The Confessions: He died in his childhood bedroom. Why is he still chained to his body?
The Last Dinner My Mother Made
The last thing my mother asked me to do was bring my plate downstairs.
“Otherwise you’ll leave it there,” she said, sliding another poori onto the steel thali. “Tomorrow I’ll find ants.”
“Ma, enough.”
“You said enough before I gave you anything.”
She pressed the serving spoon against a potato, breaking it into two. Gravy ran into the compartment beside the pooris. A strand of hair had escaped her clip, and she pushed it away with the back of her wrist.
The kitchen window flashed yellow.
“Working now?” someone shouted from the courtyard.
Half the wedding lights went dark.
Ma looked through the grille and sighed.
“Your father will stand there until morning supervising that wire.”
Through the dining-room doorway, I could see him bent over a handwritten list, his food cooling beside his elbow. His glasses had slipped down his nose. Beneath the ceiling light, the thinning patch on his crown showed through the few strands he still combed carefully across it.
He caught me looking.
“Station tomorrow. Six-thirty.”
“I just got here, Papa.”
“So have the other guests. Somebody has to collect them.”
From downstairs, an uncle shouted that the lights were working.
Papa put down his spoon and went to check.
Ma watched him leave.
“Thirty years,” she murmured. “Still cannot finish one meal while it’s hot.”
I laughed.
She smiled without looking up.
I had come home that morning with a suitcase, a laptop, and five days of leave. By eleven that night, I had collected relatives, carried chairs, and argued with a decorator who insisted that maroon and red were the same colour.
At thirty-two, I spent most of my working life explaining software problems to people who wanted them fixed yesterday.
My brother’s wedding seemed to involve much the same skill.
“Sit here,” Ma said, nudging a chair with her foot. “I’ll make tea after.”
“I’ll eat upstairs. A couple of office messages.”
Her spoon stopped.
“You’re on leave.”
“Just replies.”
She glanced at the chair again, then added two sweets to my plate.
“Take water.”
“Haan.”
“And bring this down.”
“I heard you, Ma.”
I was already turning toward the stairs.
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Ten O’Clock Tomorrow
Manish sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, surrounded by envelopes and shopping bags. His phone was trapped between his shoulder and ear.
“Bhai. Wait.”
I stopped outside.
He covered the microphone.
“Come with me tomorrow to collect the sherwani.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
I looked at him.
“Ten,” he said.
“Papa’s already sending me to the station at six-thirty.”
“I’ll do the station. You come with me afterward.”
That was Manish. He would complain for ten minutes about helping me, then quietly take the worse job.
“Fine.”
“Ten means ten.”
“You’ve become very demanding since the engagement.”
He grinned.
I started walking.
“Bhai.”
“What?”
He pointed at the sweets.
I held one out. Instead of taking it, he leaned forward and bit it from my fingers, dropping crumbs onto an envelope.
“Animal.”
He chewed, smiling.
For a moment, I saw him at eight years old, sitting beside me on a train, asleep with his sticky hand still inside my packet of biscuits.
Now there were wedding envelopes around his knees.
“Cream suits you,” I said, nodding toward the photograph on his phone.
He looked down at it.
“Really?”
“Don’t ruin it with those shiny shoes.”
“There it is,” he said. “I was worried you’d become nice.”
I left him laughing into the phone.
The Room I Kept Locked
My bedroom knob needed lifting before it would turn.
I balanced the plate on one palm, raised the handle, and pushed with my shoulder. The door scraped over the floor.
I had been meaning to repair it for three visits.
Inside, Ma had left a folded bedsheet and a clean pillowcase on the chair. She knew I disliked people moving my things, so she had stopped changing the bed herself.
I had called that privacy.
The room held other evidence of my visits: a small cigarette burn near the pillow, another low on the curtain, an old steel lid with ash worked into its rim.
I put the food beneath the television and slid the brass bolt across the door.
For months, smoking and drinking had occupied more of my day than I admitted to anyone. At my flat in Kolkata, packets lay beside the laptop. Sometimes I reached for a cigarette and found one already burning.
Here, I hid them behind folded jeans.
I worried about Papa finding the bottle. I imagined his disappointment, the silence afterward, relatives carrying the discovery downstairs in lowered voices.
