Broken Hug

Suicide

Rohan Reflects

My God, this handwriting, yes… an exact replica of Fai’s.

            Who was she, I mean this Charoen, who told me to address her as Fai? Was she a figment of my imagination? Was she a part of the vast space, the fa? Fa in Thai means sky; see daam, colour blue. Our mind is a vast space, and endless thoughts are housed within its roomy room. So was this girl, this student, this Charoen, Charoen-Thip, a tiny molecule’s molecule lying in my mind. If so, she has dominated over all the other molecules, the stars, known and undiscovered.

            Someone, come and provide me with a solution. Light up my path with the torchlight of your love and care, lest I stumble and fall, stumble over the rocky-strewed path and fall. I can only vision myself standing on the extreme point of a mountain. The sun has already been murdered and goes deeper into the surrounding purple blackness. My toes feel the loose grip of the mountain edge; and below, far, far below there are only dark forests. My back feels someone’s soft and slender fingers, the nails a sparkle with fluorescent pink and orange. I can picture her smiling eyes, her white teeth that sparkle, her face innocently tilted to the left, the fingers of the breeze playing with her hair.

            I wait for that split second moment when the fingers in joint conspiracy headed by the mastermind will apply a gentle loving push and I will tilt forward to a five degree, then ten, fifteen twenty, twenty-five… and then down, and Down and DOWN…

*

For how long Rohan remained where he was, he was not aware. In a gradual pace, the night grew deeper. And it appeared so because when he looked up, the stars were hidden, and deep desires of the night seemed to be roaming about freely.

            Charoen’s life could be compared to grey clouds from the zenith to the horizon, what with a broken home. But hearing Rohan’s news of lost love, she was trying to heal him. Like a doctor playing his genuine part by prescribing medicines, Charoen-Thip was his heart healer. Her voice was soft as Fai’s and her gait, like her too, slow yet casual. How could she get to know about Fai? Or, is this a girl’s normal manner of walking that of a normal girl?

Oh Fai, how I wish you were here.

*

With wide open eyes, he stared at the dark ceiling. A faint light reflected on the attic-study door. Fai, my love, my dream of a thousand rivers. She came and went out of the open door of Rohan’s thoughts. Her face appeared, her hand caressed his hair. Her face close to his, her shoulder length hair fell on his chest. Her cheekbones smooth, her nose so pretty to his touch, her lips, pink and soft. And her black eyes, they rested on his. My Fai smiles. The tick-tick of the wall clock came from far away. Two o’clock…

The pent-up feeling rose up in slow measures. Emotion opened a warm flood gate. Her hand rested on his chest, her mouth came closer, their lips in a loving crush of surrender. And now below him, Fai enwrapped her legs around his waist. 

Sleep was a transparent piece of glass,

brittle and breaking with every moan

on the bed of my aloneness.

Suicide

Rohan could not make out the reason why the next morning, as he looked out at the guava tree he found the leaves looking fresh; and why, at the same time, a tinge of desolation took shelter in his heart? Yesterday was a moderately good day, but the night was restless. Was the shade of forlornness today due to the thoughts from Charoen’s notebook?

Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. With this thought in mind, and checking if he had really taken the notebook, Rohan headed towards college.

He stood beside the tennis court. Most of the students were lolling on the lawn, their colourful dresses like flowers on the greenery.

Laughter and giggles filled the air, perhaps from a joke. Ravi’s eyes danced from one side to the other, but he had already found his target, and threw a hard and cold look at Rohan’s direction. His eyes narrowed, his forehead squeezed, hair covering part of his eyes.

When the lawn gradually became empty and before the first class began, the college dean called the professors to his room. He looked more serious than other days.

“Another suicide has taken place.” The dean’s slow tone was accompanied with enough gravity. “And this time, it is a girl from our college.”

Silence and disbelief trapped the entire room.

“This is what had happened,” the dean continued. “Samita Jones, second year student had left her Science project assignment undone. This had continued for several days. Ms Dastidar had come to me, insisting that Samita’s parents be informed about it. I agreed to the plan. The parent came yesterday and Ms Dastidar and I were present here along with Samita and her mother. We told her that Samita had been showing an improved performance in her studies, but from the last four weeks she had not been completing her Science assignments. Samita’s mother felt quite angry and reprimanded her in front of us. According to the mother, she locked up Samita in her room that day by bolting the latch from outside. When she opened the door after about an hour she found her daughter surrounded in a pool of blood. Her right hand held a barber’s razor, and her throat was cut open from one side to the other. Their neighbour and doctor was called who said she had already died around some thirty minutes ago.”

“But,” Mrs. Sharma, the Philosophy professor said, “it was in the air that Samita’s steady boyfriend had left her for another girl. So other reason or reasons could be attached to this disaster.”

Everyone nodded.

The professors found it difficult to fathom that Samita, who had been the leading star in tennis in college and who shouldered her duties quite remarkably was no more with them. She was above average in academics but as far as extracurricular activities were concerned, she was a known figure.

Rohan looked out of the office room window. At the concrete lawn tennis court, the net was being fixed. The sunlight fallen on a portion of the court, looked crisp and energetic. But to him it was a sad patch. I need Charoen to talk to. She was the only one who could make him feel better. Then he suddenly remembered her green notebook in his room.

“Some of us should visit Samita’s house.” Ms Dastidar said, her voice steady but coated with sorrow.

“How about Ms Banerjee, the Hindi teacher and Mr. Rohan,” the dean said.

“And some of her classmates, I feel,” Ms Banerjee said.

The dean nodded, and so did the others.

Charoen’s notebook flashed in Rohan’s mind. Her parents not together. Broken home. Would she, would she too…?

No Rohan, drive away such thoughts…

*

They got into the jeep and headed towards the southern side. A stream of vehicles, most of them office bound, sucked our vehicles into slowness. Activities carried on in its usual pace all around – pedestrians crossing the roads, vendors with displayed wares, shopping malls opening their shutters and customers standing in a queue outside Axis Bank – but something in his mind (and possibly in the minds of the other colleagues) had cast a blanket of desolation.

In his mind it was more. The vehicle took the flyover but what extent of time did it take for the poor girl’s life to struggle away from her body? Wow Rohan, you are already using the past tense to express your feeling for the poor girl! How much of pain she might have gone through to prepare to end her life, eh? How can you throw away the present tense? Isn’t her presence as alive as the fact that you all are going to her house? It’s not even been twenty-four hours that she’s not with you all. 

The jeep came down the second flyover and slowed down again when it faced some artery of roads on either side. After cruising along for several seconds, it took the left narrow road, As a startling fact, at the crossing was only one auto-rickshaw with a damaged front wheel. And a little ahead, to the left again, stood a young tree lying half bent, its trunk sawed off more than half from the middle. Imagine a man hanging from the gallows. His head will be bent from the neck and lie limp as much as his body will be. These were signs the surroundings of Samita’s house was giving the erudite group. Signs that they should mourn and that the entire neighbourhood was mourning. Are these ominous signs? If so for whom? Questions after questions scourged in Rohan’s heart.

The jeep stopped outside a house with Roy painted on a letter box. The balcony was covered with an iron grill painted light green. Green, colour of fertility. Fertility after death. In the other dimension. Samita will fertilise there. ‘Crossing the Bar’? as Tennyson had poetically described. Samita has crossed the bar. Who is next?

The smoky beings of the café, beings from the other dimension squatted in Rohan’s mind with more determination. They were a pair of lovers with a video cam focusing on human beings. Yes, who is next?