Chapter 8: A twelve year old middle aged man
When she heard the news, she was checking in a patient to get MRI done. The world had blurred for a moment. She instructed an intern to get the report to her and had broken into a run. She called Nikki to find out where Armaan was and quickly calculated the shortest distance to get there. As she ran she didn't notice anything except for the goal that she had to achieve. She didn't notice that she was running through the dimly lit and deserted corridors in which never travelled alone. Nothing had mattered. When she opened the door of the room Armaan was in, she saw Abhi and Nikki hanging around. By their looks it didn't seem there was anything serious.
"What happened?" She threw the question to the two of them, hands on her knees and gasping for breath.
"He forgot to eat and sleep", Nikki replied wryly. Riddhima raised her eyebrows.
"You know about his insomnia right? It has gotten worse and on top of that he is skipping lots of meals. He is too absorbed in his work and in his own world", Nikki continued.
"It's nothing serious Riddhima. He needs to get some rest, drink lots of water and eat on time. He is just exhausted." Abhi said. She collapsed on a nearby chair and closed her eyes. She had felt terrified when she heard that Armaan had fainted.
"Stay here with him till he wakes up Riddhima. I will reassign your case to someone else. The situation with road accident is also contained. Anjali and Rahul will also be coming soon, so you don't need to worry." Abhi told her. Riddhima nodded gratefully. The job was important to her, she was sure of it. But the man currently sleeping was important to her too. At that moment she chose the man over her job.
"I will get you some coffee too okay?" Nikki told her and excused herself from the room after Abhi nodded at her. Abhi had sensed a sense of unrest in Armaan for past couple of weeks. All of them including Riddhima were openly worried about him he had brushed off as a byproduct of insomnia. But he seemed to be harboring something inside himself which had puzzled everyone. Riddhima hadn't pressed the matter further. She knew that once he was ready he would come to her. She gave him time to do so.
She sat down next to him and held his hand in hers and waited for him to open his eyes.
It was the most peaceful sleep he had ever had. Though his eyes felt heavy his body felt refreshed. When he opened his eyes he saw Riddhima talking to a nurse by the door and observed her for few moments. She looked exactly same as she was when he first met her but he could see the difference in her. Her actions lacked the passivity it had before and she looked little more spirited than before. A sudden splurge of pride erupted in him and he smiled when Riddhima turned to look at him. Only she didn't return the smile. He knew that there would be questions now and he wasn't in a position to deny answers to any of them. He wasn't lying but he wasn't completely honest with her when she had asked him if he was going through any problems. She cut him off before he could say anything.
"I have asked that nurse to get you some food. Eat it and then get some rest. Once you have gained some color and rest, we can talk. Okay?" She decided for him. He wasn't feeling particularly hungry given the fact that he hadn't been eating well of late but he didn't dare to cross Riddhima. He ate the soup brought in by the nurse and waited to see what Riddhima was up to.
"Since I am not on floor, everyone thinks that I am the right person to do paperwork as I have to keep a watch on you." Riddhima complained. He knew very well that she was merely using his condition as a ruse to help out her friends and was feeling sorry that she wasn't there on the floor with the others. But he needed her and she had wholeheartedly signed up for that. He smiled and nodded. In few moments, he drifted off to sleep as soon as the medications started their effect.
It was a week since Armaan had fainted in the hospital. He was feeling much better after the vacation he was forced to take. Though he wasn't too happy about being cut off from the work he appreciated the gesture. Abhi had instructed everyone to steer out of Armaan's way for first couple of days so that he can recover without anyone buzzing around him. However by the end of week Armaan had cleaned his house twice, finished reading all journals and even cleaned his roof top garden. It had been less than a year and half since he had come here and he was already dependent on his group of friends to get by. He wondered how he had managed to spend time before he came here all alone. It was the last day of his holiday and to celebrate his return Riddhima's family had invited him for dinner. But before that Riddhima was coming by early afternoon to talk to him about whatever was bothering him. She had said that he needed to vent a little before he started his work. Otherwise he would again become a ghost of his old self. When he told her that his family had been haunting him for weeks, she had strangely kept quiet and didn't press the matter. He had found it odd because she was almost envious of the family she was blessed with. He had asked her about it.
"I know how you feel Armaan because I did not always have a happy family." It was then he realized that before Shashank came in to her life her life hadn't been all that great. She was too young at that time but there might have been a deeper impact on her psyche. He wondered if Shubhankar was aware of this and made a mental note to ask him about it.
When Riddhima arrived he felt like a little kid who was about to take a big exam.
"Why are you so tense Armaan?" Riddhima asked him as he helped her to take off her jacket.
"I honestly don't know Riddhima. It may be because I haven't spoken about my family to anyone. It has been eighteen years since it happened and I have managed to overcome it till now." She didn't ask him what "it" was.
"It all started few weeks ago when I was having dinner with your family. It oddly struck a chord with me. It may be because my family and I never really ate together at dinner table so there was nothing I could be nostalgic about." Riddhima nodded and motioned him to continue.
