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Hyperpower

Posted on April 26, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

There was the soft scratching sound, it was all you could hear, if your brain was capable of tuning out the sound of the ceiling fan, the traffic outside the window and the ticking of the grandfather clock. It was the sound of a young artist at work. He didn’t think of himself as a young artist. He didn’t think of himself at all, as anything anyway. He knew what he liked, not because he was old enough to elucidate such things but because he tried to find the time to do the things he liked.

Drawing was one of them.

He was four years old and his mother thanked all the gods in her heaven that she had been gifted a child who did not feel the need to tear up the house before he fell asleep each day. Her Varun was very happy as long as he had a sheet of paper, a sharpened pencil and an eraser. Sometimes when he looked up at her, from his position on the floor and smiled suddenly, she thought her heart would explode. No man had ever made her feel like that. It was like watching the most poignant scene in a movie and feeling oneself welling up even though the events on screen had no bearing on one’s own life. The swelling of her heart always brought tears to her eyes.

Like every other day, her son was on the floor sketching his version of the world around him. Her husband was at work and all was right in Lila’s world. She was done cooking with over an hour to spare before she had to feed her son. The maid was washing clothes in the bathroom and she would do the dishes after they had eaten. This one had been around for long enough that Lila had learnt to stop worrying about what she would do when the maid threatened to leave. In the late morning warmth, with the sound of her son’s pencil scratching across the paper, she fell asleep.

Within moments, she was dreaming.

His name was Amar and he had made her feel things a middle class girl from a working class suburb in Mumbai had no right to feel. He made her feel adventurous, he allowed her to think the world was her oyster and he led her to believe that he would marry her. She hadn’t worn a dress since she was twelve and by her own acknowledgement she was no beauty. Yet the guy with the curly hair and the dangerous smile took an interest in the girl dressed in the demure cotton salwar kameez. When she wasn’t particularly responsive to his early advances he tried harder. He got her to open up to him and then he took her on a whirlwind ride that culminated in an act she hadn’t even contemplated.

Money had always required stretching around her family so there was little left over for luxuries like the cinema and cable television. In the absence of media saturation, her sexual awakening had been extremely laboured. There had been some sort of mumbled explanation from her mother about how her body was changing when her first period arrived. Apart from that there was little else to suggest the existence of a universe of personal pleasure she was unaware of. Amar changed all that and in doing so became a permanent inhabitant of her dream world. Even after he moved on without properly saying goodbye. Or perhaps she just hadn’t understood what he said to her that last time they were together in one of the numerous empty flats he seemed to have access to. She didn’t think all the blame for the miscommunication rested with her because how was a girl supposed to be able to think straight after she had just done that with a boy?

So yet again, while she was in her easy chair, waiting for the clock to arrive at twelve-thirty, Lila dreamt of Amar. It was never the same dream but elements carried over from previous episodes. She didn’t ever remember anything more than fragments. In this one she was in a man’s arms. She could see his arms and his shirt (blue) and the corded veins pulsing in his forearms. Even though she couldn’t see without craning her neck she knew he was wearing pants. He smelt of sweat in the way men who work in the fields carried an aroma of greenery, earth and the product of their own sebaceous glands. She had her fingers intertwined behind his neck and she was looking up at his face, except that there was no face to see.

There was a chin and there were ears but his eyes, his nose and the surprisingly white teeth were not there. The curly hair was there but without his eyes to guide her it was impossible to tell where they were going. She tried looking around but it was like they were walking through a dense fog at night. She didn’t feel cold and there was something comforting about not being able to see where she was going. His arms were all the safety she needed.

Something happened suddenly and he tripped. Maybe she had shifted her weight, causing both of them to tip over. As she fell, she reached out for something to grab onto, and woke up. Her eyelidss were gummy and her mouth felt like she needed to gargle. She squinted at the clock; 12:25. Varun was still working on his opus of the day. She stood up, stretched and headed for the kitchen.

“Mummy!”

Her son was holding up his work for her to see.

“Finished!”

Lila went over and took the sheet of paper from her son who was watching her expectantly. She was always proud of what he drew and she liked to ask him questions about various elements. It was their routine and it seemed to motivate him to work on a fresh picture every day. She always took the finished drawings and put them in a file with Varun close behind to ensure that she was taking good care of it. When his father returned from work, after he had bathed and finished dinner, there was the ceremonial unveiling of their son’s work from that day. It was a well-established ritual and one that all of them looked forward to.

Lila accepted the drawing and it took a moment for her to understand what she was looking at. When she did, the sleepy fuzziness left her in a hurry, bringing in its stead a quiet terror. She was looking at a child’s rendition of a man carrying a woman over clouds. The man had curly hair but no face. The woman was hanging on for dear life. Lila knelt next to her son, put an arm around his shoulders and asked with barely concealed concern, “What is this beta?”

“This man is carrying this woman on the clouds Mummy. So simple!”

“Why is he doing that?”

Her four-year-old shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“Is the lady scared?”

“No.”

“Who is she?”

“It’s you Mummy. Don’t you recognise your face.”

“And this is Daddy?”

“No.”

“Who is it then? Who else is strong enough carry Mummy like this?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you draw this picture beta?”

“I don’t know.”

The maid came in to remind her that it was time for them to eat. She needed to wash up and leave for her next assignment. Lila nodded without actually registering what the woman had said.

Her husband would be asking their son the same questions she had. If he gave the same answers she didn’t know if she would be able to laugh it off in the presence of the man who knew nothing about her past.

Lila had seven hours to teach her son how to lie.

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