Page 77 of Red Flags and Rishtas
‘Sarita, please.’ My dad cut her off and said, ‘What your mother means to say is … we’re here for you. Whether you want to talk to us … or someone else.’
I was overcome with guilt and love of equal proportions as I realised that my parents were proposing therapy. In a household that had never had an open and healthy discussion about mental health, this was huge. In my parents’ circles, the words depression and anxiety were scorned at. First-world problems, I’d heard them say in the past. And yet, they were sitting in front of me, trying to help me crawl out of the deep, dark pit I’d fallen in.
It was too much for me to take in. In the last few days, I’d convinced myself that nobody cared about me. And so, it didn’t matter if I wasted my life away, staying in bed throughout the day and talking to the ceiling during the night. I’d forgotten that there were two people in the world who would always love me, even if I was being a divine pain in the ass.
I caught my parents off guard when I burst into tears. It took them a few seconds to run over to me and wrap their arms around me. But as I dissolved into their warm, protectiveembrace, I began to believe what they were saying. It was all going to be okay. I was going to be all right.
The next morning, my mother entered my room and opened all the curtains, letting the sunlight in. Even though I’d been awake for the last couple of hours, I had to squint to adjust my eyes to the light. I felt like an exposed vampire.
‘Good morning, Anu,’ she said, her face deadpan.
The implication was clear. It was way past dawn and I would not be allowed to sleep in. I kicked my legs and groaned loudly, but deep down, I was grateful for the push. The warm shower was invigorating. I stayed in there until my geyser ran out of hot water, watching the droplets trickle down my skin and soak it with life. When I stepped out of the washroom with my hair in a towel, I paused to take a good look at my room.
This was the room I’d grown up in. In my teenage years, I would redecorate it every other year, pasting posters of the latest boy band over the previous ones. Justin Bieber had replaced the Jonas Brothers, before John Mayer had reigned supreme. The photos pinned on the board over my study desk belonged to school friends I hadn’t spoken to in a decade. My bookshelf didn’t carry a single title I’d read in the last three years. They were all sitting in a cardboard box under my bed, waiting to be rearranged.
I sighed and removed the towel from my wet hair. It was time.
The thing with rock bottom is that it gets boring. At some point, there’s nothing left to do but climb up.
And so, I began overturning my teenage room. The person who had done it up with so much love didn’t exist anymore. I hadn’t been that girl for a long time. And I was tired of living in a stranger’s room.
It felt strangely cathartic to rip out the posters from my bedroom wall. I began tossing meaningless mementos, photos of forgotten friends and old magazines into the trash. It’samazing how much garbage you can accumulate over a period of ten years. I found broken earrings, old journals, slam books, chargers for every phone I’d ever owned, birthday cards from old classmates, at least five bottles of frozen Fevicol, CDs and DVDs of annual day performances from school, along with leaking lipsticks and handbags that had been ruined by dust and grime.
After I was done stuffing everything I didn’t need into large black trash bags, my room looked pitifully bare. It had been robbed of all its personality and in its place were sad, empty walls and naked shelves and tables. But when I looked at it, I saw a clean slate – an opportunity to create a version of my current life rather than losing myself in the life I had once lived.
I sat down on the foot of my bed, a stack of old Polaroids in my hand. Most of them had been taken about three or four years ago, after V had gifted me a Polaroid camera for one of my birthdays. Apart from a couple of photos with my parents, all of them had V in them.
V feeding me a slice of birthday cake. V and I sitting in my college classroom when she’d come to visit me. V and I dancing in a bar. V and I with our arms around each other, giggling at a joke I didn’t remember.
I went through the photos, my eyes watering as the memories washed over me. And then, I found a photo I couldn’t quite put down. It had been taken in a bar in Hauz Khas on the night V had first met Saurav. He had been out with his then-girlfriend and a group of friends, and at some point, he had struck up a conversation with my friend. It had been an innocent encounter, but the two of them had exchanged numbers and later begun to date. Saurav had dumped his girlfriend for V, and they’d started their own love story shortly thereafter.
I remembered that we’d asked the bartender to take the photo I was now holding in my hand, and he’d done a shoddy job of it, not bothering to adjust the settings of the Polaroid camera.As a result, all four faces in the photo were dark and almost unrecognisable.
But the more I studied the photo, the surer I became that something was off about it. Saurav stood in the middle, his right arm around V, who was holding onto my hand, and his left arm around another woman – his ex.
I realised with a start that I’d seen her recently. She had been in his car the other day.
Ever since we were kids, Vrinda’s two-storey bungalow in Greater Kailash had unnerved and awed me uniformly. I still remember, in third grade, she had invited me over for a sleepover for the first time. I had marvelled at the lush green lawns outside, the chandelier in the living room, the spiral staircase that I’d only ever seen inK3Gbefore and the preposterous size of her bedroom.How many people sleep in here?I had asked her innocently.
Today, as I waited for her under the same crystal chandelier in the living room, I was equally overwhelmed by the opulence around me. I recalled the days after that first sleepover when I’d tried to distance myself from V because I was too ashamed to let her see the reality of my home. I didn’t want to invite her over. But she had persisted, and when I finally brought her to my three-bedroom flat, she was completely unfazed. She had jumped onto my bed and started wrestling with my stuffed toys, making herself at home.
I’d learned that day that the financial disparity between us existed only in my head – it was my burden to carry.
‘Hi.’ V’s voice yanked me out of my head, and I looked up.
She was standing at the top of the spiral staircase, wearing a fuzzy lavender bathrobe.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Can I come up?’
She nodded and waited for me to join her at the top. Up close, she looked different. Her eyes were heavier, as if she hadn’t been sleeping too much. Her skin had blemishes on it, freshly red after her warm shower. And her mouth was sombre and unsmiling. In our lifelong friendship, we had never gone three weeks without speaking to each other. I wondered if it had affected her as deeply as it had me.
She led me to her room, where I closed the door behind me.
‘How are you?’ she asked, her eyes blank.
We sat down on the patchwork couch in front of her king-size poster bed. The door to her balcony was open and the light from outside lit up the entire room.
‘Meh,’ I said. ‘You?’