"That day you spilled the entire container of curry, remember? Your mom rushed to you side and first checked if you were alright. She was wiping your arms with a clean dish towel and the two of you were sitting on the floor in middle of a mess. That scene reminded me of my mother and sister." Armaan reminisced. He had watched that scene from sidelines and was impressed the way the elder Guptas had handled the situation.
"You told me once that your sister was mentally challenged." Riddhima noted.
"She was. So scenes like that was quite common occurrence. Many times we had to order food because my sister had managed to spill it or had added something to it. My mother never scolded her but always tried to educate her of her mistakes. My mother had a lot of patience for my sister and she taught me that too. I was a kid myself but I had to cultivate patience that a mother had for her child. In the beginning I was upset with such an expectation set for me. But later on I saw how my mother was tired and exhausted so I decided to help her out." Armaan said.
"How did you help your mother?" Riddhima asked.
"I helped her to take care of my sister. My mother was unnaturally over protective of my sister. I didn't find it odd but I found it disturbing. My mother's over protectiveness was something akin to being obsessive about my sister. Have I told you that my father was a doctor? " Armaan asked. Riddhima shook her head no. She wanted to tell him that he hadn't told anything about himself. All the things he told her about his past were related to his days in college and boarding school. The days before his boarding school were never mentioned.
"He was an anesthesiologist and a famous one at that. Once my sister was born, the dynamics of my family changed completely. I was nine years old then and my sister had just turned six. The three of us were waiting for my father to come home for dinner but he never came. My mother put us both to bed after we had waited enough. It was the first time my father missed his promise of eating dinner with us. If he was in a surgery, he would always call and talk to us before he went about his work. I felt sad that night."
"Was he okay?" Riddhima asked him. She could imagine him as a little boy waiting for his dad to come home.
"Well, in a way. Somewhere around mid night I heard noise coming from stairs. So I crept outside my room to check it out. I saw my parents quarrelling. My father was thoroughly drunk and even slapped my mother once. Before my mother or I could react, he collapsed into a deep sleep. The look in my mother's eyes when she saw me is something I can never forget. She was ashamed that I had seen her in that situation being physically abused by her husband. I went to her and ran my palm over her cheek and told her not to cry. She nodded and asked me to help her to take my father to her room." He clearly remembered the night which had put many things to action and changed his perspective on life forever.
"After that it became a common occurrence to see him drunk. At first my sister used to scream at the sight of him beating my mother and I. We hid my sister and locked the room so that my father didn't turn his anger towards my sister. I did not understand why my father had changed so dramatically. I was too young to realize then, I suppose." Armaan said with a sigh.
"Did you think it was because of your mother and sister?" Riddhima asked. She felt that his father was already stressed with hospital and seeing his wife obsessing over their daughter had merely driven him to edge. It was either that or there was something else involved.
"It could be that or that fact that he and I were completely ignored by my mother. I was only a child myself yet I was acting like an adult. I remember my father trying to put me into a boarding school and hiring a help to take care of my sister but my mother had fought with him violently saying that she wanted both her kids to grow up together. My father was okay with that as far as I was left alone. But she didn't have any of that. After this fight, his drinking got worse."
"Didn't his drinking affect his work?"
"It did. And it was that incident which destroyed my family forever." Armaan stopped. Riddhima excused herself and prepared some coffee for both of them. She wondered if it was a good idea to talk to him about his past. Couple of days before, she had met Shubhankar and had asked him about it. He had given her a positive response.
"If there is anything in his past which affects his current mental state, then it's best if he talks about it soon. Things like those bottled up for long will not bring good to him. Just hear him out Riddhima. Based on what you hear and understand, let me know how deep the problem is, okay?" Shubhankar had advised.
She gave him a cup of coffee and sat next to him in the patio. He drank his coffee in silence and collecting his thoughts.
"What happened next?" She asked.
"For the next three years my father regularly drunk and came home whenever he wanted to. My mother stopped thinking about him and grew even more obsessed with my sister. My parents come from wealthy family and they were independently wealthy too. She never really needed money from my father to run the household. I received generous pocket money from both my parents using which I had to take care of myself. By then time I was eleven, I was already completely independent. Our family driver took me to stores and I purchased the things I wanted for school. I drowned myself in innumerable activities outside curriculum to an extent that I was numb about everything else. I know you would think that I was being a self absorbed prick but for an eleven year old, it was an excellent idea." Armaan said in one breath.
"It is not being self absorbed Armaan. It is called survival. You just looked out for yourself as neither of your parents were doing so. There is nothing wrong in what you did. I am actually impressed that you did you so well in school and other activities at that time. Many kids who are ignored by parents tend to get into bad crowd and develop severe issues in their attitudes; like being bullies or cutting classes or picking up an addiction. But you did none of that. For that, I respect you." Armaan looked at Riddhima in awe. This was definitely not the answer he was expecting. Even his father had called him extremely selfish since he hadn't bothered to find out whereabouts of his mother and his sister once and had told him that he was in swimming class so he didn't know where they went. Doing well in school and other activities had earned Armaan a good reputation of all around good boy in his school. And when his parents had come to know about it, they had looked at him in surprise. They weren't aware that their boy was capable of looking after himself this well. His mother had gone back to his sister after few minutes and his father returned to his drink. His achievements lay forgotten.
