Lock and Key

I’m standing, key in hand, at the office door. It’s Monday. Or is it Wednesday? Who knows? When life is a series of Mondays, the best you can hope for is to start on top of the ticker tape of the to-do list and notch your way to the bottom before this mid-week Monday is done. Tomorrow, it will be Monday again. 

It’s been blurring for a while now. But it’s the first time, I’ve managed getting up, bathing, coffee, breakfast, kid, the perfunctory peck on the lips of the perfunctory husband, and even the customary expletives at some lane-swapping bastard without having woken up completely. Or at all. 

I know I did everything I just listed, like I know I breathed in and out through the night. I don’t have to remember having done it to know it got done. But shouldn’t I remember having left home? Or what my son’s face looked like this morning? Was it still tear-stained from accidentally locking himself in the loo last night? How did I get him out?

#

The last thing I remember is walking upstairs after dinner and hearing his wail from inside the bathroom. The thump of his little fists against the door. Me screaming from outside, trying to get him to unlock it from within. Hearing him whimpering and uncomprehending on the other side, I knew that he would not be able to coax the lock open. 

At this point, Amar, the husband, entered the scene and proceeded to don the ‘one sane male’ mantle.

“Calm down, Tarini, don’t get hysterical. It’s not helping.”

“I need you to step back,” I said, shoving him aside.

I think he did a literal double-take. His Taru, soft, docile, sweet, cow Taru, pushing him? 

“Let me take care of this for you.”

At this point, I lifted a chair and slammed it against the lock. Amar raised his hands as if I was holding him at gunpoint. I slammed the door until it cracked, and I saw my little boy, my precious Appu, cowering against the bathroom wall. Everything after that is a blank. Last night, I think, I cracked something inside me. 

#

It seems to have done something to me. I’m frozen, unable to open a door I’ve opened every morning for a decade of grey Mondays. I desperately want to remember a moment in vivid colour before I unlock it. A greyness, like clotted cotton wool in my lungs, is wetly suffocating me from within. A cold sweat springs up, beading my upper lip. I’m afraid that if I open this door again without remembering a Sunday afternoon moment, I will doom myself to Mondays till I keel over at my desk.  My mind tries, finds no purchase and slips.

I hear a car arrive behind me and instantly know it’s Rumi.  I can see her vintage yellow Beetle in my mind without turning. She slams the door and walks towards me. I wish it weren’t her right now. I’ve spent so many years being flawless in front of her, never letting on how much I want to taste her beautiful mouth. I’m the good mentor, harmless, dependable Tarini. Not this paralysed, batshit crazy Tarini.

“Heya Tarini, this is legend! You’re not already in the office? I thought you crept out of the filing cabinets in the morning before we got here.” Her cheery tone falters as I stand there, catatonic.

And still, I cannot remember. If I died right now, would a series of obligations flash before my eyes? I know, if I open the door and let her in, I will simply walk through another numb and blind day, before ending up opening the door on another Monday. 

It’s then that I notice the new key dangling on my keychain. Like something out of a child’s imagination. A familiar key, three-lobed, thick filigreed brass. A key to unlock treasure chests, secret gardens and women locked away for life for the privilege of being rescued by self-righteous men they’ve never met. A key to unlock chastity belts or Pandora’s box loaded with a god’s vengeance and blame. Or even Blackbeard’s lair with piles of murdered wives within. This key, it thaws me.

When Rumi sashays over to me, I hide it and open the door with my regular key. I must get in before her frangipani scent envelopes me. She must not see the key. It’s mine. It will save me.

#

I get through the day somehow. I’ve always been a wind-up doll for people’s expectations. All my life, my mother held the key to me. Till four, I would feel her fury only through her hands, like vices on my arms. She wouldn’t hit me. That’s not what women from good families do. She would crush my arms and speak softly right into my face, leaving red imprints of her fingers and bloody crescents from her manicured nails on my arms. I learned the lifecycle of a bruise – blue, then purple, then yellow. You could count how often I had angered her by the different colours pressed into my skin. 

She was Mamaaa, never Amma. Nothing as ordinary as Amma. The last descendant of the distinguished Tomars. With a mind like a steam engine, put to service the humble pressure cooker. Tomar women were brilliant at business. Tomar women were impeccable wives. Tomar women had wasp waists, expensive tastes, and husbands that sat squarely on the asset column of the ledger, all in service of clan and dynasty. Except she didn’t. She married a failure against her father’s judgment, thinking Daddy would take care of it. Daddy disowned her instead. Then, she had the temerity to birth a daughter. 

And to add insult to injury, the failure who got her exiled from paradise died. She was alone, and nothing was how it should’ve been. It was my job to fix that.  To bring back an army of domestic servants to this echoing house. To give her a toehold again into the world where she was once a rising star. To become the perfect Tomar debutante. She would make sure I did, even if she had to trim me like the impeccable topiary in my grandfather’s gardens. 

When the bruises didn’t achieve the desired shape, my mother decided to up the ante. She was locked out, so I would be locked in until I complied. One day, I sat with my legs apart when we visited Grandpa and gave his drawing-room crowd a view of my raggedy knickers.