Fading Out

I sit on the wide ledge by the glass wall and look down at the street. It is two o’clock in the afternoon in Andheri East and there are a few people about. I press my face to the glass pane, palms cupping my eyes, magnifying the street below – yes, all wore masks. And looked around furtively, walking fast.

The June sun shines down on most parts of the deserted street; a few strays sleep under a clump of trees. The building across the street has a yellow signboard ‘Sai Primary School’ dangling from the top floor. Its shuttered windows are a dirty turquoise with gashes of brown where the paint has peeled off.

Andheri East, or whatever little of it I can see from my glass walled hotel room, swelters in the June heat.

Without cars scuttling around, without the hustle of office-goers, without the throng of influencers at cafés like Little Italy, isn’t this the India of the nineties? The India I grew up in? The India I chase in my dreams on most nights? At least on nights I’m not drunk. On the nights I am, Ebe arrives with his large beady eyes, ebony black skin and cropped curly hair.

I choke, my breath nearly stopping. My hands grab my face to loosen the mask. There isn’t any mask, just my two-day old stubble. Breath is a luxury.

Jumping down from the window ledge, I ring room service for beer. ‘Sir, we don’t serve alcohol to quarantined guests.’ Earlier they’d informed me they would only serve vegetarian food during the quarantine. I am back to the Navratri days of my childhood when North Indian neighbours used to frown at us Bengalis and ask, ‘How could you eat non-vegetarian food during Durga puja?’ I hadn’t been able to tap dance to vegetarian Tuesdays and to nod my agreement to evicting North Eastern girls from my society and to chip in on water cooler conversations on how to fuck others over during appraisal season. I was a misfit. I was a coward. So I had run off to Singapore.

And now I’m back.

What will India hold for me now? The visits from Singapore in the last twelve years had been about strolling down memory lane with relatives, friends and colleagues, everyone painting their own Malgudi. Those-were-the-days. Except when I went to Chennai to meet Ebe. We’d drink brandy, smoke up, listen to John Mayers and read Calvin and Hobbes. I’d try to touch him, gobbling in each moment with him, stowing them away to cherish later like a half–eaten Tiramisu takeaway from a French pâtisserie. But once back in Singapore, the cake would be pushed to the farthest corner of the fridge. Hidden. And Ebe would arrive only in my drunken dreams.

And now I’m back. But Ebe was gone and everyone’s Malgudi has been blown to bits. And Ramayana played on tv. The rerun of the nineties.

Oh! How I loved the nineties. How I hated the nineties. How I’d loved Ebe and hated not being able to say it. I was a coward, I was a nineties kid. But with Ebe I had wobbled across the world on MTV and Channel V crutches. He had hated the Indian VJs, calling them pretentious. I didn’t mind though – Cyrus Broacha and Mini Mathur were my demigods, introducing me to The Cranberries, November Rain and a world beyond.

And now I’m back to a near-nineties India. And Channel V is gone. So is Ebe.

MTV was on the brink of shutdown. So was I.

*

‘I’ve come back to the India of my childhood. They’re playing Ramayana on tv,’ I tell Rajini on the phone. ‘Oh … that Ramananda… whatever series?’

‘Yes, yes.’

She cackles. But I can sense the nervous edge to it. The time for the evacuation flight is coming up. ‘How’s quarantine day two?’ she asks.

‘It’s a welcome break from family for sure,’ She laughs. I laugh. We disconnect.

Forty eight hours into quarantine and all I want to do is to step out. Step onto those empty streets and tail a guy with cropped hair pretending he is Ebe. He wouldn’t understand what I want but Ebe hadn’t either.

*

I am noticing a pattern emerge in my routine. I wake up, brush my teeth, prepare a pot of black coffee and carry it to the ledge by the glass wall. I sit down and look down at the street, plastering my cheeks flat against the glass, straining my eyes to see the end of Andheri East. Then I straighten and scan the Sai Primary building, looking for an open window, searching for any sense of life – failing, and then fix my gaze on the signboard.

Yesterday I had glazed over Sai Primary and its decrepit signboard. It was just another shabby Mumbai building. But today, the Sai Primary signboard has the comforting familiarity of … of … yes … a railway station signboard…. Yes that is it. A Railway Station signboard. The same upper case letters in black ink on a yellow sheet of corrugated tin. The window ledge I sit on for the better part of my day is now a window seat of Toofan Express from my childhood. Toofan Express used to carry us from our coal mining town to Kolkata speeding through other towns, throwing fistfuls of noisy streets, gully cricket games and a collage of colours and smells in through the window. My window ledge draws in fistfuls of blaring ambulances and police jeeps chasing masked workers. And, of course, Sai Primary.

