Amma was coming. Amma was coming. Amma was coming tomorrow.
If I couldn’t keep it calm and cool while she was in town, my sweet, anxious mother would think something was wrong. But of course, there wasn’t anything for her to worry about because nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong.
One week after leaving Thiruvananthapuram, I had never once felt better.
My new apartment was a mess, open boxes and bubble wrap, a place unfit for my mother to see. Unpacking was taking a long time because I was running a little thought experiment. I was trying to make my apartment the most efficient place in the whole world. I got the idea from watching my paternal grandmother all summer long. Ammooma was nearly blind and deaf, yet she zipped around her flat like a roadrunner. Everything had its place and that place was in the path of least resistance for her. Efficiency then depended on each individual’s idiosyncrasies. When a person is in control of their environment, its layout transformed into a schema of their mind.
As I figured out the best places to put mixing bowls, towels, and instruction manuals, I took copious notes on my thought processes and my overall progress. As I suspected, it was all connected. The research I’d done in Thiruvananthapuram, the ethnography I’d conducted on my grandmother, the answers I’d found to the questions that yawned in my heart. Yes, the more I thought about it, the less I doubted it. I was on the verge of something truly incredible. I hummed as I motored through the various piles of things that needed to be sorted. I was on track for my most productive year yet. Things were only going up, up, up.
As if the budding academic success weren’t enough, three days before, I’d stumbled across the man I was going to marry. A singer, a violinist, a computer systems analyst. I met him on Tinder, but we’d Facetimed right away. He was smart, his sense of humor caustic, his Tamil features cut roguish. He didn’t say much, but I could tell a deliciously dark past nipped at his heels. We’d only talked for six hours, two hours a day, three days that week, but I already knew that I loved him. I loved him. I loved him. Kannan Venkatachalam, what a beautiful name. He lived a half hour from my parents’ home in Virginia. We made plans to meet the next time I was in town. A date with destiny! The moment we met, the whole world would crackle. What were the chances I’d meet him right now, at this very moment when everything else in my life was aligning? What were the chances? What were the chances?
Midnight in Los Angeles – I was walking home from a bar, feeling grand. I’d just had drinks with a graduate student in my program. It was the first time I’d talked about my summer in Thiruvananthapuram with anyone associated with academia. I’d been nervous. What if my ideas were nonsense garbage, utter drivel that meant nothing outside my head? But my fears were unwarranted. We’d talked for three hours straight. I left, tottering, flush with validation.
Lonely men, that’s who walk the streets at night. I wanted to save them all. I blinked at the glaring light of a gas station. I marched right up and bought myself a packet of cigarettes. I deserved the little cancer sticks. I was a woman who spoke of revolutions. While I waited for the cashier to ring me up, I struck up a conversation with the man waiting in line behind me. Hi, how are you, how’s your night, what do you do for work, would you be interested in participating in a study, I’m a researcher who thinks about inefficiency and the universal right to a decent life, upending our notions of labor, here’s my phone number, call it so I have yours, so nice to have met you, I’ll be in touch soon, have a good night.
Oh, the fabulous feeling of inhaling tobacco smoke with alcohol softening your brain! The fiery buzz that sets your teeth tingling, your coffee skin singing! The moon was big, the wind was soft, the grass smelled sweet. I spread my arms wide to hold it all. Oh look, here was another man, tall and lanky, walking alone in the blue of night. As he approached me, he asked if he could bum a cigarette. Here I was, leaning close to light his cigarette, and before I could help myself, I started again. Hello, how are you, what’s your name? He told me he was on disability. It had been so long that he’d been looking for work. I told him I was working on some research that could help him. Here’s my phone number, give me a call so I have yours, I’ll get in touch as soon as I have a more concrete plan, have a good night, bye-bye.
One step, two step, three step, four step, one foot in front of the other, I made my way home. A glass of water, a few forkfuls of leftover takeout, puff puffs of weed, an episode of tv. I set my alarm for nine, an hour before my mother was supposed to land, then crawled into bed, my blanket luxurious in the coolness of night. My phone pinged twice, text messages from the man I’d met at the gas station. I smiled. It was already working. I was doing it. I was Anjana Gigi Radhakrishnan, researcher extraordinaire! I snuggled in bed, pulse thumping. I couldn’t believe my luck. To be perfect, to be me! Another glorious day. Another glorious day. Another glorious day.
Oh, mania, that honeydew-melon-dripping, razor-sharp-snipping, heart-flutter-skipping enchantress. With a twist of her wrist, she set my depression off to sea. Pressing her palm to my heart, she warmed it, whispering of golden light dreams.
I loved her. No one had ever made me happier.
It wasn’t that I became a whole other person when she came around. No, it was more like the best parts of me crowded everything else out. Under her wing, I became a woman without fear, a woman never denied. I grew irrepressible and cheeky, indomitable and wise.
For the first time in my life, purpose slipped under the soles of my feet. How fast I thought. How smooth I moved. How wonderful to have the energy to do the things I wanted to do.
And the momentum. Intoxicating, sheer, wonderous bliss that shot through my veins. I was alert. I was awake. Every sensation blazed.
What could possibly explain this radical shift in perception, moving as it did so drastically from depression to acceleration? Far as I could figure, there was only one logical explanation. I had to be fast approaching a moment of pure insight, a discovery. I had read the books. I had seen the movies. A new, unbridled luminosity radiated through me.
Those two weeks after I left Thiruvananthapuram, with that surge of emotion and that electrical current snap, I believed with all my heart I had finally closed the gap. Convinced that I had ferreted out the meaning of life, I thought that I would soon be free from strife.
But shimmering chimera, Mania fooled me good. Without my knowing, she had slipped on me a dark, velvet hood.
Blinded then, I skated the lip of a cliff, oblivious to harm, while just to the right of me, a desolate Psychosis yawned.
Originally posted on a now defunct personal blogging website.
