Evol Story

Prakash shifts the bulk of his weight onto his right foot as he stands on tiptoe and reaches for the cardboard carton, filled with packs of Carefree sanitary pads, on the topmost shelf. He will have to work fast to finish restocking their glass display case with the white packs printed with dainty blue flowers, move on to fixing the detergent display that a customer had carelessly knocked down earlier, all before Shankaran ammavan comes by to check the ledger at 5 pm sharp.

He almost drops the carton when he hears Preeti’s voice from the front of the store.

‘One Parle-G and one Red Label tea powder. 100 grams.’

Prakash carefully sets the box down on the floor and flattens himself against the wall of the storeroom, his heart hammering like a trapped animal against his healed rib cage. He peers through the gap between the hinges of the partially open storeroom door. She is wearing a black salwar kameez, a red dupatta draped gracefully around her neck; most of her face is hidden from his view by the door.

‘Anything else?’ he hears his cousin Unni ask her.

He could stroll out casually, fake a surprised eyebrow raise, start a conversation. ‘Lekha said you have joined for MBA in Bangalore. How is it going? Are you here for your semester break?’

But even the thought is too much.

‘Go away. Go away fast,’ he mutters under his breath.

He stays inside the storeroom till he is sure she has reached the main road, out of sight from their shop, till the strange induced-by-hospital-smell-like nausea abates, before he steps out with the sanitary pads. Unni looks at him curiously. Ignoring the kid, he goes about his tasks, his heart finally slowing down to a steady march-past tempo.

*

He paces the length of their living room, trying to distribute his weight equally on both feet, though his left leg hurts badly. His physio insisted that he walk this way for an hour every day to avoid developing a pronounced limp. He ignores the conversation taking place in the same room between Shankaran ammavan and Amma, the same way they ignore his presence despite the fact that he is the topic of their discussion.

‘We were thinking of enrolling him for some post graduate course…’ his mother’s voice trails away, lacking conviction, but trying to add heft by using the plural ‘we’, though his father is yet to contribute a word to the conference.

His uncle harrumphs. ‘What’s the use? He will probably see some girl there and re-enact his acrobatic performance.’

He notices his mother’s face reddening in embarrassment.

‘Send him to my shop,’ Shankaran ammavan bulldozes forward, sensing a weak opposition like a true politician. (He is a ward member and plans to stand for president in the Gram Panchayat elections, despite his thorough rout the last time.) ‘You know all my attention is taken up by my new supermarket. I cannot devote much time to the old store, but it is still a profitable one. Unni is too young to manage the shop on his own. Besides he has tuitions for his board exams on alternate days. I would prefer someone from within the family, rather than hiring an outsider. I will pay him, of course. It will help you pay off that loan you took for his hospital bills.’

He sees his mother wiping her tears away with a corner of her sari pallu, as she nods her head in mute acquiescence. Prakash continues pacing, ignoring this verdict in absentia on his near foreseeable future.

*

Lekha, Salim and Rehana visit him one Saturday morning.

‘His physiotherapy will start next week. His doctor just told us yesterday,’ his mother updates them, as she drags a few chairs towards his bed. ‘You all sit and talk to him, I will get you tea,’ she attempts a smile, that looks almost painful after months of being out of practice. At least her sobbing and berating has whittled down to morose looks and glares. An awkward silence sets in after his mother leaves the room.

‘You must be tired of lying down all day,’ Lekha observes. Prakash just smiles and nods.

‘Preeti has joined the MBA programme at SJIM in Bangalore,’ Lekha says, rather abruptly, and even more awkwardness settles into the room. It’s like they are all back in Paulson Sir’s Physics period in school; their teacher would pinch the girls on their arms for wrong answers, his fingers lingering on their reddened skin, the silence in the classroom echoing in the stifling summer afternoons.

Prakash clenches his fist, groping around in his mind for a change of topic.

‘What about you guys? Are you joining for a PG course anywhere?’

The faces of his three friends show obvious relief. Salim and Rehana start together, ‘We are…’ then stop and smile at each other. Salim indicates that she should continue.

‘Both of us have gotten through for PG in nursing at Trivandrum Government College. They have good campus placements, even a few hospitals from the Middle East have turned up in the past,’ Rehana explains.

Prakash smiles at them, ignoring the sudden pang that grabs him around his throat. His friends are chasing their dreams. The two of them have been planning this for a long time, and will certainly be able to get married soon, now. He tries to imbue as much joy as possible into his voice when he says, ‘That’s such great news. I am so happy for you both.’