As a child I never could make out how far Toofan Express was from reaching Kolkata unless I asked Dad. On this window ledge time slithers out of my hand like dry sand and I’m no closer to my destination. I have no dad to ask, and the news screams that there is no end in sight.

*

 ‘You’ll move back to India for this new job? Alone? And you thought I’ll be ok with that?’ Rajini had asked sipping on her Sauvignon Blanc looking at Marina Bay Sands, curved up and rising against the South China sea. In phase one of lockdown relaxation, Overeasy had opened up near Merlion Park and it was our obvious choice of watering hole. She’d get a headache for drinking in the afternoon, I’d thought.

‘Huh’? She had prodded.

‘I don’t want to risk you both moving during these times.’

‘You get to decide your fate, not ours. Plus, you’ll be earning in rupees and spending in dollars for us.’

‘It’s not about the money. And it’s tempora–’.

‘Are you running away from your job? ‘

‘Nah.’

‘I know you’re shattered about Ebe. But you must let go –’

‘NO. No. It’s not about him.’

‘Then?’

‘India is the future and this new job –’

‘Fuck you.’ Rajini had stormed to the ladies room.

This was a month before my evacuation flight. I’d just applied to the Indian High Commission for a seat in an Air India evacuation flight taking Indians out.

A week later it had been my last day at my bank and Adrian and I had gone behind the hedges by the office cafeteria to have one last smoke.

After a few puffs in silence he asked the inevitable question: ‘Is this new job really such a game changer, lah? You can get infected in India, you know how it is…’

‘I could get infected in Singapore too. Who knows, maybe I have been,’ I’d retorted and thrown the Marlboro Lights in the hedge. To hell with Singapore rules. And anyways, I couldn’t even taste the cigarette.

Adrian had lightly touched my elbow. ‘We can work out your open positions or any other issues, you know that right?’

I hadn’t answered him. I was sick of hiding. I was sick of being ashamed.

That Marlboro Lights was already four days ago and light years away from this Toofan-Express hotel room.

*

Afternoons are boring, like when the Toofan Express is chugging through endless green paddy fields.

‘Hullo Reception, when is my test?’ I call the hotel reception twice a day, spacing out my calls, not mentioning my room number. But I guess they can still make out.

‘We’ll advise you when it’s scheduled sir. No need to call again.’

The doorbell rings, I jump up and open the door. A member of the hotel staff is at my door with a nurse on one side and lunch trolley on the other. Both are in PPE kits making them look like astronauts. I extend my right hand, the temperature gun beeps. They ask me, through their space suits, if I feel all right. Their voices are muffled. I show a thumbs up.

As they move to the next room, I look up and down the corridor. The electric blue carpets have turned a powdery light blue with months of dust. The lilies and tuberoses in the ornate vase droop brown by the lift lobby.

The occupant in my neighbouring room isn’t answering. We both had checked in about the same time two days back, an elderly Parsi gentleman. The hotel staff press the room bell which caws kaaa – kaaa.

Nobody answers. The staff member looks at me from the corner of his eyes, I pop back in, lunch tray in hand. There’s no point in raising suspicion.

The lunch smells like it’s from Ananda Bhavan restaurant at Changi airport. The rectangular disposable tray has dal, alu gobi and a semi-dry gulab jamun in square compartments with rotis rolled up in silver foil. The food is bland. I might as well have chewed on paper. I fish out the pickle with the end of a spoon from its small round plastic container like in inflight meals; its tanginess cuts into my tongue, making inroads to my taste buds. Finally some taste.

I pull the silver foil of the rotis over the uneaten food and heave back onto the sofa. My mirror image stares back from the blank screen of the tv on the wall opposite. It looks like a flitting ghost in a dark photo frame, shimmering at the edges.

*

Today is day four of quarantine. Or is it day five? I inventoried my room’s furniture today morning. I had never thought I’d do it for a hotel room. But this is my home now, my India for the next two weeks.

If I lie in bed, then the writing desk is to my left by the glass wall. To my right is a small bedside table and the abominable glass window to the bathroom. I don’t understand why star hotels have this look through glass window to the toilet. Beyond the toilet is the wardrobe, a table with a basic coffee machine below which is the minibar. And there ends my rectangular India. No dispute on this map of India at least.

