by Shreya Ramachandran
What theme are you addressing in your piece? Why is this important to you?
Shreya Ramachandran: In this piece, I’m addressing something very important to me: the idea of difficult memories, how you make sense of them, and how they affect you. I also wanted to try and look at settings that I’ve been in and think deserve attention – the post-school and pre-college world, college abroad, and how the college experience can be a little difficult. It’s about those feelings and that sense of confusion and worry. I always feel like there is more to say than I’ve said (or has been said by others) but hopefully this is a good start.
The coffee shop is empty at twelve in the afternoon. We don’t really have a coffee shop culture – everything is just going stale, reheated endlessly, with chemicals on the floor and on the shelves. Veg puff, cream éclair, tomato and pesto sandwich, going cold. Up on the green boards the prices are three hundred, four hundred rupees, something excessive for food which doesn’t fill you or give you satisfaction.
Amit walks into the coffee shop and tilts his head at me before he sits down. We have met once before. I went to school with Varun, our mutual friend. They both study business at UPenn. All their other friends are Indian and went to school in Bombay or Delhi and they said on their applications that they wanted to go to school abroad for the international experience.
‘Hey, Anusree, right?’
‘Hi.’
‘First time we’re meeting without Varun right? Is he coming?’
‘No, he said he had some work.’
‘What’ve you been up to? How’s your break?’
It’s been six months since I came down to India from Philadelphia. I don’t think I will go back but I don’t say this now.
‘The break’s good, just been relaxing. How was your term?’
‘Good, good. Hectic. But it’s nice being home.’
Amit leans back in his chair and keeps his sunglasses and wallet in front of him on the table, like a retinue. He laughs. ‘These things are always so awkward, meeting a friend’s friend and all.’
Amit orders a chocolate Frappuccino. I order green tea. Even though the waiter has come up to us and asked us what we want, he says, ‘Yes, excuse me, I’d like…’ This immediately annoys me about him. Why draw attention to yourself when you’re already there?
But then something even worse happens. ‘Varun said you had a hard time at college in Philadelphia? All okay?’
‘It’s not that. I just have a hard time now and don’t really know if I can go back. I don’t think I am ready for it.’
I am suddenly deeply, deeply sad and my green tea has not even gone cold yet.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, come on. Varun said I should chat with you, help you out. You can tell me. You’re feeling bad about…?’
‘I just feel bad because I think… I think I killed someone.’
The words come slowly but already he is sitting up straighter, pushing himself up by his arms, as if somebody has walked up to us and he is afraid of them, and wants to show respect.
*
It happened in December, about two weeks after I returned from Philadelphia. Leisure Valley in Gurgaon still looked in parts like the empty, sandy lot it used to be. I learnt to drive there a few years back, as a high-school student. Now it’s filled with food trucks and two-storey restaurant complexes where people come to eat in the nights. That night, it was late, maybe 11 PM or so. I had finished with meeting a friend and I was walking across the lot to get to one of the hotels nearby, from where I could call my mom to pick me up in the safety of the bright lights and other people’s presence.
On the road just past the lot, I was about to cross, and I heard a car, first a quiet hum and then loud, like an animal about to pounce. It had crossed into the lot, and the driver – I couldn’t see through the windows – was coming straight towards me. Behind me was only the neem tree which my mother, when she taught me to drive in this lot, asked me to swerve around. ‘It’s good practice,’ she had said. ‘It’s important to be careful.’
*
Amit is not content with his complicated coffee order and has asked for a grilled chicken wrap. When it arrives, the meat is pink, lifeless.
‘Want some?’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Are you veg?’
I decide not to answer. Amit has a silver watch on his hand. It’s so big it blocks up his wrist and probably replaces his pulse with its own mad mechanical one.
He stays quiet for a bit before talking again.
‘I don’t really see… I mean if I can talk about it… I don’t really see how what happened was murder. I mean, you said murder.’
I am not really happy with his choice of word. Murder. I never used that. But I don’t want to waste my time explaining it to him.
‘Yeah,’ I say in a dry voice, ‘but I didn’t see behind me na? There could have been someone.’
‘But you didn’t really do anything.’
‘But that’s exactly my point. I just let them die.’
I feel like I’m back there now, that dark night, the same feeling that I could call and call, press dial, and my mother wouldn’t hear me, wouldn’t be able to find me. A few days after that night, Varun had come home to visit me and brought this woman, Priyal along, because he was scared to visit me alone and hear my story. She might have been his girlfriend and she might have been a classmate and she might have not been either. My mother asked if I wanted to go to a therapist and left a list of therapists and neurologists on the board above my desk. Then the list changed to driving instructor and driving classes, which she thought would help.