Riddhima's casual acceptance of his decision of ignoring his family had come has a surprise for him. Her reasoning had made sense and for the first time thought maybe he wasn't all that wrong about his decision.
"It was around the same time when my mother went frenzy. My sister was deregistered from the special school she was attending. My mother had got into her head that except for her no one could take care of my sister properly. This frenzy along with obsession made my mother look like a crazy person in front of everyone else. My father tried to talk her out of it but it was in vain. It was evident that something was wrong with her. Now I understand what it was by the way she used to react to things but then even I thought she had gone crazy."
"What do you think happened to her?"
"I am guessing she had a psychotic breakdown. The pressure she had felt from my father and my sister might have been too much for her to handle. She was a very sensitive person always over thinking about every little action. The amount of time she put in taking care of my sister might have consumed her when my sister was a child. It's not uncommon to see young mothers having break down post pregnancy. But in her case she never recovered. But this is just my theory."
"It is possible. But it might also be possible that she suffered from severe psychosis. I am merely drawing a common pattern between your mother and I Armaan so please do not misunderstand. Some sort of guilt or grief could have triggered that psychosis in her and made her obsessive about your sister." Armaan was impressed with his girlfriend. This is how far she had come since he first met her. The girl who didn't want to talk about anything about herself of her past was now using her own example to make him see things clearly about himself. She had become stronger than he originally thought she was.
"That is also possible. She forbade all our relatives and friends to come to our house. She fired most of the house staff except for cook and driver. My mother fully ignored my father and I. It wasn't as if we even existed. My father however bad drunk he was he was not really a bad guy. He tried to get some help for my mother but she never cooperated. After that the chasm between us deepened even more."
"But the worst part was yet to come. My father created a major blunder during a surgery and the patient died on table. It was obvious that my father was to blame. The hospital wasn't happy with my father due to his behavior in past years so they fired him and released the news to local news. The news devastated my father and since my mother had managed to alienate all of our family friends and relatives, he was completely broken. Three days later, he hung himself. I was the one to find him hanging from the ceiling." Riddhima could only stare at him. She could not fathom the damage Armaan's young psyche had undergone.
"My mother was shocked and my sister could only cry. I took help from our cook and driver to arrange for his rites. My mother refused to come and I had to do it alone. There were so many things happening. There was staff from hospital, police and few of his colleagues. Seeing so many people inside the house had drove my mother into one of her psychotic breakdowns. My father's colleagues who were doctors tried calming her down but she accused them of stealing her daughter. They put her on a sedative and had left for the day. It was a suicide case and it was made a huge deal by our neighborhood. One week later I came home after shopping for supplies to find the front door already open. Our cook was waiting for me in living room and she looked panicked. She told me that my mother had locked herself up along with my sister in her room and hadn't come out in a long time. Our driver and I ran to the room and knocked on door many times. But mom never opened it. Fearing the worst we had to break down the door to find that my mother and my sister were dead for a few hours already. She had fed herself and my sister poison and handful of sedatives. They had died in their sleep." Armaan finished numbly. Riddhima was shocked. Losing all of the family with in span of one week because of suicides was something she couldn't even comprehend. It was surprising that Armaan had turned out the way he had. Kids like him would grow to be the complete social outcasts and would never be able to settle down in one job. But Armaan had overcome his entire childhood trauma and made a life of his own.
Of course things would haunt him permanently irrespective of the hours of therapy he might have to take or had taken. Riddhima knew that she had to tell Shubhankar the extent of depression Armaan had undergone as a child. Armaan seemed to believe that he had overcome it but in reality it was never really even addressed. Unless he saw things for what it's worth, episodes like previous week would keep returning.
"After that I went to boarding school. I got busy with my work and tried very hard to forget everything about my family. I was twelve then but felt as if I was a middle aged guy. I knew things that my classmates could not even think of. I had seen things that my friends could never handle even if they were adults. Life taught me bitter lessons at a very young age. After graduating from medical school I volunteered for UN. I knew that I could handle job at the UN. I had gotten a sense of recklessness and carelessness about myself. I was alone in this world and it didn't matter what happened to me."
"It is not like that anymore. Is that the pressure you were facing earlier?" Riddhima asked him directly.
"Please do not misunderstand me Riddhima. For past eighteen years I have been alone. But in last one year, I have best friends, a girl I love dearly, family which takes care of me, a father figure and whole lot of acquaintances. I am very happy. And that's what scares me." Armaan answered looking straight in her eye when he said that.
"I am afraid I am going to lose all these things one day." Armaan continued and sighed. Riddhima understood where all the problems had stemmed from. He had a fear of people leaving him. His happy childhood had turned into an absolute nightmare and his job wasn't all that roses and sunshine either. Finally he was having a shot at happiness but his continual failure in the same area had made him doubt. She had to get him to talk to Shubhankar. But that had to wait for another day. They had dinner to go to.
"Let's go home." She said.
To be continued.
Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin
