Milk

Ram woke up. Except, he wasn’t sleeping. At least it didn’t feel like his usual sleep. Although he wasn’t averse to nightmares, his dreams were mostly pleasant. He always woke up refreshed. This time it felt different. The sun was in his eyes.

Why is the sun in my eyes?

He heard a distant voice repeating the same words at regular intervals. The voice seemed to get closer and closer. He realised someone was calling out his name from a train. And the train got closer and the voice grew louder.

Eventually, his senses converged to a point of focus. His eyes trained strained to see the silhouette that was now covering the afternoon sun amidst a clear blue sky. The voice belonged to this figure, his wife Veda.

“Ram!

Ram!

Oh, god!

Are you ok?

Are you hurt?

Can you hear me?”

Ram groaned. He tried to lift his head up, but his neck muscles didn’t cooperate. He threw his arm up and Veda grabbed his hand. Her hand was cold.

“Careful! Can you move?”

Ram seemed to slowly nod in affirmative. Veda and a stranger helped him sit up. Then, it all came back to him in a rush.

It had become black. Before that, the scooter had rapidly changed direction towards him. Before that he heard the horrible screech of the car that tried to avoid the child that jumped in front of it. Before that the boy chased after the cat from the fish shop and into the street. There had been an accident. He had now been involved in an accident for the first time in his life.

Ram touched the back of his head. His eyes tried to focus as he brought his fingers in front of his face - there didn’t seem to be any blood. He looked around and saw a crowd gathered in two different spots along the crossroad. Some people were huddled around the fallen scooter, some around the car. It was a traffic signal in a busy part of the city and angry honks soon emanated from different sections, followed by a shrill police whistle.

The stranger now rushed towards him with a bottle of water. He proceeded to splash some on Ram’s face. Ram hissed and flinched as the cool water touched his skin. Veda tried to get him to drink some. He spat it out. When he tried to stand up the world around him spun a little. He staggered and widened his stance as he tried to balance on two feet. He pushed the stranger away even though he was trying to prop him up.

Ram furtively glanced at the chaos once more, held Veda’s hand and slowly walked home. He didn’t sleep well that night.

The next day, Ram woke up with a throbbing headache and a sore backside. He grabbed a cold bottle of water from the refrigerator and sat carefully on the sofa – the cold bottle felt soothing against his tired head.

Ram’s home was like any upper middle-class Mumbaikar’s house. A long grey sofa (popular with the kind of people who shopped on the particular furniture website) complemented the peppermint coloured wall. A kitsch coffee table atop an ethnic rug marked the centre of the room. A minimal-looking TV stand and a tall lamp made up the rest of what was a carefully curated living room. Veda, flanked by the cook and the maid was on breakfast duty in the open kitchen across the living room. The TV was playing the stock tips of the morning, the rice cooker had begun to whistle and vessels clanged about as they were being washed in the sink. These ambient noises seemed particularly loud to Ram that morning. Veda came up to check on him. She pressed her palm to his forehead.

“Good. You don’t have a fever anymore.”

“I don’t? I did?”

She nodded. “Last night. It was mild. I gave you a paracetamol before you slept.”

“Funny. I feel like I haven’t slept at all.” He smiled wryly.

“Welcome to my world. Anyway, you want your coffee now, or later? I have to leave in ten.”

“I don’t feel like coffee.” This statement shook Ram to his very core. He didn’t do anything in the morning without his cup of dark, mildly sugared filter coffee. He couldn’t.

“Just give me a glass of milk. Cold.” He said with certainty.

“I knew I should’ve taken you to the doctor!”  Veda smiled as she went back to the kitchen. Ram gulped down the milk gladly. It seemed to calm him down. He felt satiated.

Veda left for work and the cook and the maid followed. Ram had been working from home for the past few months. His recent promotion had given him these perks. He thought it would allow him to watch more cricket, work on his book, take care of his American clients more efficiently. But all it did was give him new-found lethargy and, along with it, two extra kilos that definitely showed around his waist and visibly in the mirror. “All I need is some discipline, and a plan,” he told himself that day. He had neither cultivated the former nor devised the latter.

He opened his laptop and began checking mails. The usual weekly job-lists, meeting requests and company newsletters populated the inbox. He opened the interactive job-list and began checking off responsibilities he was finished with. This way, his cross-continental team would be abreast of who had to do what and when. He was in the middle of compiling a to-do list from handovers others had given him when his eyelids began feeling heavy. He felt himself sliding ever so slightly backwards in his sofa. He didn’t remember falling asleep. But it was a good nap.

“That was a good nap,” Ram thought to himself as he stretched his arms out wide and cracked his knuckles. “Now I feel like I can get to work.”

Ram felt hungry. He dawdled to the kitchen counter and grabbed whatever he could find on top of the pile of snacks. He froze as he glanced at the big clock above him. It was 4 PM.

“I slept for 6 hours!” He cried out aloud.

“It was a good nap, though” Came a reply. Although from where, he couldn’t tell.

“What?” Ram struggled as he muttered under his breath, still in shock.

“I said it was a fucking great nap!” Again, he heard it, but he could trace the source. It didn’t come from around him. There was no one in the house except him. He looked around. The TV was still on. He rushed towards it to check if it was some strange aural coincidence. It was on mute. Ram panicked. He grabbed the cricket bat from under the sofa and inched towards the balcony door after realising it was ajar. He opened it carefully and leapt out like a SWAT officer in one of those Hollywood action movies.

Empty. He was careful not to make himself conspicuous.

He backtracked into the living room and checked his bedroom and then the guest room. He even checked the bathrooms. He was alone in his house that was now for sure. A confused, but somewhat relieved Ram sat back down on his sofa.

“Maybe I was half asleep.”

Maybe it was like a dream that sometimes spills over momentarily as one wakes up.

“Maybe I’m just nuts, eh!”

Ram froze again. He heard it loud and clear. This time he felt it. It wasn’t coming from outside. It was as if it was coming from within.

“Who said that? Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

It definitely was a voice—an older, masculine voice. It was coming to him but it was like it was being broadcasted inside his own mind, in a frequency meant only for him.

“Am I talking to myself?”

“No, you are talking to me.”

“I… can hear you. How?”

“Funny, ‘cos I never heard anything like you before either.”

Ram paused, as he reconciled with the fact that he was having an exchange with someone else who was not present physically.

“I think I should lie down,” he thought to himself.

“I think so, too.” The voice replied.

He didn’t remember dozing off again. He was awoken harshly by the incessant ringing of the doorbell. He tried rushing to his feet but he couldn’t. He unlocked the door to see a visibly furious Veda. She noticed his unruly bed-head and rattled off a few insults under her breath.

“This is why I’d said I’ll take the spare key with me. But nooo! ‘I’ll be home, bebbe. I love opening the door for you, bebbe!’ If only!”

“She’s not in a good mood, is she!”

“S-sorry. I must have slept off. My head still-”

Veda interjected with a quick “how are you feeling?”

“Erm, my head still feels heavy. I slept. A lot!”

“That’s good.”

“It was a fucking great nap, lady!”

Ram winced.

“Do you wanna go see Dr. Subbu? What if it’s a concussion?”

“No, I-“

“Let’s take an X-ray at least, no?”

“I don’t think it’s-“

“What if it’s something worse?”

“Enough ya!” Ram spat. His face took an ungainly shape: The shadows from the fluorescent indoor lights seem to highlight their lines in a sinister way.

“Ok, alright, I’m sorry.” Veda refrained as she walked towards him with her arms open to conciliate. After a brief embrace, she left to freshen up. Ram slumped on the sofa and buried his head in his hands. It seemed his head was too big at the moment. Or too heavy.

“Okay, she wasn’t nice.”

“Shut up.”

“Is she like your-“

“How did you get inside my head?”

“Wait, I’m inside your head? It is quite dark in here. And hollow. Sometimes I talk to myself and I can hear my own voice.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t.”

Ram heard the soft clink of the bathroom door opening. “Ra-ra!”

“Yes, baby.”

“You wanna go out for dinner? There’s only chappati and dal. And it’s Friday.”

“Sure. How about seafood.”

A rush of footsteps came from inside the room to the outside.

“Really? Seafood?”

“Sure.”

Veda furrowed her brows. “Is this a sick joke?”

Even Ram couldn’t explain it. He threw his hands up and merely admitted he felt like seafood. It was the one food group he stayed away from. Not that he was allergic or anything. Maybe it was the fish market right next to the house he grew up in, but he’d always detested seafood.

There was a cute Bengali joint down the road from their apartment. It was in the basement of a small shopping-slash-business complex. It only had about four tables. One of them was occupied by regulars who were more interested in conversation that food, or so it seemed. It had started to drizzle as they were eating. “Petrichor,” they both muttered simultaneously while polishing off remaining morsels of delicious Rohu.

The evening had cooled, making their walk back pleasant and the pace mellow. Veda stopped to take a clever picture of the bright lights in the night reflecting off the shiny wet road.

“I think I’ll take a couple of days off.” Ram mused.

“It is the weekend anyway Ra-ra.” Veda replied absent-mindedly while checking the photo on the phone.

“Just, precautionary. And no, I don’t think I need to see Dr. Subbu.”

“Hmm…”

“I just need some rest.”

Ram thought he would hear from Him again. But there was no reply. He slept peacefully.

He woke up with a ringing in his head. It felt like a peanut vendor banging his steel vessel with his ladle urgently. Except he was inside the vessel. He turned his head groggily to find Veda was still asleep – usually, she would be up just before the alarm went off, and would considerately disable it so Ram would get another ten minutes in. Ram turned on his sides and reached over a cocooned Veda to switch the alarm off, gently squishing Veda in the process. Ram’s heart stopped, as Veda opened her eyes. Startled, their gazes met each other in shock.

“’Morning.” She yawned in response, while relaxing her face and eyes to a more sedate expression.

Ram rolled off to the edge of the bed to get some stretches in.

“I never knew you talked in your sleep.” She mumbled.

“I don’t know if I do. I mean, I don’t think I do.”

“You were last night.”

Ram chuckled. “I hope I didn’t say anything controversial.”

“No, no. You were having a proper interview with yourself.”

Ram paused mid-stretch; his body resembling a conked Swiss Army Knife.

“Erm… what was I saying?”

“Well, I was up for hours trying to decode some of it. I guess that’s why I didn’t get much sleep in. At times you were ranting, you even went on a brief sequence of what can only be described as horny moans. It was… weird. Were you having nightmares?”

During breakfast Ram was playing with his Idly and Sambar, his mind preoccupied with the level of influence his new ‘friend’ was now enjoying. He was racking his brain to see if he could sift through this strange information to find out the whys, and also to see if his ‘friend’ would presently respond to his queries. As his train of thought rolled on, the one that made it screech to a halt was: ‘I need to go back to spot where the accident happened.’

Around 11AM, Ram grabbed a notepad, a pencil and a camera and set out to the spot of the accident. He didn’t exactly know why he grabbed these particular items, whether it was instinct or a premonition, he couldn’t tell. It took him about half-an-hour to get there. Peak hour traffic had subsided, but it was a busy part of town. The roads were wide enough for the traffic to flow constantly, but that was just enough encouragement for motorists to jump lanes, take abrupt U-turns, stop-short of pedestrians who seemingly appeared out of nowhere – it was a nightmare of an intersection. But even in this chaos, nothing ever stopped – except on that fateful day.

Ram stood in the spot where he was struck. The ‘No Parking’ sign behind him was slightly bent from the impact of the scooter. The concrete that was supposed to be the footpath had suffered enough entropy for it devolve into loose gravel roughly held together by broken cement. This is why, he remembered, he lost balance and fell backward, although he didn’t remember the actual impact. He surveyed the scene from his vantage point: the careening scooter eventually ended up sandwiched between the gates of a small apartment complex and the car had settled into a small ditch on the far side.

A small, portly security guard stood outside the apartment complex. He seemed more interested in shielding his mobile phone from the sun than who was approaching him.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you…”

The guard didn’t appreciate his presence.

