his voice made her peer, then lean back.

Their exchanges followed a circular arc. After the initial few minutes, silence hung like stale air in the room. You could hear her green pencil urgently scribble on a coarse notepad. He looked out the window. A stray dog, black with white spots on its ears, ambled towards a green trashcan. Two women walked a bright orange pram on the sidewalk. A gorgeous tree whose name he wished he knew, swayed in the wind and sunlight. He focussed on the not-knowing. Suddenly, a car drove up at high speed, about to run over the dog. It swerved at the last minute. He thought he heard the screeching of its tires on asphalt.

She saw his breathing turn heavy, palm clenching the armrest. Its beige turned a shade of darker brown. Outside the window, the two women stopped to buy ice cream. Their jovial demeanour agitated him, she noted.

*

Mahesh was the one who started therapy.

Soon after his return, he had realised he needed it. One night he woke up thirsty, feeling sandpaper rub on his windpipe. Kriti cocooned in her blanket beside him, the moonlight making her seem ghostly and distant. As he groped for a bottle of water in the kitchen, he elbowed another past the edge of the slab. It toppled. The sound of shattering glass filled the apartment shrouded in darkness. When Kriti switched on the light, they saw a broken bottle of ketchup on the floor. Tiny shards of glass shone from thick, red paste. MOVE AWAY, he shouted, his body tense, his hand clutching a kitchen knife they used to cut apples and passion fruit in the evenings. Kriti’s spine hardened into drying clay. The vein running behind Mahesh’s neck bulged like a highway. As if it would explode from his head. No one knew how long they stood like that.

Golu barked from the doorway. His hind legs shivered. Mahesh put down the knife, collapsed on the floor, and sobbed in deep, stifled breaths. Kriti moved the knife away. Then she held him, first gently, then tightly.

His hair smelt of cheap shampoo and fear.

*

He wanted to tell his therapist something in him had snapped the afternoon his platoon had shot at a car speeding towards their checkpoint. What he couldn’t put into words was it was he who had done most of the shooting.

He was manning the checkpoint. The other sentry, Gopal, had fired a warning shot at the blue Alto, after blasting the deafening Caution-Alarm on the loudhailer. The Alto continued moving towards them. The marker, sitting beside Mahesh, following the Alto through high-powered binoculars, signalled hostile. The thick static on their walky-talky ordered fire. Mahesh pulled the trigger, aiming first at the tyres, and then slightly above. A cloud of dust rose from the disoriented car. He would have fired four, maybe five rounds before the car crashed. Gopal, positioned on the opposite check-post, had fired too. Mahesh knew some of their bullets, his bullets, may have hit people in the car. He hoped they would still be alive.

There was a man’s body in the driver’s seat, a woman’s on the seat behind. The man’s eyes were open. He wore a blue sweater that had slowly turned maroon. The woman’s belly was as swollen as the car’s bonnet. She was eight, maybe nine months pregnant. Maybe in the middle of labour from the way she lay prostrate on the rear-seat, thought Mahesh, checking his magazine. It held only six rounds. He calculated, he had fired twenty-four. His rifle still felt heavy. A broken eyelash irritated his left eye. He was taking deep breaths.

For two days, Mahesh felt something he couldn’t name, swim in his gut. He wanted to vomit. All he managed, repeatedly pressing his glottis, were coughs and farts. He ate normally, smoked casually, and exercised vigorously, but no amount of food, cigarettes, or push-ups dislodged that feeling. It wafted like sewer stench from somewhere within him. The blood of three, Mahesh said to himself, looking in the mirror while shaving. He had gashed his chin.

When Gopal and he met for a smoke, Gopal behaved like nothing had happened. After this tour ends, Neha and I are taking a trip, he said, blowing smoke rings. Mahesh nodded. Maybe even trying for a baby, continued Gopal. Mahesh’s heartbeat quickened.

He stubbed the cigarette with his thumb. Gopal followed the stub, not realising what was happening. Mahesh wanted to shake him and tell him something, anything. Gopal spat and walked away.

*

Mahesh and Kriti were undressing when they heard Golu’s low, guttural cries from the living room. Those sounds made Mahesh go limp, tensing his shoulder blades.

Golu was yelping, trying desperately to move to his bowl. But his hind legs seemed detached from his body, dragging from his rear like dead tree branches. They took turns to stay awake all night, soothing him, giving him water, and petting him. Neither of them slept.

In the morning, they reached the vet’s clinic an hour before it opened. It was a quiet, Saturday morning, the streets unusually desolate, the birds decidedly noisy. Golu was tucked in his grey blanket in the rear-seat. One couldn’t say he was comfortable, though he was not in pain.

They sipped lukewarm coffee from Styrofoam cups. They realised they had never been awake together at this time of the day on a Saturday. Mahesh looked closely at Kriti’s face. The skin of her cheeks broke at places, traces of crows-feet appearing from the corner of her eyes.

Two other pet parents waited with a Chihuahua and an Alsatian.

We should have got him here earlier, Kriti said, her voice so heavy, it sunk to the bottom of the Styrofoam cup.

I am sorry, he said, very, very sorry. She turned towards him.

Before she could ask, he blurted out, during the ambush, I let them shoot me. I didn’t shoot back. I could but I didn’t. I just let them. It was all I wanted.

And then, as if he were weighing something unsettling in his mind, he stopped and spat out, six months ago, I killed an innocent, pregnant woman and her husband.

He was looking straight at the silver Volvo. Or the mahogany tree behind it. He threw his cup on the sidewalk. His breathing was heavy. He felt the sensation of a blade cutting through his shoulder. His head bobbed slowly, looking away. He knew he couldn’t look her in the eye. Other pet parents had begun arriving. One of them knew Mahesh and Kriti. They waved from their car. Mahesh waved back, maintaining his posture to avoid looking at Kriti. All this while, she studied him, the lines on his face, his crew cut and stubble, his greyish-black eyes, and his shoulder which had begun to twitch.

Mahesh saw the vet approach the entrance. A certain urgency crept into his demeanour. He sprang into action, removing Golu’s blanket. Kriti stood there uncertainly looking as Mahesh scurried inside, carrying Golu like an infant.