Pull the plug

I stared at him. His eyes told it very clearly. Pull the plug Goddamnit!

Fifteen years back, when I first met him outside our college – he tried to sell me a credit card. I patiently explained to him that college kids normally didn’t qualify for credit card offers. Probably he was standing at the wrong gate. There was an IT company right opposite to our college.

“Oh Yeah! Sorry madam. I on the wrong gate.” He was embarrassed.

“That’s why the chicken crossed the road!” I replied.

We hit it off. He was a graduate – passed the course in his third attempt. While his English was pidgin, his Tamil was equally bad.

“Thirukkurala? Kettadillaiye?” He said the other day. I told him all about the great Thiruvalluvar including the saint’s statue near Vivekananda Rock off the coast of Kanyakumari.

He was perhaps the only Tamilian who hadn’t heard of Thiruvalluvar until then.

“How you know him? You are Telugu no?” He asked me immediately.

“Yes! But I have been in Tamil Nadu for the last four years.” I said.

We got married three years later. Our parents died long back. So there was no one to protest. We went to a priest, spent some five thousand rupees and became a couple.

“Singaperumal Koil vandaacchu. Get down.” He woke me up. I rubbed my sleepy eyes and peered outside. The vibrant village of Singaperumal Koil was just waking up.

I alighted from the bus and waved him off. He was traveling to his hometown near Madhurai. I worked in a software company near Singaperumal Koil.

Please, pull the plug you idiot!

The message was clear. I knew I had to do it. In fact I wanted to do it. I wanted to walk out of the room with a sense of accomplishment.

It was a cat as per the eyewitnesses.

The driver wanted to avoid, of all things in this world, a cat; a cat with three legs.

The result was that the cat lived to tell the tale all the three legs intact. The bus plunged into the river. The driver was never seen again. My man took the impact on his spinal chord.

“What can I say – It is a wonder he is still breathing. But he is completely paralyzed. He cannot even hear anything. Only his eyesight is functioning normally.”

I tried hard not to cry. I missed a shoulder to cry on.

“When will he be normal doctor?” I asked him.

He replied with silence.

“Will he ever be normal doctor?” I persisted even though the answer was pretty evident to me.

It took me quite a while to accept the situation. My man was going to be like this for the rest of his life. He would wake up everyday and stare at the ceiling. He would do that for twelve hours with brief spells of unconsciousness in between. He would try to talk through his eyes. I could see the pain, the frustration, the confusion and finally the nirvana – His eyes, those hazel ones I fell for, were the window to his soul. I understood his thoughts comprehensively. We talked as if we were chatting in his favorite Tea shop right outside our one room apartment in Velachery.

And one day he appeared more serious than he ever was.

It can’t continue like this.

Why not?

Our bank balance is zero. No money to pay.

I will do something.

What?

I will think of something. I can do anything for you.

Be practical.

No! I don’t want to be practical here. I want to be just myself. I want to talk to you like this everyday – No TV to disturb us. No calls for HSBC.

How pay for treatment? We don’t have anything.

I will manage. I can manage. I will go to my relatives.

His eyes smiled. He knew I was talking without thinking. I looked away to hide my tears.

He slept. I stared at him. The moonlight was sneaking into the room. I knew I wouldn’t be able to extract a penny from any of my relatives. I knew it was the end of the road for me. I knew what was in store. I knew everything. The only thing I didn’t know was how to accept the facts.

Pull the plug

My conscience roared again. It’s best for him. Rid him off this miserable life.

That night I withdrew two hundred rupees from the ATM and decided not to have a printout of the transaction. I was not ready to see the remaining balance of my account. I just walked on the road – at ten in the night. The beach was deserted. I sat there on the sand watching the waves – the reflection of the moon, the ships emerging victorious from the horizon.

Pull the plug

I stood up and started walking into the sea. Pull the plug. All because of a three legged cat. The water was icy. Don’t you know it is the end of the world. It ended when you said Goodbye!

I was angry. I was furious. I didn’t know whom to blame for wrecking my wonderful life. The cat? The driver? My bank balance? I wanted to kill somebody. I wanted to take revenge. I had to find a channel to vent my anger. It was building up inside me uncontrollably.

Twenty years before, I found myself in a similar situation. It was my pet cat. It came under a speeding motorcycle. Fortunately the rider was not injured. My cat however was almost crushed. The Vet shook his head and declared that it had to be put to sleep.

“Why? She is still alive.” I cried.

“She will lead a life of misery Tanya. It is in her best interests that we have to do this.” My father tried to reason with me.

“Go away. No one touches her.” I shouted with tears rolling down my cheeks.

My mother locked me up in the bedroom when the cat was given the injection. I cried for two days. I had never really recovered from that shock. I had not been able to understand our Vet’s reasoning.

Ten years later, my parents went on a tour to Kashmir. They wanted to see Dal lake. I was in a boarding school then. I begged them to take me with them. However they didn’t agree. It was a celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary and they wanted to spend it alone.

The night they left, I cried for hours. The fact that I was not considered as an integral part of their marriage hit me very badly.

I hated them. When my uncle – the one who had never bothered to visit us till then – broke the news that my parents would never come back from Kashmir, I was silent. I didn’t feel like crying.

My life had since then undergone sweeping changes. No one wanted to take care of me. I found myself at the mercy of the orphanage next door.

The water was inviting. Just a couple of steps more and I would be history. As I was about to take those two steps, I heard his voice in my mind.

If you kill yourself, who will talk to me my dear?

I stopped. Who will talk to me?

Next morning I went to that place near Thindivanam where the accident happened.

“Where is that cat?” I asked the police inspector.

He didn’t ask me why I wanted that cat. He knew my plight. “Saravana” he called his head constable.

It took us just about half an hour to locate the cat. We found it in the slums. It was by then a very famous cat. The cat that killed thirty, injured ten and immobilized one.

“Madam, Anbe Sivam paatthengala?” Saravanan asked me. I nodded. I did see that movie. I knew what he was thinking. It was a dog there. The coincidence was killing me.

I took the cat in my hands. Taxo plasmosis. Put it down. I could almost here my man screaming from the hospital. I only told him how dangerous cats could be. Taxo Plasmosis could create grave complications during pregnancy. Cats carried the bacteria Taxi Plasma Gondi. I loved cats. He started despising them after this revelation.

“If it is dangerous I don’t want it in home.” He declared firmly.

I didn’t foresee that it could be this dangerous. Forget Taxo whatever, the cat did take its toll.

“Madam, Enna paNNapporenga?” Saravanan asked me curiously.

I smiled and took a butcher knife out.

Saravanan screamed, “No!”

I kept on smiling. The cat’s head was the first target. Then I attacked those three legs. Finally I worked on its tail.

“My God! Kadavule! Ayyo paavam” Saravanan vomited.

I showed the knife to him, “Don’t sympathize with the cat.”

“But what did it do?”

“It derailed my life Saravanan. I know it was not the cat’s mistake. I know I acted in a barbarous way. However I needed to kill it. It was something that could bring closure to the turmoil in my life. My mind is now clear. I know what to do.”

Saravanan was aghast.

“Where can I find the driver of the bus?” I asked him.

It gave him a jolt. “No madam No! He went missing. We don’t know where he is.”

I handed my visiting card to him. “Do me a favor Saravanan, give me a call if you hear anything about him.”

When I boarded the bus back to Chennai – I just couldn’t wait to get to the hospital.

Pull the plug

I will my dear I will. Can’t wait to do it now.

The End.