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Survivor

Posted on July 20, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

They were going around the stationary merry-go-round of cheap folding chairs. Some of them were sitting forward like they might be suffering cramps or motion sickness. Others sat back, were slouched over or had scooted their asses so far forward that they were in danger of sliding off their chairs and damaging their spines en route to a bruised tailbone when they hit the concrete floor.

The printed words on the A4 sheet of paper (landscape orientation) read SURVIVOR followed by the words Group In Session on the next line. Everything was centre-aligned and looked pretty serious for a simple sheet of white paper taped to a brown door.

Inside the room, two stainless steel dispensers sat close to each other on a long table that also carried an apologetic plate laden with biscuits and cookies. A couple of people seated in the closed circle had cast glances at the coffee/tea/biscuits but they were glances of curiosity rather than longing. It was tradition to wrap a session up with a lukewarm beverage and semi-soggy nibbles. The people in the room had been through enough to be noncommittal about most things. They were in no particular hurry to arrive at the end of a session any more than they were to have it go on for ever.

There were twelve people in the room, five women and seven men and between eleven of them they had survived disease, spousal abuse, accidental injury and sex addiction. The twelfth was the facilitator or moderator or mentor or whatever anyone cared to call him that day. He had the most beaten expression of them all.

His name was Amar and he was trying hard to stay focused on Mahima, the survivor of a horrible attack that had left her with a broken jaw, several broken bones, cracked ribs and a permanent speech impediment. That her attacker was her husband was not surprising to anyone nor was it particularly astonishing that she chose not to press charges. What had been surprising to Amar and most of the others in the room was the fact that Mahima had filed for divorce. She was afraid of the man who had caused her irreversible damage but wasn’t too paralysed to take steps to remedy her situation.

She was talking about her week, “Amar threatened me again on Friday. Said that he could hurt me and since it was the weekend nobody would come to my aid until Monday. I was scared but I didn’t say anything. I just disconnected. He called back immediately but I didn’t answer the phone. Every time the line got cut he called back. After half an hour or so I disconnected the phone only. I still haven’t connected the phone again. I can’t get a cellphone because I don’t have any address proof since my name was on his ration card…the divorce hearing is in six days so I don’t know if I will be here next week. Maybe he will actually come to my parents’ house and kill me…”

She fell silent and it always bothered the moderator that he shared his name with her husband. Having to listen to an account of the horrible things a man named Amar was doing to a woman named Mahima made him want to stand up and defend his name. He wanted to say that Amar might have been provoked or justified or suffered emotional abuse that led to his lashing out with his hands and feet. Instead he sat there and realised that he was tapping into the zeitgeist of man and abuser as he thought those thoughts. When the moment had passed he looked around and waited to see if anyone had anything to add. When it was clear that nobody did, he led them all in saying, “Thank you for sharing Mahima.”

She blinked in acknowledgement and lowered her eyes to her hands which were lying crossed over each other in her lap.

All attention shifted to Samar, the bearded, bespectacled man who was seated to Mahima’s right. Samar was an advertising executive who had survived a terrifying road accident. He walked with a cane and it was unlikely that he would recover complete use of his left hand or be able to turn his head without his body following in any direction. Samar considered himself incredibly lucky and everyone who had attended to him right from the time he was cut out of the crumpled car to the surgery and physiotherapy beyond it, agreed with him.

Samar had been trying to get to work after a client meeting when his boss chose to call him. No one who reported to his boss was allowed to ignore a call from The Man, no matter what the employee was doing at the time. Rumours floated around about people doing their business on the toilet while taking feedback from him or others who tried to eat their lunch without making a sound while he lectured them about profit margins and expectations. There was also the legendary story of the woman who had taken a phone call while having sex. She had tried to stay as quiet as possible during the lecture but through the most ironic sequence of events in her life she had been told that she was fired right around the time she was achieving climax. The boss thought she was screaming in distress and people who couldn’t resist making a bad joke out of someone else’s misfortune referred to her as the woman who came and went at the same time.

Samar had been getting his ear chewed out by the boss at the time he lost control of his car which flipped over and crashed into a telephone pole. The Man had visited him in the hospital and forbidden him from saying a word about how he ended up in traction and fighting for his life. For the first time in his life Samar defied someone and came up on top. He retained his job while the boss was given marching orders only to end up in a better position at a bigger organisation. Samar looked around at the expectant eyes and said, “It was a good week for me. Nothing major happened. I’m getting more used to the cane. Don’t lean on it as much so my arm hurts less.”

Everyone chorused, “Thank you for sharing Samar,” before their greedy eyes devoured Roshni, the sex addict.

Roshni figured out that she was addicted to sex when she found herself in an extreme state of undress on a railway station bench one morning. She couldn’t remember all the details but she did know that a guy she had barely met had suggested that they do it in plain view as the last train barreled past. She had never been to a railway station before and because she was already a member of the Mile High club and had done unspeakable things in the back of moving and stationary vehicles of all sizes (that had four wheels or more), she didn’t think it was wrong to have sex near a train.

As in most cases, nothing is really wrong until a person gets caught in the act. Though she hadn’t exactly been caught in the act, the cops had taken a very dim view of the sluttily-dressed woman they found during their early morning patrol. Being booked for soliciting was her wakeup call. She realised she had a problem and Amar suspected that she didn’t seek a cure as much as she wanted to control her addiction. He also suspected that very few people considered sex addiction a problem and that most people within their circle of twelve returned to listen to Roshni’s accounts of her latest escapades even though they had a handle on their own problem.

Roshni took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think most people who survive something bad become nice people. I think the movies lie. Maybe they are nice when they think they are going to die but they become complete bastards again when they recover.”

This was definitely not what everyone was waiting for. They were waiting for more detailed accounts of shenanigans along the lines of her encounter with an Arab sheikh aboard his luxury yacht or the time she got into a round of dares where a circle of girlfriends got naked to see who could ‘accommodate’ the largest cucumber.

With a deep breath she continued, “I just met this cancer survivor who behaves like the most entitled person in the world. She is not grateful to be alive, she behaves like other people should be grateful that she fought the cancer and won.”

Amar looked at her, as expectant as the rest, that all of this was leading to an imaginative sex story. But nothing came. He looked around the room at the disappointed faces and then he said, “I think that’s all we have time for. Thank you for sharing Roshni.”

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