In the fourteen days of quarantine I’d planned to catch up on books, exercise and journal my imprisonment. But all I do is gaze outside the glass wall at the street below or up at the Sai Primary signboard or at the white ceiling. Sometimes I wave or make faces at the tv; my reflection has stopped following me and doesn’t even flinch. It stays put and only mimics me after a while, as if remembering to do so in hindsight. There is a lag in communication. Or the tv has a mind of its own. And just maybe – just maybe – the tv is actually a CCTV camera and the man in the tv was the operator secretly recording me. That would be cool.

My phone rings and I let it ring. Silence tiptoes back into the room once the ringing stops. Like I had tiptoed in last night and my boots had stopped at the hotel reception. The reception floor had been slippery with powdery dust and there hadn’t been any lights on, barring the lone lamp atop the reception desk, its feeble light throwing long flickering shadows against the walls. In the penumbra around the reception lobby were silhouettes of expensive sofas and high backed chairs with covers thrown over them.

I’d thought that if civilisation were to end, hotels would be the first to turn into ruins. Hospitals might be the last.

The heavily masked up receptionist had been gazing at a red velvet board adorned with satin and pink paper roses. I’d followed her gaze to the board propped up by the glass entrance – ‘Anu weds Vish – March 15’. Why hadn’t they removed a three-month-old board? Now I knew why – this was a battle of red velvet boards and bare white ceilings; the war of weddings versus funerals. Sitting amidst the ruins of the once vibrant hotel lobby, the red velvet board was the receptionist’s last leaf. She needed it to win. I wasn’t sure I did.

Washing up I lie in bed and pull the covers over me. It’s funny how I shiver though Mumbai burns outside. I’ve had the chills for the past few days, like the ones you have when sweat dries up on you and sends a shiver through you when wind blows through your clothes. This chill is the same, with the difference that the wind seems to be blowing for a long long time and going straight to the bone.

My bed spread and covers are still white. I am waiting for when they’ll turn into dirty crumpled newspapers like the ones used for wrapping vada pau and then I’ll start sleeping on the sofa.

‘And oh sir, one more thing. There will be no Housekeeping during your stay,’ the masked receptionist had informed me. This was a glorified police lockup – a paid one at that – the same shit vegetarian meal every day, no beer, no cleaners, no way out.

I check my phone for the missed call; it was Rajini. I call back but she doesn’t pick up. It should be about five in the evening in Singapore now. Has she taken Sanvi for her skating class? Or haven’t they resumed yet? Or is it her online guitar class today? I couldn’t be losing track of time so soon?

I throw the phone by the pillow and turn to the glass wall. In the late afternoon light the signboard in the opposite building is an orange hue with bold green letters. Isn’t it…? Ah! It is indeed – my high school signboard. My high school … its hard benches, the rush of our notebooks out of Duckback school bags and the noisy lunch breaks. And being glued to Ebe for the most part of the day. And sometimes in the evenings too, under the pretence of group study. He and I used to share the same desk. He was a Kannadiga Pentecostal Christian, an unlikely character in 90’s Calcutta. He’d just moved from Kuwait, his mom had died and his dad had decided to move back to India, accepting a job at Dunlop Tyres. And I’d moved from a small coal mining town in Bihar. Bereft of friends, we’d stuck to each other, despite our stark differences – he was tall, dark and mostly calm. I was (am) short, fair and mostly stressed. There was this time when we had skipped school in eleventh standard and Ebe had emptied an entire pint of whiskey while leaning against a parked blue Vespa scooter in a lane off New Empire cinema. It hadn’t even been evening. I’d been scared playing truant and had frozen up seeing the late afternoon sun shine through the empty McDowell’s bottle as Ebe gulped down the last drop. His eyes had taken on the wild look that drunks have, his eyeballs had lost their usual sparkle and had a red tinge around them. But he hadn’t slurred like in the movies, he’d just been restless and kept asking if there was a pool nearby to swim off the heat and stink. And yet, he had been as attractive as ever if not more. Scary, but it made him more beautiful even. And then the Vespa owner had returned and shooed us away with a long press of the Vespa horn – kaaaa–kaaa–kaaa.

I wake up to the doorbell buzzing and wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth. The sun had set and the room was a fridge. I switch off the aircon.

I roll out of bed and open the door. A set of the hotel staff are again at the door. They hand me the dinner tray and move two rooms away and ring the bell. ‘Hey, what about this room?’ I point to the room beside me. One of the guys points his right thumb down with a shifty gaze. My neighbour is a thumbs down? Was the old Parsi gentleman infected? Have they taken him away? Has he already … I pop back inside with the dinner tray.

The glass wall is tinted with darkness. Crisscross reflections of streetlights and the occasional ambulance lights play on it.