Six months have passed since that night. Amit is home for the summer holidays. Varun had said ‘you two would get along great, you should meet him, stop hiding.’ My mother’s point of view on this matter was that if I stopped hiding I might get ready for the outside world again. ‘Do something, Anusree,’ my mother told me this morning, ‘You’ve just been turning down my suggestions. Give this at least a try. If you get back into the mood, you’ll feel ready for college.’ To make her happy, I said okay, and honestly, for a while, I really thought it would help. But I am starting to wish I had never bothered.
‘Listen, Anusree, I get it.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, I know why you feel freaked out. Something similar happened to me. I had to apply to college late because I broke my leg. Did Varun tell you? I had to get surgery. It’s why I’m one year late. Everyone else moved on, you know. Go to college.’
‘Oh … that sounds painful.’
‘The surgery was really bad. I had to write my exams from bed. I mean, study for them, from bed.’
‘Ohh.’
‘Anyway, I think everyone has these strange experiences, you just have to move on. It just motivated me to do better, you know?’
‘I don’t really understand how that’s the same thing at all.’
‘I mean something bad happened and it makes it difficult to go back to normal you know? But yours was just a weird experience. Nothing bad even happened.’
Nothing bad.
He has no expression on his face.
‘Look, I’m your friend, you can trust me. Are you okay?’
‘Friend?’
Varun had messaged me saying you will get along great, it’s time you met someone. He set up the day I would meet Amit. I thought…
‘I thought this was… this was a date?’
‘A date?’ He puts down his sandwich. ‘When did I say that?’
*
Without my legs doing any thinking, I ran and ran. The headlights, which looked like smileless eyes that were drowning me in their white light, seemed so close to me.
I didn’t think I would be able to escape. I don’t know how but the car was behind me, and I was ahead, and I was running until the sand turned hard and I was on the road. I heard so many sounds. My breathing, cars, some mumbling as if somebody was talking to me.
I heard the sound that metal makes when it hits the side of a person. Something soft; it almost sounds muffled.
I was still close enough to stop, to turn around, to see if they were okay. Whoever they were.
I kept running. The road was empty. I crossed, ran into the hotel lobby and never looked back to see who was and wasn’t there in that empty parking lot.
I can still remember the sound of something hitting someone. I saw the car on the road, from the lobby. In it were two people – man, woman – and she had headphones on. I could see them now. I never learnt their names. They seemed happy.
Sometimes I want to go back in time and ask them if there was anybody else in the parking lot that day. I don’t know if I would believe their answer.
*
Amit is crunching his tissue paper up, standing, getting his things together. ‘Varun just told me to meet you because you needed someone to talk to… I didn’t think… I mean if I gave you any wrong idea…’
‘Amit, it’s fine, yaar, Varun said I should meet you, so I assumed….’
‘Anusree I’m really sorry. I acted like… I mean I don’t even know you and…’
I’m tired. ‘Amit, okay, I’m going home. Tell Varun hi. Or… you know.’
‘You don’t have to – we can – you don’t have to leave.’ He holds his wallet, unsure whether to put it back into his pocket or not. ‘Do you want to go somewhere else, ice-cream? I don’t know how to help.’
‘I just want to go home.’
I get up and put two hundred rupees down on the table. For one cup of coffee. Outrageous.
I walk out and feel obliged to prolong this suffering a little bit more so I text Varun. Walked out on Amit. Sorry. Hope you guys (and you and I) can still be friends.
Varun replies: What?? Why do you act so weird around everyone?
Sometimes I think there’s a shortcut to intimacy, like if you tell people deep and dark about yourself, which separates you from everyone else walking on the road outside the coffee shop, they will be forced to appreciate you.
But it turns out that life doesn’t work like that. There is no shortcut. People minimise your sadness and humanness until it fits into a chewing gum wrapper size in their hands, and they can throw it away. Sometimes it happens while you are watching.
Outside the mall, there are autos that take you to the metro station. I get into one. The auto driver has white in his beard. Folding his newspaper, he asks, ‘Station?’ I say yes. ‘Seventy rupees.’ I make a vague gesture that says, okay, now let’s go.
‘You’re not going to try and bring the price down?’ he asks.
‘No.’
He moves in slow motion, puts the paper under his seat, walks over from the other side. My phone is still in my hand and I have to do something with it. I call my mother.
‘Anusree? What number is this?’
‘Ma, it’s my India number, I’ve told you so many times, save it.’ She still has my U. S. number saved on her phone.
‘Where are you?’
‘On my way back.’
‘Shall I send the car?’
‘No, I can manage.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you soon.’
The auto driver leans down and pulls a lever that starts the engine. Outside, a woman is selling the latest issues of Vogue and Cosmo and Femina and she splays them out like a fan and frowns against the late afternoon sunlight. She holds them out in our direction and I shake my head and say no. As if she is the one with something to offer.
