Eyes of Hyderabad
A year has passed since the events of the movie Premalu.
Reenu and Sachin are trying to work it long-distance; Amal Davis has left Hyderabad, and Niharika moved out to pursue travel blogging, but everyone’s been in touch. That’s neither been conscious nor demanding; skin and screen share the same space in Reenu’s heart, and days are spent tapping in and out of happenings, sliding careless brush strokes across keyboards, smiling at static eyes.
But today, things were off; her thoughts held a momentum that was hard to control. Like slipping into a white room, Reenu kept disappearing into her mind trying to lock onto something unthinkable. There was no memory of reading a children’s book.
There was no memory of even holding one. This is perhaps why her grip on the copy of Black Beauty felt uneasy like she had little faith in her own hands. The cityscape outside was an unfocused blur; she confronted a phantom childhood of her imagination, and it occurred to her that if she would assign an analogy, her childhood seemed no longer than this car ride, it seemed no more than a fantasy anyone can sew into these songs.
Her mind would not let go of this childhood, which hung empty before her. Was this because she had held her friend and former roommate’s newborn child in her arms for a brief moment before she experienced herself drifting in a heavy and strange moment of stillness? At that moment, it was like her memory was wiped clean and she was nobody. Luckily, the baby didn’t know it was capable of such power, it looked as uncomfortable as ever. When it wailed, it was comforted. Reenu went back to her thoughts, they were a bit off today.
At the wedding where she first met Sachin, she had witnessed Karthika among a throng of kids, helping to soothe a crying baby. She laid the child to bed and sang to it ridiculously about a thieving crow that loves to mess with kids. Reenu watched afar and later exclaimed, “How did you do that?”
“You learn these things when you have many baby cousins”, Karthika said.
A blinding white, shapeless wind came alive in her mind for the first time, and before it could alarm her, a kerfuffle broke out from afar. She and Karthika rushed outside to find Aadhi manhandling what appeared to be a young boy. Sachin’s manic entry into their lives delayed a revelation that had now caught up to Reenu.
She got out of the parked car and made her way into the apartment that the audience of Premalu would recognise as the setting for film-life. She was still clutching Black Beauty; the book called out to her while she was perusing for an appropriate gift for an infant. Ever since Niharika moved out, Reenu was experiencing white moments like earlier, when her thoughts rolled into each other, cascading and tumbling down a fast mountain fall. She’d heard the phrase “train of thought” but this was no train; in these instances, the fall remained long and consistent though when she awoke, it was like no time had passed. She knew something was off. This did not make sense. How can she keep slipping in and out of a place, only to discover there is no place, that time had passed and whatever held her hostage for a moment, claimed no moment.
Reenu’s mysterious childhood, her unexplained fear of ‘baby cousins’, and her fixation with an autobiographical horse; there was no known harmony in these triggers, but one knows when there is a conspiracy involving oneself.
The sight of the book and her grip over it no longer sent her wandering through her mind, so it felt safe to open it. Niharika had bought several customary gifts that set the stage for a reunion with a friend after a year. She bought a hip flask for herself exclaiming ‘self care!’. One night, Niharika urged Reenu to drink with her and the two women spoke into the night about each other. They disagreed more than necessary but Reenu never let herself approach regret; so much had changed so quickly, it wasn’t fair that she must stubbornly go on. Now and then, the alcohol would tip over the plants or the rug, and Reenu would haughtily mumble under her breath as Niharika lost her way to the end of her sentence.
The mind always goes to drunken conversations when a mystery needs solving. Somewhere inside the filth of affection and distaste, Reenu unearthed a couple of lost memories, and the whiteout took hold of her. That night she was close to discovering the absurdity and inanity of her existence. When she found her way back, Niharika was holding out a confession: she felt untethered lately, she felt free but blue. Reenu asked a couple of follow-up questions but no amount of contemplation was able to clarify why or how Niharika felt this way. A drunken misstep would have landed either woman into the arms of a tense but faint pleasure; but isn’t it a mistake on the writer’s part to assume such a pleasure? Who would feign pleasure knowing they belong to the minds and fantasies of us; that a tear in the screen and a love afar and unreachable are the same?
Well then, Reenu decided, she wasn’t disappearing on command, it was happening at random. Without reason, it caught hold of her whenever it wished and let go of her just like that. There was nothing convincing about ignorance and yet it felt no different from the darkness of the white embrace. She managed to cough out a chuckle at the demise of her consciousness; what a silly way to briefly touch a timeless space. Knowing there is a lot her mind is incapable of conjuring up, knowing there were no children’s books or baby cousins, it would be wrong to say nothing existed before, and it would be wrong to say nothing exists after it. Emptiness is rather simple, so her life is barren.
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