Solidarity

by Megha Nayar

A tormented writer, who pens stories to keep herself together, receives a series of messages that send her over the edge. Is this a well-wisher or a stalker? Megha narrates a story of two precarious people who almost connect, but not quite.

It was 11 pm and I was about to call it a night when my phone quivered gently. This wasn’t the urgent beckoning of a call, just the quiet beep of a social media account coming alive. I glanced at the screen. It said I’d received a direct message on Twitter.

I was surprised. I had never received DMs in the past. I normally use Twitter only to read and rant. It is hardly my place of choice for a personal conversation. I wondered who this could be.

I scooped up my phone and opened the message. It was from a handle named @anu1187. It said, ’Hie mem I read ur short storys on merikahaani.com. It is very nice. Then after i have decided to tell u that I luv ur writing. pls continue ur storys.’

I felt relief wash over me. The knots in my stomach started to undo themselves. It was fan mail alright– nothing to fret about.

And then I felt annoyed at myself. Why had a simple phone beep unsettled me so much? Why does everything unsettle me these days? Once upon a time, I was fiercely untamed. In class 11, I had responded to a biker’s sleazy invitation of ‘Aati kya Khandala’ outside my tuition class with a loud ‘Chal, kab jaana hai?!’, only to watch the stunned man zoom away without a word. That was me, fearless. How had I become so skittish lately?

My therapist Tarini says it has something to do with ”emotional baggage”. She is sweet and sympathetic, and sometimes she clicks her tongue like a mother hen. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ she says every time we meet. When she says this, I visualise myself holding up a giant hammer à la Thor, all set to smash it on my toes, but Tarini sweeps in to take my hammer away, drags me home, and tucks me into bed.

Suddenly, I  was tempted to message her and ask if it’s normal for someone with my condition to feel so uneasy about hearing from strangers. Does every person with anxiety expect the worst from everyone and everything?

But I resisted the urge to ping her and felt secretly proud of myself for doing so. I’m a grown woman; I should be able to manage my nerves on my own. I know at least a dozen people, starting with my mother, who have dealt with third-world trauma without the fancy accoutrement of a psychologist. If they were to find out I need one to take me through banal everyday affairs, they would laugh heartily at my indulgence.

There! There I was, marinating in my inadequacies as always. The trigger this time was a harmless message complimenting my penmanship. I must not be sucked into the vortex of my mind over this. No. I had to cut this transgression short and get back to the business of falling asleep.

‘Thank you very much! Glad to know you loved my stories. Please keep reading!’, I wrote in response to my Twitter admirer. I was about to hit Send when it occurred to me: was this too effusive? Was I giving them the wrong signals? I quickly edited my message, removing the first line. I replaced the last exclamation mark with a period. Finally satisfied that I was being polite without provoking further conversation, I launched the message into cyberspace and retired for the night.

——-

I have been a writer for a while now. Needless to say, it has been a lonely process. I am an amalgamation of all the writing clichés you know. I despise noise and throngs, I ruminate a lot but speak very little, I abhor small talk. I drink endless cups of tea in hole-in-the-wall joints when I’m seized by a story. The Notes app on my phone is overrun with quotable quotes and character quirks. I hate meeting up with friends, even those that I love. Every human interaction becomes an assessment of opportunity cost, each hour spent interacting with people feels like an irretrievable loss.

I know that I’m being unfair to myself, that I do not have to justify my existence by accounting for every minute. But there is no getting away from my mind. Repeated reminders of “think less, smile more” do nothing to allay my broodings.

Tarini feels this may have something to do with the time I spent being a married nobody – the fact that I was a victim survivor for three years and then in healing for another three, and that by the time I was ready to face the world again, I felt older by twenty.

I am 40 years old. Assuming I will live till 60 without incident, I technically have two more decades to become the greatest author ever.

But all this is theory. In practice, each story I accomplish is a minor victory, and each day spent without concluding one feels like a crushing defeat.

Yesterday I was sitting by the window, staring at a dish antenna in the distance while trying to delineate the qualities of my protagonist. Unable to come up with anything substantial, I absently opened my Internet browser. Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr – I checked them in quick succession, before opening Twitter. There, in the left panel on my profile was the envelope icon for DMs. I had received three new messages.

Reminding myself to keep cool, I opened the folder. All the messages were from @anu1187.

‘Hye mem! I was read ur story about suicide. Very sed story mem but u write very nice. i m almost cry. pls write more storys.’

’Mem u live in bombay? u r only story writer or also techer?’

’U r amazing combo. Good writer n swit nature. we meet, it is possible?’

By now, I was ablaze with alarm. Someone I did not know was obsessing over me. They were not content with reading my stories, they also wanted the validation of a personal connection. They were spending precious time pondering over my whereabouts. Was this person psychopathic? What if the messages escalated out of control? What would I do if they tracked me down to my address?

I reached out for my water bottle and glugged all the water down. My heart was beating wildly, but it was a familiar emotion. I knew the Standard Operating Procedure by heart now. I opened the windows, put the fan on full speed, untied my hair. I placed my chair directly under the fan but when that did not help, I lay down on the baithak in the corner and closed my eyes. The building seemed to spin, so I shut my eyes tighter.

After what felt like ages but was only fifteen minutes, the horror had passed. I managed to open my eyes. My heartbeats were nearly back to normal, and I was able to think clearly. The house was in perfect order – contrary to the spinning in my head, nothing had jumped out of place.  

I resisted the urge to stay in bed and went to my computer. Tarini says you cannot conquer the prison of your thoughts unless you face your fears. No matter how big the threat, you must learn to look it in the eye.

I reopened Twitter and went straight to @anu1187. It gave away very little about my online admirer – no display photo, no mention of gender, only a handful of followers. The location was “India”. The person had posted no tweets of their own; their timeline had only retweets from an assortment of celebrities.

I wondered if blocking this profile was the best way of dealing with it. Tarini might perhaps have recommended it. ‘If it makes your life easier, sure,’ she might have said. But I was unsure if this person’s intentions were sinister at all. Maybe it was just an eager fan. Blocking someone for no reason is the virtual equivalent of slamming a door in their face. It is humiliating, even if you don’t know them personally.

Then again, what if responding to them invited more messages, and therefore, more terror?

I pushed the thought aside and opened my DMs. ‘Hi,’ I wrote. ‘Thank you once again for your kind words. However, please do refrain from messaging me further. I’m not comfortable with DMs. Thank you again for reading my stories.’

A little while later, I was back to writing.

——-

This morning, I woke up to an email from goodreads.com. It was a notification: someone named Anukriti S. had posted a review for my collection of short stories.

This book is 5 stars. Archana Mem has write wonderful storys. I was totally depress before I read it. I wanted to suicide. But I read n now i feel better. I will not suicide. I will fite. Thank u mem. Some day i hope i will meet u. God bless u.

I opened Twitter right away, my fingers working as fast as they could. But it was too late. Twitter told me @anu1187 did not exist anymore. 

Megha Nayar is an independent Communications Trainer based in Ahmedabad. She teaches English, Workplace Skills and French. She is a devotee of the written word and devours short stories every day. She is enormously grateful for the existence of literary journals. She hopes to publish her own collection of short stories soon. When she’s not obsessing over literature, she self-teaches Spanish, goes for long walks, and contemplates the purpose of human existence.