Note 4.

So it was just another one of those days, getting low, then getting high by getting high. Randy Blythe blared electrically through the ceiling fan still, for laziness had personally asked them to delay calling the electrician to fix it. She, in particular, felt obliged in not getting it fixed. Because being obliged is one of those phrases of the English language which have two genuine, completely contrasting definitions. When she felt obliged, chances are that she might not really have been obliged at all. 

She didn't particularly like going out too much now, especially after the episodes became frequent. She was particularly afraid of the evenings and the nights outside, because those triggered her "episodes" even more. She liked the wind in her face, but the traffic was maddening. Literally maddening. 

The first time she saw her, she wore a pink worn-out Saree with faded purple grapevines printed on it that now looked like dead branches that hadn't been watered for at least 30 years. She must have been in her early fifties, but she looked eighty years of age. The wrinkles on her face were carved carelessly and in a hurry, and her face was unevenly sunken from both sides. The measly layer of skin on her arms was dark as ebony from the lack of sunscreen lotion, and an air conditioned cabin, or of empathy, all or none of these. But you could tell that her face was still bright, from the glimpses you stole from beneath her pallu covering her head and clutched between her teeth from one side. 'Amma', as she was known, smiled at her through her half-clad face. Now that she had finally stepped out from her shack after a long time, she decided to walk over to Amma's little establishment on the sidewalk.

"Bohot time ho gaya gudiya, tumhe dekhe," Amma said to her with a suppressed child-like laughter, that burst out in weary chuckles between her sentences. "Kahaan rehti ho aajkal?" Amma inquired with an affectionate smile, her eyes gleaming like a mug full of sparkling, freshly poured beer.

She didn't know what to make of Amma's question, one of the apparently simple ones but the most hard to answer. What do you tell someone when they ask you where you've been all this time? Do you tell them a detailed account of all the places that you've been going in and coming out of? Would they really stand and wait to listen all of it? And even if they do, do they really give any tiny speck of fuck? So, realizing the sheer futility, after thinking for a few seconds sometimes and sometimes just shooting right out with it, you say, "bas, yahin kahin. Idhar udhar..."

Then, the psycho-actives took the better part of her. You know, how they make you paranoid, and helpless in controlling and managing the million thoughts shooting through your neurons like forest fires. What did Amma really mean? Was she trying to tell her something? Because really, where had she been all this while? Should she describe the dark tunnel she has been mentally living in, with its scurrying rats and despicable creeping insects? She didn't know. It was as if eons had ended within a fraction of a second. 

She stood gaping at Amma's stack of fresh but dead vegetables, each covered with a million little water droplets and lying in perfect symmetry on a bed of moist gunny bags on the sidewalk.

"Busy rehte hain Amma... time hi kahaan aaj kal..." she spoke after a while, in utter detachment. 

She realized that she had forgotten why she had come out that day. She fell silent again, and a befuddled and delusional look spread all over her face as she froze in her spot again.