With Manish’s wedding approaching, every imagined consequence became larger.
So I kept the door locked.
I switched on the television, lowered its sudden burst of applause, and listened.
Nobody came upstairs.
The AC started with a click. I pulled the curtains together, leaving a narrow gap beside the window grille, then opened the wardrobe.
Behind three stacks of jeans were the whisky and cigarette packets.
I took them out without disturbing the folded edges.
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One Drink Before Dinner
My phone buzzed.
Manish had sent another photograph of the sherwani.
Don’t let me forget the shoes.
I typed:
Unfortunately I’ve seen them.
His reply arrived while I was lighting a cigarette.
Sleep early, old man.
Downstairs, somebody began a wedding song and forgot the second line. Three women supplied three different versions.
I smiled around the filter.
Then I coughed.
I bent forward, swallowing the last of it so the sound would not carry, and reached for the water jug.
Empty.
I tipped it over the glass anyway. One drop struck the bottom.
I could have gone downstairs. Ma would still be awake. She might scold me for carrying an empty jug past the kitchen.
Instead, I looked at the bottle.
“One small drink.”
The whisky rose higher than I intended.
The first swallow burned enough to make my eyes water. I lowered the glass and waited, then tore a poori and pressed it into the potatoes.
“Guddu?”
Ma’s voice came from the staircase.
I stopped with the food in my hand.
“Haan?”
“Have you eaten?”
“Eating.”
“Water?”
I looked at the jug.
“Yes.”
“All right. Don’t stay awake working.”
Her slippers moved away.
I put down the piece of poori.
I waited until I could hear her downstairs before lifting the glass again.
The Phone Beside My Pillow
I do not remember deciding on the second drink.
I remember the bottle touching the rim of the tumbler. I remember wiping a spill with my palm.
The room had grown cold.
I put out the cigarette, pulled the thin blanket over my legs, and leaned against the pillow. There was a dull discomfort beneath my breastbone. I shifted onto my side and blamed the whisky.
On the desk, the gravy was forming a skin.
I would eat in a minute.
My phone showed a little after midnight.
I set an alarm for half past eight, then changed it to nine.
Manish would call.
Before putting the phone down, I opened my conversation with Ma. Most of it was photographs of meals, reminders about train tickets, and questions I answered hours late.
Her last message was from two days earlier.
Come safely. Don’t bring anything. Just come.
I had replied with a thumbs-up.
I stared at it for a moment, then locked the screen.
Downstairs, a door closed.
The television kept talking.
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A Hand’s Distance Away
Something woke me.
I tried to turn over, but a heavy pressure held the middle of my chest.
For a few seconds, I waited for it to pass.
It tightened.
I pushed myself upward on one elbow. Sweat ran from my hairline into my ear, although the AC was cold against my face.
I could not draw a satisfying breath.
“Ma.”
The word barely reached the edge of the bed.
My phone lay beside the pillow.
I stretched toward it.
My elbow slipped.
The phone dropped into the gap between the mattress and the wall. I pushed my fingers after it, scraping the bedsheet into a fold.
Downstairs, water splashed into a bucket.
Someone was awake.
I tried to shout.
The Face I Could No Longer See
I was standing beside the wardrobe.
For a moment, I thought I had got up for water.
Then I saw the bed.
One foot hung over the edge. The blanket had slipped to the waist. A hand lay beside the pillow, fingers curled toward the wall.
I recognised the scar near the elbow.
My hand went to the same place on my own arm.
On the bed, the thread Ma had tied around my wrist that morning rested against the sheet.
But my face was gone.
I could see an ear, the flattened hair, the curve of my neck above the collar. Between them was a black opening.
I leaned sideways.
The darkness stayed.
Television light moved across the pillow and my chest. None of it entered that space.
Then I smelled something burning.
I turned toward the desk. The cigarette was crushed in the lid.
I checked the blanket, the television wires, the socket.
Nothing smoked.
The smell thickened: burnt hair and scorched flesh, a sickly heaviness that caught at the back of my throat.
I folded forward and gagged.
Nothing came.
I waited for saliva, the sour rush, anything.
My shoulders convulsed again.
