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FICTION
THE ABODE OF SEASONS REMAIN VACANT By Manisha Kulshreshtha Translated from the Hindi by Aparna Anekvarna the abode of seasons remain vacant people dwell within walls and doors. Sheen Kaaf Nizam This time, she was dead serious about it. The day had been dripping-wet and that particular colour of the season did not mean anything to her anymore. She felt the pain shooting beyond its threshold. It caused a kind of short-circuit in her brain-wiring. At its peak now, her loneliness was complete. Curled close to a heap of books and the television left on the whole night, she had to brace herself to face yet another forsaken morning in that corner, its faded pink curtains, in the same decay of that very house, area, city and country in the same old world. She woke up like this maybe for the one thousand and thirtieth time, that day. Carrying a three-year-old pain in her lower abdomen, a dead appetite, swollen anaemic face and puffy eyes, chipped nailpaint and raw fingernails. Her mind was made. This was no emotional blackmailing or any wrath-driven impulse. It had sprouted to become a necessity now. This day, suicide had turned into a desperate need. To her, nothing had remained the same as before, in fact everything was over. The will to live or sleep, the occasional daydreaming, trust over god or her own self, physical attraction towards men, indulgences and fetishes, even her interest in grooming, food or drinks was over. Days went by without even a single glance at the mirror. “Let me do away with this troublesome continuation of inhaling and exhaling.” She dragged herself to the balcony of her third-floor apartment and peered down. The jamun tree there was in full splendour turning the road below purple, with the plump, dark berries falling now and then. The plums fell to their squashed end, creating pleasant purple patterns on the road. If she willed so, she could have easily taken a similar plunge just as she had been imagining a thousand times, and at times dreamt about it as well. “No, this ain’t the correct way.” She couldn’t bring herself to fall to a squashed end and turn the road red like a jamun plum. So what next? She went back inside. A note, with a phone number, in bold black markings on the wall near her bed’s headrest read “Sumaitri: Life is precious”. A friend had scribbled the number of the NGO when she was there to drop her home from a hospital. At that time, she had attempted suicide by consuming phenyl. “Listen, just dial this number whenever you have the same inclination again. Thankfully I arrived in time and you went through the abdomen-wash and saline was administered
