The Talisman - Part 1

Ananya hadn’t always been like this. She had been a free spirit who had just flown where she wanted to and done what she wanted to, ever smiling like the sun that came out every morning and as colorful as the rainbow. Then life had started to change around her when her parents were taken away from her in a car crash. Life then started disintegrating, one crack at a time, spreading and widening like the aircraft window one sees in movies cracking up at high altitude. Until it finally resembled an intricate spider’s web where there was nothing other than the crazed windshield through which she could hardly see the life she was driving through.

Now she read the daily horoscope to decide what she would wear, passed everyone through a Linda Goodman security check and crossed her fingers and toes when she wanted something to happen, apart from avoiding elevators and cats. She had grown used to blaming herself for most things that went wrong and invariably the bread would fall and when it did, it would fall on the buttered side wouldn’t it? Her life was full of the expectation of the next thing that would go wrong and how she always knew it was going to happen and why she couldn’t have stopped it because it was written in the stars.

That bright summer morning was no different. She stubbed her toe on the bed as she walked to the bathroom and then chipped her coffee cup as she set it down in a hurry, couldn’t get her hair dryer to work and ended up walking out the front door with her hair feeling like straw and having a sneaky suspicion that she looked like a scarecrow. A minor scrape with an auto and two stumbles on the pavement brought her to the train station where she usually caught the 7:30 morning local to work. As with every morning, she stood apart from the early crowd that was coming onto the platform, in her own corner, back to a pillar and her earphones piping her favorite John Mayer acoustic version of Free Fallin’.

It was then that the gaggle of college girls landed on the platform like a swarm of bees and buzzed around as badly. A few elbows and legs later, she gave up trying to hold onto her position and backed into a corner. The train blared its horn as it swished into the station platform, the doors sliding open. She tried to avoid the swarm of bees and then started following them into the train. She saw the doors starting to slide shut and hurriedly took a step to get in, only to step onto someone else’s raised heel. Arms and legs flailing like the windmills that Don Quixote battled against in vain, she fell, hoping to land inside the train but glanced back and saw the platform rising to meet her. Fully expecting her luck or lack of it to hold good, she closed her eyes, only to be jerked to a stop by a pair of hands that caught her around the waist.

The wind driven out of her like a pair of bellows on full squeeze, her eyes opened with a start. She was pulled back up from behind and she used her hands and legs to good use to get herself back into a standing position. She turned around and met a pair of smiling eyes, and a mouth full of teeth. A voice from somewhere below the eyes said, “Are you OK?” But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the eyes enough to answer. Finally, she woke from her hypnotic trance and blabbed a yes. The crowd was a little too thickly packed and she found that she had no room to move away from the stranger. She muttered a thank you to the stranger who was dressed in a suit and looked like he worked in a bank.

He got lost almost immediately in what appeared to be a wall of clothes with hands, legs and an occasional face holding it up. The brief exchange left her completely unnerved and very shaky. She hardly got her bearings when she realised that the next train was coming in. She felt sure that she was going to miss this one too and get late for work. However, as the train pulled in, everyone seemed to be keen to get in through one of the other doors of the train, leaving the one that she was standing opposite, quite empty. She almost strolled in and then nearly stepped off when the same pair of smiling eyes greeted her on the train. Managing to hold onto a hand rail like it was a buoy that kept her afloat in a stormy sea; she tried to turn her back to him.

She soon found that staring into the face of the man standing opposite was distinctly less pleasing than looking at those smiling eyes. Turning back, she was greeted with a look that almost said, “I told you so”. He was talkative to the dozen while she could barely make the right noises and soon she learnt that his name was Ritvik, he lived close to where she did and worked at a multinational bank in the central business district. Despite his repeated attempts to learn something about her, she remained a closed book, refusing to give off even dust from its covers.

She got off the train at her usual stop and he waved bye from inside, the familiarity coming easily to him. She nodded her head and smiled and walked towards the escalator. It was then that it hit her – she had actually not fallen that morning when usually she would have been picking herself and her things off the floor. She thanked her lucky stars and the stranger a little more fervently and walked the short distance to work. Caught as she was in the threads of her thoughts about the morning and her escape as she wove and unwove them, she didn’t even notice that she had walked onto the road in front of the cab but miraculously didn’t get hurt. The elevator was waiting for her just as she walked in and the coffee in her cup didn’t splash on her like it usually did. It was a great morning after all!

Towards evening, her luck went back to normal. Her hard disk crashed and the pitch she was making to the client disappeared along with it. A few hasty chart paper hand outs and a near disaster with a half empty cup of coffee later, her head was pounding like some prison inmates were on hard labour inside her head. Taking a couple of dispirins, she walked out of office. A near claustrophobic death trap of an elevator and a scraped elbow from saying hello to the curb at close quarters later, she found herself on the train back home. The train ride itself was uneventful, thank goodness and she walked back to her apartment. As she reached the front door, she remembered that she had left her bag on the train.

Cursing her luck, she almost gave up, breaking down in tears in sheer frustration. She trudged down the stairs of her apartment with no hope of ever finding her bag again, thinking of all the calls she would need to make to cancel her cards and her phone and everything else. As she walked back in slow defeated steps towards the train station, she had a feeling it was going to be a long night. The tears of frustration seeped out of her in small bursts as she rounded the bend in the road towards the station.