There was no relief afterward.
When I straightened, the smell remained.
So did the body.
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Get Up
I’m dreaming.
The thought brought such relief that I almost laughed.
I had fallen asleep with the television on. I had been drinking. This was something my mind had made.
I pinched my forearm.
No sting.
I twisted harder, watching the skin between my fingers.
“Come on.”
I slapped my cheek.
I felt my arm move, but no blow landed.
“Wake up.”
The television audience laughed.
I went to the wall beside the wardrobe and fixed my eyes on a chip in the paint.
Then I drove my forehead toward it.
I expected pain.
My head passed through.
I pulled back into the room and stared at the undamaged wall.
“No.”
I tried once more, harder, desperately wanting something solid to stop me.
Nothing did.
At the bed, I kept my eyes below the chin.
“Mohit. Get up.”
My hands passed through the shoulder, the wrist, the chest.
Perhaps I had come loose. Perhaps I could fit myself back.
I lowered myself carefully, matching my arms to the arms on the mattress. Before bringing my head down, I hesitated above the darkness.
Then I closed my eyes and pushed toward it.
A moment later, I was beneath the bed.
Beside the wall lay a missing slipper, dust caught around its strap.
I had searched for it during my last visit.
Above me, my body had not moved.
I stayed beside that slipper until I could bear to try something else.
The Chain Around My Ankle
I rushed through the bedroom door.
The corridor appeared around me. Beyond the railing, the staircase led toward my parents’ room.
I took two steps.
Metal scraped behind me.
A dark chain circled my right ankle.
I lifted my foot. The nearest links rose with it; the rest lay across the tiles and disappeared through the closed door.
I bent and pushed my fingers beneath the loop.
For the first time since waking, I touched something that resisted me.
The metal was cold.
I followed it back into the room.
Its other end circled the ankle hanging from the bed.
I pulled.
The chain straightened.
My body remained still.
I leaned backward with both hands around the links until the loop tightened painfully against my ankle.
Nothing on the bed shifted.
At the door, I gathered the loose length and tried again.
Perhaps I could reach the stairs.
Perhaps they would hear me from there.
The last links lifted from the floor.
I stretched toward the railing.
The chain caught.
My hand passed through the wood, and I fell backward into the bedroom.
For a long time, I sat with the links in my lap, turning them, searching for a fastening.
There was none.
Downstairs, Papa coughed in his sleep.
“Papa,” I called.
The sound of him settling against his pillow came faintly through the floor.
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Morning Without Me
The house woke a little at a time.
A tap opened. Someone searched for a towel. Ma asked where the large saucepan had gone.
I listened for the sound of tea being poured.
Usually, its smell reached the staircase.
Now there was only burning flesh.
At nine, my alarm rang beside the mattress.
I crouched near the phone and pressed the screen.
My finger passed through.
Half an hour later, Manish called.
His photograph filled the display, one hand raised because he had been tired of me taking pictures.
I touched the green button.
“Please.”
The call ended.
A message appeared.
Wake up. Leaving at 10.
Later, another.
Taking Chintu. You owe me breakfast.
I could hear him downstairs asking someone to find the scooter keys.
I shouted until his voice disappeared beyond the gate.
For years, I had trusted that someone at home would come looking if I slept too late.
That morning, everyone was letting me rest.
My Mother on the Other Side
Ma knocked sometime afterward.
“Guddu?”
I hurried toward her.
The chain tightened before I reached the door, so I stopped and leaned forward.
“Open it.”
The handle rattled.
“Tea is getting cold.”
“I’m here.”
She waited.
Then, gently, “Are you unwell?”
I pressed my hands through the panel.
“Yes, Ma. Please.”
A relative called from downstairs.
Ma answered, but stayed a moment longer.
“You were coughing last night,” she said. “Come down when you wake up.”
Her slippers moved away.
I looked toward the plate.
Two pooris remained stuck together at the top.
I remembered her separating them in the kitchen.
I had thought she was fussing.
Now I wanted her to come back and ask me every question again.
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The Window
Papa came shortly after noon.
“Mohit.”
Two firm knocks.
“Your mother has been calling.”
The knob turned.
“Open.”
I moved as close as the chain allowed.