I sit down to eat but the chapatis, rice and dal stare me down. I pop the gulab jamun into my mouth and pull the silver foil over the food.

I try to fall asleep but the trying keeps me awake. I feel a warmth rising in me and throw off the covers. I’m sweating and badly need a swim in the cool blue chlorine waters of my Singapore condo pool.

‘Singapore is a Disneyland dude; it’s good for a week but what after that? But the pools remind me of the Kuwait pools of my childhood’, Ebe had remarked the only time he had visited me in Singapore.

‘You seem to be a big fan of India now,’ I’d mocked, all the while drinking in his musky perfume, his ebony skin shining like a teak wood piano cover and his long slender fingers with which he twirled his cropped hair.

‘What are you gawking at you fatso?’ Ebe had smiled his toothy smile. We were lying on the deck chairs by the pool and it was twilight on a weekday so there wasn’t anybody around.

In the reflection of the floor lights by the pool, Ebe had looked like Adonis. I couldn’t think of a black God to compare him to, so, Adonis. He wore blue Lycra trunks while I was covered neck to toe in my swimming suit. He had a body to show off while I had one to hide. Before I could reach out to touch him he had dived into the pool. I’d followed suit. Then Rajini had returned with our daughter from her skating classes and the usual family banter had followed late into the evening. That was the last I saw of him.

I check my mobile for messages and play Cranberries’ ‘Ode to My Family’, our favourite from high school days.

The warmth subsides, Dolores’ voice creating eddies pulling me deeper into cool waters. The music fades and the world is shut out as water blocks my ears. I can hear my heart beating at my eardrums. I bring my palms in front of my face to see the bubbles stuck on them. And when I look up, Ebe is opposite me motioning me to dive deeper. He is bare-bodied except for the light blue trunks. I want to touch him and dive after him. The water is freezing and it grows dark. I can’t lose Ebe. I can’t hold my breath anymore but I don’t want to leave Ebe in the abyss. My hands flap, legs kicking the water like a dying frog until I’m above water. I gasp for breath and look around, it is dark and there isn’t anybody around. I climb out of the pool, leaving wet footmarks as I tip toe to the shower. I crank the shower handle but barely a trickle splashes on my face. I realise it’s my grandma’s bathroom in Calcutta and I panic, I need to get out, I need to reach the office. The white shirt, the brass cufflinks and grey flannel trousers are laid out on the bed and I slide into them. Out on the street, it’s seven am in Hong Kong Central and I join the Monday morning rush. I half-walk, half-run up the bright uphill roads, pushing and jostling past the fashionable crowd, the hum of street hawkers and newspaper-cigarette vendors playing in the background. At the office, the trading floor is a slaughterhouse, traders bleed as markets tumble with no bottom in sight. I’d thought the sub-prime days would never come back. Such a fool I’d been. Such a fool.

I sprint past the FX desks, the equity desks, futures and options desks – markets falling down, down, down. There’s no point in staying any longer; sooner or later they’ll get to my trades. They’ll find out about my losses, my open positions which can’t be squared. Will they send me to jail? My trading licence will be cancelled. But that’s a small thing now.

I skip out of the office and take the stairs – hopping and skipping steps. I see a guy by the emergency hatch. The glass is shattered and the red emergency hammer lies on the floor. Wind bellows in through the small gap like an angry banshee, the Hong Kong skyline flickering behind the man like a digital photo frame with a dying battery. The man glances at me, and then jumps through the hatch. One more down. Run Run Run. I can’t stop, I’m skipping down the stairs, scraping my palms against the walls for support. Down, down, down. I burst out into the back alley of Kolkata’s New Empire cinema hall. Dirty vessels are piled up on both sides of the narrow street; an elderly Cantonese couple squat on the road scrubbing the vessels and banging them on the pavement. The stench is overpowering. I’m about to ask them the way but I spot the blue Vespa scooter parked on the opposite pavement. I need to get away, to find my way to the airport.

At Hong Kong airport security, they ask to remove my mask and the Cantonese officer says ‘Sir, I can’t let you pass, your face has come off on the mask.’

I’m awake, swimming in sweat. I can barely breathe. My phone says its six in the morning but the room is awash with sunlight. My head is a ton of bricks.

I dab my face with the end of the blanket, running my fingers through the contours of my face. I start breathing again.

The doorbell rings. ‘Themprator’, two nurses in blue PPE kits peer at me. Beep. The nurse in astronaut suit shows the temperature gun to her colleague. Both signal to me for another reading. ’Left.’ I extend my left arm – beep. This time both crowd over the temperature gun. They exchange hurried glances and nod at me. I pop back in and remember about breakfast, and pop out again to ask but they are gone.

I switch on the aircon and lie in between the covers. I thump through my phone, it’s the same Whatsapp forwards – friends with family members in deathbeds, India has recorded a new high of Covid cases and calls for plasma donors. There’s just one difference now in these messages – Pimpri Chinchwad is no more an obscure unpronounceable name but a real place, only a hundred kilometres away. Uncomfortably close.

My bedside phone rings: ‘Sir, your breakfast is by your door.’ ‘Oh, no doorbell eh? Hey can I go to the back of the hotel and smoke. I promise I’ll be quick.’ ‘How are you feeling sir?’ ‘Bored.’ ‘I meant health-wise sir.’ ‘Never better.’ ‘Good. Enjoy your meal.’ Click.

I heave myself up. The breakfast tray is on the dirty carpet. The idiots left the food on the dirty carpet. Why not hand it to me? I pick up the tray. I take a long time to straighten up as my back hurts, and retreat through the door into the room. How I’ve aged in these last few days. Every bone creaks in my body.

I call Mom but don’t tell her that the firm I’ve been interviewing at haven’t sent me the appointment letter yet. I call Didi and get sucked into her vortex of office politics. I call a couple of friends but they don’t pick up. Forty-five minutes of phone calls and I am out of breath again. I switch on the aircon and curl up on the sofa. The aircon gains power, converting the room into a fridge. I start to shiver again and take out my pyjama from the suitcase. I still haven’t unpacked. Too much work.

The doorbell rings again. The same astronautish nurses stand at the door. Really? Another temperature check? I thrust out my right arm in anger. Beep. The nurses consult the reading. One of them fishes out an oximeter and clips it on my forefinger – Beep. She checks the reading and ask me to step back into the room. ‘Why?’ Anger grips me. ‘What’s the meaning of these frequent checks?’

‘Step back sir’, the second nurse’s words come out surprisingly clear through her mask ’Do you have trouble breathing?’

‘No – Ah yes, a little because the room hasn’t been cleaned and it’s stuffy. If only I could step out…’

‘You will have your RTPCR test today.’

‘Isn’t that later in the week?’

‘It’s when we say it is. One of us will come and get you. You will need to wear a PPE suit.’ They leave.

I look up and down the corridor. There is absolute silence. No muffled sounds of tv or phone conversations from the rooms. Am I alone on this floor? The receptionist had been alone too, sitting amidst the ruins of the once prosperous lobby, but she had had her last leaf in the red velvet board. What is my last leaf on this ruinous empty floor?

‘When in panic, take a shower,’ was my mom’s remedy. I grab her advice and get into the shower. The lukewarm water feels good. The chills come soon after I dry myself. I curl up on the sofa. The bed is too disgusting with its crumpled sheets.

I toss and turn and Ebe floats in and out of my view. I toss and turn and out of the corner of my eye I see Ebe talking to nurses in PPE kits while taking swigs from the whiskey bottle in his hand.

Ebe sees me seeing and beckons me to get up. The nurses in PPE kits now have a stretcher laid out on the floor and ask me to lie down on it.

‘It’s time,’ says Ebe.

It cannot be – it cannot be. Nope. Ebe had been taken away by the black winds of Covid. Has he come back to save me?

‘Yes you dodo. I’m here, it’ll be alright. It doesn’t hurt much.’ Ebe speaks from the black tv screen.

‘But I’d worn a PPE kit on the flight. And a face shield and two masks. And gloves. And I had sprayed my suitcases with sanitisers with 80% alcohol.’

‘Doesn’t work that way. You get it, you get it. You’ve had fever for some time now right?’

‘Ye–Yes, I had had fever for the past one week before leaving Singapore. And I’ve been taking fistfuls of Paracetamols. But it’s not that. It’s just jet lag and stress.’

‘Sure. You’ve come back to India, that’s what matters.’

‘Yes. The family is safe. They didn’t get it from me. And I’m here – with you. Finally.’

I check my pulse and its racing, throbbing against my wrist. That’s because I am tense. I’m always tense.

‘Yes, you are. My sweet little good-for-nothing.’ Ebe’s voice booms inside my head.

I get up and force myself to the glass wall and yank the curtains aside. Light fills the room. I turn to check on Ebe in the dark tv screen but he is gone. The tv shows me lying on a stretcher by the bed, I jolt up and look at the floor, there is no stretcher.

The phone rings. ‘Sir, they’re here for the test. Best of luck.’

‘Sure. I’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Ebe? I’m leaving.’

There is no reply.