“Hello…”

The guard strained his eyes to concentrate. The beep-boops only meant he was playing one of those mind-numbing games where colourful gems pop into existence before eager fingers grouped them into similar colours to then pop them into oblivion. Each tone of beep-boop indicated the scale of points one would receive. The higher the score, the more your ranking. The more your ranking, the meaner you got to be to your friend whom you had just leapfrogged on the leader board. Ram hated these games.

“Ahem!” Ram interrupted carefully.

The guard complained under his breath as he finally looked up. A longer, low-pitched beep-boop that followed indicated that he had lost.

“Sorry. I just wanted to know…”

The guard raised his eyebrows and craned his neck forward. Ram parted his hair awkwardly and realised he didn’t know quite what to ask him. He fumbled before inquiring: “do you remember the accident from two days ago?”

“What accident?” The guard scowled.

“The car, the bike that hit your gate…”

“Haan….” His eyes gazed skywards as his memory finally came up to speed and into a steady jog.

“Ya, saar! Gate full damage-u. My lunchbox went damaal! (he gestured as if something small exploded) Everything falling,” he recalled in sad remembrance while gesticulating with his hands the radius of his lunchbox explosion.

“Do you remember exactly what happened?”

“Some boy ran to the main road saar,” the guard spoke with a general disdain for the incident. “The signal was green-u. So all peoples braked-u, hit-u, full madness saar. Beginning of the highway, no! I think the car driver still in hospital saar.”

“Someone got hurt?”

“Someone died-u!” The guard exclaimed disbelievingly. Ram’s heart sank and he didn’t know why.

“The passenger in the car-u. Old man saar. When it hit-u, (he recalled the impact by clasping his hands together) he gone.”

“And the driver?”

“He...” The guard paused, his memory jog had come to an abrupt, breathless halt. He looked across the street and waved at a teashop vendor, “Yov, Dinesha!” He proceeded to converse with the vendor in Tamil, which was Ram’s native tongue. He picked up bits and pieces, but since he grew up in Mumbai, his grasp of it was sketchy at best. The guard nodded and the conversation presumably affirmed his story.

“Haan! He in Gourment hospital saar. G.H-u. Serious it seems saar.” He said in mock concern. Ram picked out whatever small change he had in his pockets and rewarded the guard for his trouble. “Yov, Dinesha! Tea!” The guard yelled as he began walking towards the teashop.

Ram knew where the Government Hospital was. It was another half-hour drive and in slightly heavier traffic. So he decided to park his car right under the ‘No Parking’ sign after tipping the guard generously, which he gleefully accepted. He hailed a cab and on the way decided to jot down this new information. While putting the words down, a familiar sinking feeling came back when he scribbled ‘old person in the passenger seat, possibly dead.’

“I wonder how he smelled.”

Ram had to pinch his forearm to refrain from yelling in response. “At this rate”, he thought, “I’d probably have to admit myself into the hospital.”

“I think we should go back.”

As he entered the busy hospital Ram made his way through the maze of the people in the lobby. Most of them seemed lost, wandering from desk to desk. Some inquiries were wearied, some urgent, and some despondent. Ram hated coming to hospitals, which is why he never saw Dr. Subbu as often as he should have. “If only Dr. Subbu had an independent practice”, he thought to himself. After a quick check at the information desk, he was directed to the ICU where the driver of the car was under observation. He couldn’t visit but he was told the family were in the waiting area and he was free to speak with them. As he made his way into the quietest section of the hospital, his neuroses seemed to heighten a notch. The dull blue fluorescent lighting; the badly designed and placed ‘Silence Please’ signs; the cold, clunky metal chairs placed along the walls of the room, and, most disturbingly; the low and steady chatter of its occupants of the waiting area made this a depressed crater in an otherwise flat, functioning world.

Ram inquired with a nurse who was passing, she responded by reminding him of the visiting hours. “No, sister, I just want to meet the relatives, if any. Can you tell me if any of the family are here?” She pointed to a middle-aged man and woman sitting quietly in the corner.

As Ram approached them his rummaged through his brain to see if there were any appropriate greetings for this sort of a thing. Before he found any, the man looked up and met his nervous gaze. The man was slim, his bony frame seemed exaggerated by the oversized kurta that he was wearing. His hair was fine but thinning, his bald spot neatly covered by a long wisp combed across it. He had a sharp nose and pair of rounded specs sat falteringly on the bridge. The woman, clad in a simple cotton saree, was the picture of a middle-class Indian housewife: a small but visible bindi, hair neatly braided, a small handy purse sat on her lap atop a long plastic bag that had the name of a diagnostics centre. She was resting her head on the man’s shoulder. She lifted it up and both of them looked at him presently.

“I am so sorry to bother you,” he fumbled, “my name is Ram.” He stood at a distance to avoid looming over them. He felt that another loomer was the last thing they needed.

“Do I know you?” The man offered.

“No I-“

“Oh, you must be from Ketan’s office.” The woman concluded while nodding positively. For reasons he couldn’t comprehend, he didn’t correct her. He sat next to them and asked in a precisely considerate tone, “How is Ketan?”

“He is out of danger,” the man stated, “but he needs surgery. His skull has depressed and is pushing into his brain”. Ram winced visibly. “I am Madhavan, Ketan’s father, this is Susheela, his mother.” Ram nodded politely.

“Do you work for Ketan at Psy?”

“No, I am in another team. I-“
“Are you the friend he meets at the cafeteria and discusses videogames!” Susheela surmised wrongly again, but this time she had a much brighter expression.

“Erm. There was someone else in the car?”
“My brother. He was old. On impact he suffered a cardiac arrest…” Madhavan threw his hands up in helplessness. He seemed to struggle for words afterwards.

“Ketan is the safest driver, you know? It seems he was trying to avoid hitting a child. My beta always had everyone else’ best interests in mind. Nothing will happen to him!” Susheela sounded emphatic while rounding off the sentiment with a quick look up at the heavens.

“I know, aunty,” Ram replied with a smile, “he is always been nice to me. He was one of the first to say hi to me in the cafeteria. I am only, um, few months old in this company…”

“Liar!”

“…in fact that’s how we began discussing games.”

The parents nodded.

“I am sure he’ll come out of this fine. And I am so sorry about your brother.”
“Yes, he was Ketan’s hero. When Ketan was young, my job postings took me to many different countries and I wouldn’t be home for many months. It was my brother that took care of him. He taught him almost everything…”Madhavan rested his head on the wall behind as he began reminiscing.

“…Ketan’s love of football, milk, videogames – which came from them dismantling the VCR back in the day--.”
Ram’s ears perked up.

“I am sorry, did you say milk?” Ram interjected urgently.

“Yes! Every night Ketan and his uncle would drink a tall glass of milk and work on some machinery or the other. My brother thought himself a scientist.” Madhavan smiled to himself.

“And they drank milk every night you said? That’ so-“
“Well, yes! Cold. Straight from the fridge.”

Ram felt like a five-year old who had just mastered riding the bicycle.

“Such an interesting person your brother. What was his name?”
“Ravi!” they replied in unison.

“Ravi. I would have liked to meet him.”

“Wouldn’t you.”

“Yes, he was a very interesting person. Did you know he had such a long beard, when he would wake up in the morning, the hairs would go all over the place! Ketan used to get so scared of his beard as a child. So, Ravi then concocted from household supplies a kind of jelly that would hold his beard in neatly. Overnight even. Ten years ago, he sold that formula to a big pharmaceutical company for a lot of money. That became a famous beard wax in our country!” All of the reminiscing had lifted their collective spirits so much so that they both were now smiling broadly. This is was only momentary though, as they spotted the chief doctor swiftly passing through the corridor. Swift goodbyes were exchanged as Ketan’s parents dovetailed the doctor, as did a few others to hear some sort of news about their loved ones.

Ram, energised by the new information, decided to find out more about Ravi, as he exited the hospital, the voice prodded again. “I think we should go back there.”

Finding himself sufficiently alone, Ram managed a reply: “I don’t think so, Ravi.”

“Raaaveee.”

“I think something happened that day.”

“Raaa-“

“For whatever strange, supernatural –ugh- reason, you’re in my head, my brain, my mind.”

“-veeeee!”

“We’d better find out why before I lose my mind!”

“Hey! What’s a Raavee?” The voice chimed with curiousity.

“What?”

As he hurried through the narrow lanes, Ram’s head was bursting with confusion. He had hoped that what he found out a few minutes back would be the epiphany that would lead this matter to resolution. Further conversations with ‘self’ would draw unnecessary attention, he thought. So he decided to bite his tongue on the journey back.

“Are we going back? We are going back aren’t we?”

The cab approached the intersection and Ram got off in a hurry. Since the street on his side was a one-way, the cab had parked all the way in the other end. Ram could see the security guard fast asleep. His car was there and unclamped, though. Ram strode swiftly, but it seemed, strangely enough, that his pace was slowing rather than gaining. When he was merely a few feet away from his car it seemed his legs had gotten so heavy, it took him a few seconds to lift them up and forward smoothly. It felt like someone was continuously pouring concrete down his shoes and into his joints. Eventually, he froze. His feet were stuck to the ground. He couldn’t move them of his own volition.

“Ravi. Is this your doing?” He muttered under his breath. “Ravi!” He hissed.

“I’ve asked you this, haven’t I?”

“Asked me what, exactly!”
“What is Raavee”

“Ravi, there are people looking. I am in the middle of the road and there are a lot of vehicles around, I do not want to get into another accident!”

“I think we should go back!”

“Go. Back. Where!”

Ram’s head turned automatically. He was now looking back into the main road, at the intersection.

“There.” The voice asserted.

“No! We are going home. I have to make some calls. I need to find-“

“I’m hungry.”

“I need to know how to resolve this!”

“I’m hungry.”

“Ravi. Sir.” He pleaded.

“I’m hungry.”

“Fine. Let’s go back.”

“Let’s eat something first. I’m-“

“Okay!” Ram yelled. A small child that happened to be walking by with a bag of groceries was startled by the outburst. In her shock, she dropped the bag and a bunch of potatoes rolled out on to the ground. Ram’s feet began to move now. As he sheepishly crouched to pick up the fallen vegetables, the child looked at him in horror, ignored the starchy tubers and ran into a neighbouring building. Ram sighed heavily, handed the potatoes to the security guard and begged him to apologise to her on his behalf the next time she came around.

Ram stopped over at the teashop and gulped a glass of warm milk. He drank it too fast and burnt his tongue. Ram spent the next ten minutes cursing Ravi and his milk cravings.

“Okay, let’s go!” The voice instructed as Ram finished the last drop.

The voice led Ram to the side where the car had crashed. He roamed up and down the side of the road, stopping, turning, crouching whenever the voice commanded him to. He even sat on a stone for five minutes or so in the late afternoon sun. Eventually he went back to the intersection. On the corner where the boy had first chased after the cat stood a tall apartment building. It was about ten storeys high. In typical Mumbai fashion, it hadn’t been painted for years it seemed. The moss on the edges of the building and underneath the windows formed the only patches of colour on it. Everything else was grey and old. There was a small yard in front where people had parked their motorbikes. Weeds grew in the tiny gully around the building. On the outside of the wall, by the main road, stood a garbage bin. It overflowed to an extent that some of the litter fell over the wall and back into the bushes inside. Usually this gully would be an alley wide enough for people to access and go around the building to get to a well or some kind of storage. Clearly the builder was worried more about profits than amenities. The voice instructed Ram to walk through this narrow gully. Ram pinched his nose and tiptoed around the garbage and eventually ended up in the back of the building. At the back was a small abandoned outhouse, presumably for a security guard, if a building in such conditions could afford one.

“Go on.”

“Go on? No way. I think I squished a rat on my way in.”

“You know I can make you go in if I want.”

“I-“

At this point the voice had assumed full control. Ram’s shoulders slumped as he slowly trudged into the dingy outhouse. It was hardly big enough for one person. It smelled of damp clothes and burnt firewood. The only point of light was that which was reflecting off a small broken mirror mounted on the wall. A mangled dish managed to retain few drops of milk. Next to it was a litter box.

“Welcome home.”

For the second time in the day, Ram’s heart sank.

“You’re the cat.”