He knocked harder.
Then he called downstairs.
“Ruby, ring him.”
The phone began vibrating beside the wall.
Papa stopped moving.
“Mohit?”
He tried the handle again.
His slippers scraped toward the window.
I looked at the bottle on the desk.
Even then, shame rose automatically. I wanted to hide it before he saw.
His fingers curled around the grille.
He bent toward the gap in the curtains.
His eyes moved across the room.
The food.
The glass.
The bed.
“Guddu?”
The anger had left his voice.
“Yes, Papa.”
He tapped the window.
I stepped toward him until the chain lifted.
“I’m here.”
His hand tightened around the bars.
“Manish!”
What It Took to Open the Door
Manish had returned from the shops. I heard him running before I heard him answer.
“What happened?”
“Open it.”
“Bhai?”
His palm struck the panel.
“Bhai, stop it. Open the door.”
Someone went to find a tool. Papa kept turning the handle.
I looked at the bolt I had slid into place so easily.
I had worried about somebody entering without asking. Now my father stood outside trying to tear the frame apart.
“Move back,” an uncle said.
The first blow shook dust from above the door.
The second split the wood beside the screws.
When it gave, Papa stumbled into the room.
He came straight toward me.
For one foolish second, I raised my arms.
He passed through them.
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‘Look at Papa’
The bed dipped beneath him.
He reached for my face.
I wanted to stop his hand before it entered the darkness.
Instead, his palm rested against a cheek I could not see. His thumb moved beneath an invisible eye.
“Guddu.”
He touched my forehead.
Then my neck.
“Call the doctor.”
Manish was already on his phone.
Papa rubbed my arm between his hands. He had done that when I was a child, warming me after I came home soaked in rain.
“Get a blanket.”
He saw the one across my waist and pulled it higher himself.
“Open your eyes.”
I knelt beside him.
“Papa, here.”
He bent toward the pillow.
“Look at Papa.”
“I am.”
His glasses slipped.
He pushed them up with a shaking finger, then took them off altogether.
I had imagined this man discovering every hidden thing in the room. I had rehearsed excuses and arguments.
The bottle stood uncovered on the desk.
He never looked at it.
He pulled the blanket over my hanging foot and rubbed it through the cloth.
“Why is he so cold?”
Manish turned away while speaking into the phone.
He tried to give our address.
He forgot the house number.
The Plate She Had Asked Me to Bring Down
Ma arrived carrying water.
Flour marked the side of one finger.
“What happened?”
She looked from Manish to Papa.
Then she saw the bed.
Water spilled over her hand.
“Move.”
She pushed between them and touched my cheek.
“Guddu?”
Her other hand settled on my chest.
She waited.
Pressed harder.
“Wake up.”
I reached for her wrist.
“Ma.”
She leaned close enough that her hair brushed my forehead.
“You have to go with Manish.”
Behind her, my brother lowered the phone.
For a moment, he looked like the small boy who used to wait outside my room after a nightmare, pretending he only needed water.
I wanted to make space for him beside me.
I wanted to ask whether he had collected the sherwani.
Ma looked toward the desk.
The untouched food caught her attention.
“You haven’t even eaten.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
I remembered the chair she had pushed out with her foot.
The tea she had offered.
Ten minutes downstairs. That was all she had asked of me before she asked about the plate.
I tried to put my head against her shoulder.
There should have been the smell of cotton warmed by her skin, kitchen soap, a trace of the oil she put in her hair.
Burning flesh filled everything.
I gagged and turned away.
She never stopped calling my name.
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The Place Beside Them
People gathered at the doorway.
Someone told them to give us room. Someone else was crying.
Manish sat beside my legs, still holding his phone. His thumb kept waking the screen.
Papa smoothed the blanket over my knees. When it creased, he smoothed it again.
Ma held my head.
I lowered myself beside her, careful of the chain.
For years, I had shortened calls from home because I was tired, busy, eating, about to sleep. I had assumed there would be another evening when I could listen properly.
Now I listened to every broken breath.
“Ma.”
I placed my hand over hers.
It sank through her fingers.
I left it there anyway.
On the desk, the dinner waited.
She had asked me to bring the plate down.
I could not even do that.
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