ONE: The Story of the Ultimate Myth

Present—October 2007

She had to talk to him. In that park, that had been her Saturday morning routine, she had come to terms with the late morning joggers, the urchins, the birds and the stray dogs. But not him. For some inexplicable reason he stood apart. Her mind could not fathom why. Maybe it was the way he clutched that briefcase of his. And he would open it and look into it but never take anything out. The rest of the time he spent sitting still, occasionally giving a quick look over his shoulder, then easing back into stillness … waiting … for whom?

Now she counted out the grains carefully as the pigeons flocked near her, waiting to be fed. Each one got an equal share. She watched them peck hungrily and nibbled at her sandwich, which was a perfect circle by now. Then she spotted him heading for his favourite bench with his briefcase stiffly held close to his side.

How could she possibly ask him what was in his briefcase? She had not spoken to anyone except her family for so long that she did not know what people said to each other. But it was the only real desire that had sprung in her mind in a long, long time. And now, here he was, entering the park. Would she have the gumption to ask him?

Instead of sitting at his usual place he cut right through the park, a marked deviation from his weekly routine. There was a definite purpose in his movements. He stopped near a pile of long, coloured plastic pipes stacked on the side of the road. Casting a quick look around, he lowered his brown leather briefcase to the ground and sat down gingerly on the stack of pipes. His hand slipped something out of his pocket, then fell by his side. He began a slow, covert but strenuous action that was reflected mainly by the set look on his face. She forgot all about his bag and its possible contents, peering at his new activity with unconcealed interest.

The strenuous action stopped and he got up; a section of the pipe he had been sitting on was now dangling from his right hand. That’s when he noticed her. His eyes froze on her as though she were the guilty one. Without taking his eyes off her for even a moment, he walked down a path that circled the park, towards her.

She watched him with a growing sense of panic, till her breath became short and uneven. But she did not move. And now he was close enough to whisper audibly to her.

‘It’s a loan …’ he said, gesturing to the piece of coloured pipe in his hand.

She self-consciously passed her hand over her crew-cut hair. Coupled with her gaunt features it gave her a punk look that somewhat said she was not-to-be-trusted. She remained silent and he continued.

‘I am not stealing it. I need to borrow it. It is just a loan!’

‘I … I did not think you were stealing.’

‘But you were looking at me … Why?’

‘I … I was just wondering what you have in that briefcase.’

She could not believe that she had actually said that. How audacious, she would have normally thought. But she held his gaze. It flashed fear, surprise and then plain contempt. She did not know what caused each emotion but she just looked back at him. She had asked an honest question and that was that.

‘You have no right to ask me that,’ he said.

A hint of aggression but it appeared to stem from latent fear rather than indignation. Somewhere deep in her subconscious mind she eased up and was not scared of him any more.

He walked away clutching the briefcase a little more firmly and tried to conceal the coloured pipe by holding it close to his body. She watched him disappear down a lane. She was not disturbed but in some distant way reassured.

The morning continued as usual.

The thick liquid dripping from the icebox of the refrigerator was ice cream in its liquid state. Her mother loved ice cream.

‘How can you do this?’ she said. ‘Just when we thought that all was fine and you had overcome your … problem. Or are you just trying to punish us for disagreeing?’

Sonal was overcome by guilt.

‘I … I just could not stand that sound it was making. It was … it sounded as if there was something wrong with it. So, I thought I should put it off.’

‘Is this the way to put it off?!’

The refrigerator cord, with the plug missing, was whipped around and waved in front of her face like a whip.

After a pause that was just enough to assert his position as the eldest son, her elder brother and the only earning member in the family spoke. It was a reasonable speech meant to sound reasonable.

‘You have come such a long way, Sonal … We were just beginning to feel that all is … back to normal,’ and he paused to take a deep breath and let out a long sigh.

‘We love you … and care for your health. Why have you stopped taking your medicines?’ He paused again. ‘You do know how expensive they are?’ Now he paused even longer. ‘You are a thirty-seven-year-old adult and you behave like a child?’

She did not respond.

‘Well, you’d better start taking them or I am going to stop you from going out of the house,’ he said.

She reacted to this. Somewhere it connected with the fact that she would not be able to see that man again. And possibly find out what was in his briefcase.

‘I want to go to the park,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Then you better listen to us … Take your medicines and none of this! Or you will have to go back there!’

At the finality in the word ‘there’ her gaze froze on her brother’s face. She did not know or recall what ‘there’ stood for but it sounded ominous enough the way her brother said it.

She got up submissively and went to her room and sat on a chair by a writing table. It was cluttered with medicine bottles, amongst other things. Her body convulsed helplessly with increasing shudders. She opened the medicine bottles, took a pill from each and swallowed them with a gulp of water. The shudders continued as she slumped deeper into the chair.

Past—April 2001

This was many years ago.

A pale, dead-looking girl in her late twenties lay on a flat hospital table covered to the chest. It was Sonal, much younger, her head shaven clean for the occasion. Padded electrodes had been attached to her scalp at selected spots. A coloured rubber tube had been placed in her mouth, with either side of the mouth taped down A nurse made sure the mouth was held shut. Another nurse held her head steady. The doctor was stationed at the table, monitoring a gadget with knobs, toggle switches and meters that looked like a home-brewed power-supply machine. Out of this gadget came the wires that ended at the electrodes on Sonal’s scalp.

The doctor looked at the nurse to make sure she was ready and then flicked one of the toggles. The needle on the meter jumped in sync with a convulsion that ran through Sonal’s body. After a few evenly spaced convulsions, the doctor stopped flicking the dreaded toggle. There was a pause and her body slumped back.

The doctor walked up to examine her. Unusual to the conditioning of his profession, he appeared uneasy. Electroshock therapy is not easy on all involved. Ironically, despite the tremendous downside risks—loss of memory, disorientation and emotional instability—it is still among the prescribed treatments for depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and a disparate set of mental disorders. Yet, it has no proper explanation by modern science.

Present—October 2007

It was usually after episodes like this that she would reflect on how she got to where she was today. Why did she behave this way? Why did she pull out that refrigerator plug?

But regarding the time that she had been sent ‘there’—she did not even remember where ‘there’ was. There was a large gap in her memory. It was deeply frustrating, scary almost. She wanted to behave herself but then some force took over. What was it? There was something back there in her past that caused these outbursts. She must know it if she had to correct herself.

She couldn’t ask her friends. She did not even know if she had any friends. Her present life was just these two people, her mother and brother.

There was no way she would bring this up with her brother. She was terrified of him. Not because he was terrifying but because she felt so deeply indebted to him for supporting her. The expensive medicines. The constant monitoring of her behaviour. No, she could never subject him to these questions.

But she had felt it okay to broach the subject with her mother. Her mother’s response invariably bordered on an emotional breakdown each time. She would rapidly reach a hysterical pitch and then refuse to talk about it any further.

‘Just forget the past …