Rehana hesitates for a moment, before saying, ‘Lekha has news too.’

Prakash turns expectantly towards Lekha. Taken aback at the sudden spotlight on her, she starts twisting her handkerchief around her fingers.

‘My marriage has been fixed.’

Prakash cannot help but gape, his mouth falling open.

Lekha rushes on, ‘He is a distant relative of my brother-in-law. I have met him a few times at weddings and family events. He works for a software firm in Delhi. I have told him I want to study further and that I hope to pursue teaching. He has agreed to it. His parents too. They seem like open-minded people. The wedding is going to be in a month, if we get a good muhurtham.’ She runs out of steam and lapses into silence.

For the second time in a span of ten minutes, Prakash finds himself being awkwardly stared at by his friends. So, he hastens to say, ‘That’s such great news Lekha. I am so happy for you.’

*

After three weeks in the hospital, Prakash knows the rhythm of the place and the routine of the staff quite well. Nurse Steffy has the morning shifts in his ward, except for Saturday, which is her day off. Nurse Geetha has the night shifts, except for Tuesday. Bincy is the day nurse on Saturdays and Saiju is the night nurse on Tuesdays. Doctor G K Menon bustles in, usually around noon, on a flying visit, enquiring after the wellbeing of his parents, checking his chart, even asking him if he has any questions (he considers asking if the good doctor’s initials stand for General Knowledge) before rushing out, all in the duration of a few minutes.

Now, as he lies on the bed staring at the ceiling, while nurse Steffy cleans his buttocks with wet wipes, gloved fingers, and stoic professionalism, he envies Doctor Menon’s knack for rushing away from rooms. His mother has started stepping out of the room during his diaper change. In the initial days, when he had just been shifted to the room from the ICU, and had been swathed in bandages and casts, she would stay in the room during the cleaning process, crying and complaining into nurse Steffy’s sympathetic ears. Now that he looks more human than mummy, Amma has probably remembered the concept of privacy.

Once the nurse is done, Amma comes back inside and informs him he has a visitor. It is Suresh ettan, the only cousin from his father’s side of the family whom he is close to.

‘You look a lot better. I had visited when … when you were in the ICU. You were unconscious. I would have visited again but I had to go to Chennai for a couple of weeks. A work trip. No no … don’t try to talk. You shouldn’t strain your jaw till the cast is removed. Your ettathi wanted to come and see you, but she has to pick Kannan up from playschool. I will bring them both along the next time.’

Suresh has sent Amma to the hospital canteen to have her lunch, promising to wait by Prakash’s side till she is back. He sits quietly by his side for a while, after he runs out of content for his one-sided conversation while Prakash’s fascination with the ceiling continues.

Suresh then drags his chair closer, and whispers, ‘You know what I said that day … at Lakshmi’s wedding … I didn’t mean it … I mean not like this.’

Prakash closes his eyes, and pretends to fall asleep.

When he had gained consciousness after four days in the ICU, he had found the room eerie in its cold tomb-like silence; the only sounds were the mechanical whirring and beeping of the machines that were keeping him and the other critical patients alive. He had been glad to be out of the ICU. Now he finds himself missing the damn place. Visitors weren’t allowed there.

*

As he sits on the ledge around the three-storey high overhead water tank, his legs dangling over its edge, Prakash takes out the small piece of paper from his pocket and reads his note yet again. Preeti I loved you so much. You never understood the sincerity of my feelings. I wish you a good and happy life.

Maybe ‘good and happy’ is too much. ‘I wish you a good life’ or ‘I wish you a happy life’ would be more succinct and impactful. But he doesn’t have more paper with him, and so it will have to do.

Would Preeti hug his body at his funeral and sob in front of all his relatives? What will his parents think of her?

He feels guilt coursing through him at the thought of his parents. His parents will be losing their only child. They have been good parents. Mostly. His father is a little distant and taciturn, and his mother often nags him over trivial things, like his untidy room or his exam marks. But he knows they try their best. His mother had sponged his forehead for hours when he had been down with dengue fever just a few months ago. The last thing he said to Amma was ‘no’ when she asked him if he wanted more puttu while he was eating his breakfast.

Puttu and kadala curry was going to be his last meal. If he had planned this better, he would have had chicken biryani or probably parotta and egg roast, his favourite combination at the Indian Coffee House in Edapally, before climbing up the water tank. But he hadn’t planned it. That last conversation with Preeti over the phone had upset him badly.

He is now extra furious with her for being the cause of his untimely death. Hope she loses sleep for months and years after my demise, he prays.

Perhaps he could climb back down, write a heartfelt letter of apology to his parents, go eat a nice last meal, even an ice-cream sundae from Mathai chettan’s juice shop and then do this properly.

But a small crowd has already gathered at the base of the tank. People are filming him on their phones. Some are shouting and gesturing at him to climb down. A piercing siren rends the air and he sees a police jeep speeding towards the spot. He cannot back out now. If he doesn’t jump, the videos will go viral and everyone would come to know that he chickened out. Everyone – Salim, Rehana, Lekha, his parents. And Preeti. He would become a laughing stock.

He stands up. The ground has started looking dizzyingly far away. He closes his eyes and prays for a quick death. For courage, he pictures Preeti tearing her hair out in grief. Taking a deep breath, he wipes his sweaty palms on the side of his pants.

He jumps.

A raw scream tears out of his throat as he plunges towards the lush green tree that would break his fall and save his life, leaving him with five cracked ribs, a compound fracture in his left leg, a broken neck (that did not impact the nerves in his spinal cord, therefore miraculously saving him from paralysis according to Dr G K Menon) and a mildly fractured skull.

*

He happens to sit next to Suresh for the sadya after their cousin Lakshmi’s marriage. Suresh’s shrewd eyes give him a once-over, even as he mashes sambar and rice together and expertly tosses little balls of the mixture into his mouth.

‘Prakash, I noticed you have been rather gloomy since morning. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Prakash mumbles, with a shrug.

‘It’s a girl, isn’t it? I saw you, you know. I was buying stationery from the shop across your college, and I saw you near the college gate, talking to a pretty girl,’ Suresh states with a smirk. ‘Don’t worry,’ he adds, in response to the alarmed look on Prakash’s face, ‘I haven’t told your parents anything.’

‘And since you are being secretive about this, and since I can deduce you haven’t got a positive response from your beloved, let me inspire you with the love story of your ettathi and yours truly. You already know I first saw Parvati at the temple. What you don’t know is that I took two months to muster up the courage to talk to her. I started going to the temple every other day. My parents were quite impressed by my sudden piety.’

Suresh breaks into loud guffaws at the memory, and Prakash’s dark mood starts to thaw as he laughs along.

‘Parvati wouldn’t talk to me for months. It was nearly a year before she let me buy her a milkshake, and another month or two, before she agreed to watch a movie with me. So, the moral of the story is ‘don’t give up’. Girls like men who persevere.’

Suresh pats him affectionately on his head, before beckoning the server to ask for more palada payasam.

*

‘How many times should I tell you this? I am not interested!’

Prakash is stunned at the vehemence in Preeti’s voice. All his efforts at expressing his feelings for her had been met by polite disinterest till now and all his attempts at asking her out had been met with timid refusals.

‘I have been nice to you, because I didn’t want to hurt you. But you are harassing me now,’ her usually pleasant face is twisted with anger and frustration.

‘How am I harassing you? I am just asking you to give me a chance. You don’t know me well. How can you know then, that I am not the right person for you?’

‘Exactly! YOU don’t know ME too. Why do you think you are in love with me? Please don’t force me to go to the police.’

Prakash remains rooted to the spot, caught in a raging whirlwind of disappointment, shame, and confusion, even as she storms away towards the bus stop.

*

He is perched on a tree stump near the college cafeteria, watching the fresh-faced first year students file out of the auditorium after their orientation programme. Salim and Rehana are sitting on a bench opposite him, sipping tea and conversing softly. He finds it puzzling how despite being high school sweethearts, and a couple for nearly four years now, they are never bored or tired of each other. He turns to look at Lekha, who is buying a pack of potato chips from the tuck shop because he asked her to. He knows she likes him. Really likes him, as more than a friend. She is, maybe, even in love with him. But they have been in the same class since fourth grade. He tries to imagine being married to her, living an entire lifetime with her, and it feels so dull, even imagining it.

Then he sees a girl, one of the first years, approaching Lekha. She is dressed in a long blue skirt and a white top. She has wavy hair and a beautiful smile. Dimples. Deep dimples on her cheeks when she smiles.

When Lekha hands the pack of chips to him, Prakash starts with, ‘That girl you were talking to…’ but on seeing a suspicious frown crease Lekha’s forehead, he quickly corrects himself, ‘She looks like my tuition classmate Anand’s sister.’

Her frown disappears.

So he asks, ‘What’s her name?’