Unclaimed

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‘Ha ha ha ha...ho ho...ha ha ha,’ she laughed non-stop.

He smacked her leg, the look in his eyes more eloquent than a dozen words.

She was piggy-backing, her legs wrapped around his waist, arms around him. He staggered, stabilized, and then walked on the narrow, raised strip between the rice fields

They weighed almost the same. Their height was almost the same, pointy-nosed and voluptuous-mouthed, they both had dusky-bronze skin. They could well have been siblings. They were not.

Nitin and Barkha.

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There’s so much to do. Barkha pulled herself out of her easy chair, tucking a silvery grey wisp of hair behind her ear. The morning Sun, no longer soft, had begun to scorch her skin.

She had begun to lie down in the old easy chair very often.

Nitin’s grandfather had a few of the chairs carved from the best rosewood and they lay in the veranda that overlooked the back yard. Old and black, the wooden chair still gleamed. There were scratch marks all over made by the scores of children that had sat on it. Namely Barkha and her siblings; her brood: two daughters and a son.

On weekends Barkha and Nitin had sat there, just like they did now, though not ‘just’ like now, she thought. Back then, their children ran amuck in the green yard playing and screaming, stopping to snack from any one of the many fruit trees that they fancied. Things were different then.

She had kept back one chair for herself and one for Nitin. The rest had been given away to admiring relatives.

She glanced at Nitin.

He smiled at her. Vacant faced.

Like someone trying to recognise her.

Nowadays every time he looked at her, he was like that.

Like a child looking for something.

Or even a dithering idiot trying to figure out something remotely intelligent.

She smiled back.

He was a shell of his former self.

“I am going indoors now. Will you stay here”?

“Yes,” he smiled again, his eyes crinkling against the glare of the Sun, numerous fine lines on his once smooth face. He didn’t mind the Sun.

“Getting my dose of vitamin D,” he said.

She shook out her salt and pepper hair from the knot which had come lose, tied them up into a tight knot that made a certain statement and marched in through the back door.

She found that the maid, had sneaked in and was now at the kitchen sink, washing spinach in quick, sharp swishes, trying to get the cumbersome task out of the way before Barkha descended on her.

On hearing her footsteps, the maid changed her modus-operandi with lightening speed. She took the colander which she was meant to use and started to go slow, washing a few leaves at a time, under running water.

Barkha smiled at the little deception and filled the electric kettle. Another cuppa wouldn’t hurt.

The sounds of the boiling water sucked her mind into a whirlpool of thoughts which usually boiled below the surface of her cool exterior.

One cold morning in Coonoor, five years ago, the tea kettle screamed for attention, gave up and had burnt itself beyond repair.

Nitin wouldn’t recognise her.

Her Nitin. The one she knew right from college.

“Nitin, wake up.  Let’s go for a walk,” she had curled up next to him in an effort at drawing him out of his warm quilt.

A month ago he had given up his position as Manager of the tea plantations he worked for, since the last ten years. They had saved up a tidy sum so she wasn’t worried on that front.

She was ecstatic actually.

The manager’s job had a really large salary. It had also taken up all his time. He stayed at the plantation during the week and came home to Coonoor on the weekends.

They had decided that she would stay on at Coonoor so their son Avinash and daughters, Rupali and Shivali did not have to travel 60 kilometres to school one way, five days a week.

“Nitin, come on lazy bones,” she tugged at his quilt.

Nitin sat up, his hair ruffled, how adorable thought Barkha, trying to pat his hair down.

“Wh..what..w..who..”

“Wake up best friend,” Barkha gave him a peck on the cheek, “let’s make it snappy or the dew will dry up from the leaves.”

She loved looking at the sun’s rays refract through the dew drops and shine in many hues.

“Wh..who are you?”

“Stop it actor-boy,” she tittered and imitated him playfully, “Wh..wh..who are y..y..you, next minute you will be calling me Ki..ki..ki..kiran a la SRK,” she gave him a tiny punch on the chest expecting him to take the cue and chase her around the house.

“What..what are you saying..who am I,” Nitin looked at her, his face blank.

“This is too much, you are creeping me out Nitin. Enough.”

“Why are you calling me Nitin..do I live here..who are you?

Barkha smote her head with a mock sigh, “I know we like Bollywood, but you are taking it too far.”

Nitin sat there, looking at her, his eyes vacant.

She had never seen him like this, ever. A shiver ran down her spine, something was not right, was he ill?

Barkha ran to get the thermometer from the first aid box and quickly stuck it under Nitin’s tongue.

“Perfectly normal,” she looked at the reading on the thermometer and looked at Nitin.

He was a log of wood. Apart from blinking he made no effort to move.

“I’m calling Sanjay, you still have time, Nitin to own up to your buffoonery,” Barkha said to him while looking for Doctor Sanjay’s name in her mobile phone contact list.

“There, I’ve rung him, you can explain to him,” she walked away to the kitchen to make tea, trying to show him how unmoved she was to his pretence.

She wasn’t unmoved, in reality and muttered a prayer hoping Nitin was only acting.

 

Doctor Sanjay and Barkha sat in a spacious room, the waiting chambers of the psychiatrist Doctor Warrier.

They had been waiting silently for two hours.

The renowned Doctor emerged with Nitin in tow.

He asked Nitin to sit in the waiting area now and took the other two people inside.

“He seems to be having an attack of amnesia,”

Barkha couldn’t believe her ears.

Nitin had a strong, stable mind. Besides such things didn’t happen to people like them, ordinary people living normal lives.

“I can’t say why, yet” continued the Doctor and fell silent.

In his many decades of practise he had unravelled all kinds of weirdities from his patient’s mental morasses.

After many more visits, the Doctor had cleared things up for her.

The lonely widow, Nitin,s boss must have put all kinds of pressure on him, she told herself. He could not have been ensnared easily.

She had seen women make passes at him all their life together and not once had he seemed shaken. Was that for real or had he been acting and who knows what he had been up-to behind her back. What had she not un-earthed. There was no way of knowing.

Barkha beat herself up mentally until her daughters came to stay with her. Saying it all aloud to them, though this was their father they spoke about, made her lighter. Why hide things, they must know their parents for what we are. They are old enough.

Once Nitin had left the job and come back home to Coonoor, the lady, his boss, had died and left behind a sizeable portion of the estate to him in her will.

When Nitin got to know of the will he didn’t want to accept the gift as it would raise doubts, in the minds of his own family and others. On the other hand the property bequeathed to him was large enough to seduce anyone.

This dilemma caused his mind to leave him high and dry without any past memory, the psychiatrist had said. This was his mind’s natural defence mechanism, presumably.

He was at peace.

She was not and could never be. Why couldn’t her mind be more helpful and make her forget too. Instead like a vengeful enemy her mind wouldn’t let her forget anything at all.

She filled another cup of tea and slowly gathered the property papers that had fluttered all over her desk with a sudden gust of breeze.

She had travelled to the estate with Nitin, hoping to revive his memory but it had been futile. He seemed to have decided to stay on in the comfortable space he was in.

The property lay unclaimed.

Nitin sat in the sun, still soaking up Vitamin D, unclaimed.