J's Musings

TW: Contains themes of grief and death.

Read softly, and take care of your heart as you go.

Amol had just stepped into his warm bed. Sweat-drenched and exhausted, his eyes could barely stay open. The rain pattered — rather annoyingly — on the roof. Despite being a rather expensive house, no one had thought to invest in a good, thick roof. Amol had spent a good bit of his childhood, and now adulthood, believing it would fall on him the day the rains got heavy enough.

The rains had often thrummed in the vessels in his ears, gushing quicker than his blood, filling his brain with water before the blood could catch up. He was used to this floating situation.

A phone rang — loud and obnoxious.

Amol woke up in a cold sweat; the rain had died down.
“Hello?” He tried not to sound groggy.
“Hi! Is this Amol Mishra?” came an overly cheerful voice.
“No, it’s his assistant. Feel free to leave a message.”
“Oh— It wasn’t something to be passed on like this. Never mind, can you ask him to contact this number when he has time?”
“I’m just joking. Give me 15 minutes, I’ll call you back.” He rubbed his eyes and hoped the ridicule wouldn’t get across.

Forced laughter made its way to his ears, and a small “bye” ended the call.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had stopped to think before making a joke in an awkward moment. This was going to be fun.

He showered and changed into a pale blue shirt and black trousers. The dew from his shower settled over hair waiting for an untangling that would never come.
The shirt stretched over his torso — a bit too short for him — but it had looked better back when he bought it.
Metallic silver circles rimmed his rather dewy eyes. Pretty but quite useless — that applied to much more than his eyes, he thought.

He called the number from earlier. It was a little over 15 minutes, but it wasn’t like he owed her anything.

“Hi, Amol Mishra here. We spoke a little while ago?”
“Hello! Yes, we did.”
“Well, you had something to tell me? Something important, I believe?”
“Uh, yes. You see, your father, Anil Mishra, has suffered an accident.”
“What? Where is he now?”
“He’s at the hospital; they’ve put him in the ICU. I can’t say more on call.”
“Which hospital is he in? Wait — how do you know all this?”
“I work at the hospital, sir. We contacted you from his emergency contacts. Also, this is St. Mary’s Hospital in Bandra East.”
“Oh— I’ll be there in 30 minutes. Don’t hold off on anything needed to help him.”

The line went cold for those at the hospital, and Amol drove there breaking quite a few traffic laws.

At the foot of his father’s bed, a nurse tapped Amol’s shoulder. It was a haze in which it all happened, but the great Anil Mishra had now become “the body.”

In the waiting room, a nurse asked who Amol would like to inform about his father’s death immediately. With a dead mother and few people he liked, his best bet was the family lawyer — who also happened to be his uncle.

It took almost half a day before his uncle got hold of all the papers, the will, and the legal proceedings. The moon could be seen peeking from the inky sky now; it had barely been another white shadow in the same sky that Amol was wearing — a bit too short, a bit too loved.

“So, Amol, how do you plan to deal with everything?” his uncle spoke to him about something other than legal jargon for the first time.
“What everything? If you mean the funeral and cremation, I want it to be discreet and quick. No point in having people mourn losing something they never had.”
“Well, that’s good to know. But I meant the other things. The debt.”
“What debt?” The fog that had surrounded Amol’s brain lifted. He was sharp and clear as day.
“Oh dear… I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. Always told him to stay away from this, stop splurging.”
“Uncle— You’re not making sense. Do you need rest? We can talk later.”
“No, no. Better to rip the bandage off as quickly as possible. The thing is, your father earned a lot less than he spent. He didn’t make the best financial decisions.”
“How much debt is it exactly?” Loans, bills, the men who had threatened to take away his car last month — was this all related?
“Umm— roughly around one crore.”
“HOW MUCH?” His voice came out louder than he had intended.
“Well, over the years, he managed to ring up a good round 80 lakhs.”
“HE DID WHAT?”

The shock should have paralysed him, but the only rule about shock is that one can never expect it to react in a certain way for everyone.

Sure, his body didn’t collapse, but his brain did — his senses went out. He could remember the scratch of a pen against crisp paper, signatures.
What had he signed up for? He would need a job soon — something that paid more than playing guitar in a band. Maybe a clerk somewhere? Or something at Subway.

The drive home lasted longer than it should have; the sun was showing now.
The rain pattered on the too-thin roof again, a bottle of something toppled on the floor, coughing up the remains of what had once been.

Amol fell into his warm bed, eyes closing calmly — one breath, then two — a pain in his gut, his knees curling up to his chest. He was a small ball on his bed, covered in sweat; it was everywhere — his forehead, cheeks, shoulders.
He wouldn’t need to clean up again. The cropped shirt was perfect to live in.
It wouldn’t stretch over his lean torso anymore.

One beat, two more — it slowed, and then—
the line went cold.

The next morning, EMI collectors would be back for his car. And no one would be around to hold them off anymore.

– Janhavi