Then she saw Ritvik sitting on the steps, doing something on his phone and for some insane reason, her anger peaked and she wanted to hit out blindly at him. Walking up, she said in her best sarcastic tone, “So, you had no place to go and nothing to do, so you’re sitting here and catching up on work?”  He looked up, the initial smile in his eyes disappearing at her words like a curtain that just drew shut. He said nothing, just handing her something. She saw that it was her bag and wanted to eat her words, slowly, painfully, letter by letter. She stood there, clutching her bag in her hand as he just stood up and walked away. Half of her screamed to run after him and apologize and the other half was still chewing cud at her words. As she stood there feeling like the lowest of the low, the icing on the cake just appeared and it started to rain.

The next few days went by as disastrously as ever, everything seeming to go wrong in every possible way. The zodiac predictions foretold a turbulent week ahead as if she didn’t know. She searched for Ritvik every morning and evening on the train but could find no trace of him. It was almost as if he disappeared from the face of the earth after that one fateful day when he saved her - twice. Life seemed to go from bad to worse as her sister fell sick and she had to leave town. She spent over a week back at her home town nursing her back to health. Somehow, life took a whole different shape when she was at home, in her own world, her comfort zone. The routines were easy to get into, the comfort of the normal and the lack of expectations. The simple life overtook her, laying all her anxieties and worries to rest. The peace and quiet of it all lulled her into thinking that it was all fine.

She returned to her normal schedule after the 2 week break, coming in on the weekend to clean up her apartment and set it right. And the jinx came back again, painfully intense. First the plumbing at home had stopped up. And the electricity was off; she had forgotten to pay her bill before she left. The stuff in the fridge had gone completely rotten and to boot, the maid did a disappearing act. She spent most of the day chasing the electrician and the plumber and what was left of it cleaning out the fridge and the rest of the house. She ordered in some Chinese and was eating it sitting on the floor of her balcony, gazing out at the stars. As she walked back indoors, her foot struck something that went half flying across the room and she realized it was her bag, the one that Ritvik had rescued. The thought of him brought a sigh to her lips, as she wished for the millionth time that she had not said what she had.

She wandered down to the nearby hypermarket to fill up on supplies and escaped with a minor mishap in the ketchup section and a split 5 kg sack of wheat flour that was partly on the floor and partly on her. As she waited her turn at the cash counter which seemed to have miraculously filled up just as she had come to it, she suddenly saw Ritvik enter the store. She first did what she usually did, turning her face away and ignoring him, letting her discomfort at meeting him rule over everything else. Then, her better sense prevailed and she walked out of the queue, hearing the murmur about “mad woman” behind her and not caring. She caught up with him at the fruits section. She stood waiting for him to finish selecting bananas. He seemed to be taking an inordinately long time over it, examining them from every angle and smelling them only to drop them back. After a couple of minutes of waiting for his expert selection, her patience ran out and she called out “Ritvik”.

The bunch of bananas dropped to the floor with a soft plop as he turned towards her, his eyes showing that he expected something similar to last time, guarded, like the gates would close in an instant at the slightest sign of trouble. Her tentative “Hi” did nothing to make it any better. Finally, she offered to help him out and after initially refusing, he agreed and they walked in silence, picking the bananas, then the tomatoes and then the yoghurt. He picked his coffee and she asked him how he managed to like percolator coffee. That got him opened up a little bit and the explanation came out a little shaky but did come out nonetheless. When they finally got to the cash counter, it was idle and they checked out quicker than she could have believed possible. As they walked out, bags in hand, the evening had turned from the muggy heat blanket that it had been to a cool, moist breezy interlude with a growing twilight peppered with bright twinkles. He asked if she lived close by and when she told him, they decided to just walk back. There wasn’t any conversation for a while; just the silence and the company of stars.

He walked her home and then smiled at her and said goodbye and left. And that was just it. It was just right. No words said, no gestures, nothing required. She found a lady waiting outside the door and on enquiring, found that she wanted to offer her services as a maid. Deciding to hire her from the next day, she let herself in and breathed a sigh of pure unadulterated relief as the lights came on with the flick of the switch. Making herself a quick fix dinner of noodles, she caught herself humming a strange tune and smiled at herself. Dinner was distracted, her thoughts wandering and scattered like a flight of doves at feed time. Even her favourite show on TV failed to hold her interest. Sleep was difficult to come as an unnamed anxiety held her captive and she kept waking up.

Rising early after giving up on her attempts to sleep, she held her tea cupped in both hands as if she were offering it to the Sun God who was just making his presence felt on the horizon. The cool morning breeze calmed her down and she breathed in deep and unhurriedly. As she got ready for work that morning, she felt light and unburdened, as if some weight had been lifted off her and she was now free. She reached the train station in time and she stood there, her eyes searching. As much as she hated to admit to herself, she was looking forward to seeing Ritvik that morning. Not having seen him anywhere along the way, she was getting impatient. The 7:30 was just pulling into the platform when a tug at her hand made her turn and she caught those smiling eyes again and despite herself, began smiling back.