Dearest K.P.,

When we left off chatting, we were talking about memory. You were saying something about how the things that scared you as a child suddenly seem funny, and then you asked me about my first memory. Then the connection was gone.

So anyway, what I was telling you was that one of my earliest childhood memories is of something that must have been a minor flood. I must have been around two and a half. This must have been Aligarh, because it was certainly before the Lucknow days. I remember being on a cycle-rickshaw with my mother and maybe somebody else and there was water all around us. Rising in the streets. Higher and higher, inching towards my feet. I remember being fascinated. Then last year, I woke up to water seeping into the bedroom, my slippers floating. For one instant, I was biting down sheer terror. It no longer seems funny, especially since 26/7, and it took several minutes to calm down and check: there was no flood, just taps left open in the bathroom.

You know, the beautiful thing about children is that they are born without fear. They come into the world screaming – for food, attention, sleep, comfort, hygiene – but it is not conscious fear that drives them. They have, instead, a strange arrogance, an inexplicable assurance that they were born to live and be cared for and that this much is owed them. If we should deny them their needs, if we should fail to rock them to sleep, or give them milk or wipe their bottoms, they will probably die. I think that the most terrifying thing about children is that they don’t know how to be afraid.

You laugh at my baby-talk, the way I seem to be happiest when I am acting like I’m five years old. And so often I find myself wishing I could lapse into childhood again. Not because kids get taken care of, and aren’t really held responsible for most things going wrong, but because I might then be like I remember being. Years pass and I don’t do anything that is not driven by some sort of fear. The fear of getting up in the morning and thinking about teeth and dental health and protein intakes and iron and calcium supplements. The fear of being considered pushy, overambitious, humourless, or one of the hundred unattractive things I probably am. The fear of the body. My own, others’ bodies. The fear of having to stand in front of my almirah wondering if I can wear a certain dress.

You would laugh at that too, if you lived with me and had to see me doing my little routine: twenty minutes of silent squatting in front of my almirah, like I was meditating or praying. As if there was a closet god in there, you joked. But it is hard, you know. It is hard to have these masses of clothes and not be able to wear them. If you were here, standing beside me, looking at the shelves, I would show you how hard it is. Take that skirt. I love it. But it is red. And pink and orange and yellow too. A PhD student from the university once said that it was so vibrant, it forced one to stop and stare, to go on looking; she said, one feels pulled in by it. She meant it in an admiring way. It was spring. I remember laughing with pleasure then, but I have never been able to wear that skirt again.

Like this top, deep maroon, halter neck. It is a party top and I wouldn’t be wearing it in broad daylight anyway. So many times, I’ve taken it out and tried it on, but not worn it, not even to parties. I haven’t even taken the tags off. And there’s this pair of printed slacks. I wore them once, but now they’re so out. I don’t mind looking like something out of the last century. I am something out of the last century, come to think of it. But these slacks are so unusual that they always draw attention. And about fifty sarees. And a beaded belt. And the blue-grey, semi-transparent salwar. All the things I love and dread.

You know what happened the other day? I was walking down a road, just off our park. It must have been about seven in the evening. It wasn’t too dark, wasn’t too late and I wasn’t even thinking about the dark or anything in particular until I saw this man. He must have been drunk. I couldn’t tell for sure. He was coming towards me, looking straight at my face, my eyes, as if he was indeed headed towards me and not just walking down the road from the opposite direction.

The first thought in my head, then, was that it was rather dark. Or, at any rate, that it wasn’t light enough. The nearest street light was at least two hundred meters away and the lights in the park had already been switched off. Then I looked down at myself, and did a mental checklist. Full-sleeved kurta, check. Jeans… but that can’t be helped. Flat shoes, check. No make-up, check. Bunch of keys in my hand, check. Phone in my other hand with 100 as the first number on speed-dial, check.

I slowed down a little near the tiny gate that leads into the park and glanced in. There are usually some people jogging at that time. But that day, there was nobody. Not even the old sardarni who walks with her salwar rolled up as she takes her fifteen rounds, too busy being determined to return my smiles. The man slowed down too. How do I begin to explain to you the terror of that moment? I looked at him carefully then, as if looking and placing him into some kind of neat bracket was going to help! But I looked at his cheap, dusty pants, his shirt hanging loose on his shoulders, thin body, dark, a thick moustache, red eyes, thick, dusty brown hair that needed cutting, carrying something in a plastic bag.

Abruptly, I stopped and turned around and started walking back really quickly. All I could think of then was home, home, home. And, I could have imagined it, the man’s steps also quickened behind me. Over and over, I repeated to myself: you’re imagining it; the slowing down and the chasing. It is nothing. He hasn’t changed direction, has he? He’s just going where he’s going.

And, as if to test my own reassurances, I turned left suddenly. The man turned left too. I tried hard to resist looking over my shoulder but at last, I had to. And sure enough, there he was. Still staring at me. I wanted to break into a run now. But it also felt strange, and stupid, to run away from a man because he is staring at you. I looked again over my shoulder and this time, I noticed that the plastic bag he carried held something liquid in it and that he held it a little away from his body.

A thousand things streaked through the head. I can’t tell you what a mess my head was at that moment. I thought of the morning papers. I thought of an MBA student, in her own car. A four year old playing in the street outside her house, lived four houses away. The eight year old found dead in the gutter, same neighbourhood. I thought of how I had made it worse, being out at seven in the evening, walking alone. It is so terrifying: to be the creature who made it worse. The one who had a boyfriend and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. The one who didn’t look over her shoulder. The one who didn’t have money for a taxi. The one who was just clueless until it was too late.

I didn’t tell you about it before but I met a girl once, at the channel where I’d gone for the talk show. Twenty-two years old. Face and neck covered with a dupatta. I thought she was just veiled until I realized that she needed help walking and sitting and talking. Acid. She’s almost blind now, and has undergone four sets of surgeries already but, oh my god! She keeps that dupatta hanging over her face most of the time but sometimes, when her sister isn’t there at her side to keep it in position, the fabric starts to slide off her head. I caught a very brief glimpse.

That man who threw the acid wasn’t a rejected lover, you know. He hadn’t even bothered to tell her that he was in love with her. He was just a tenant in the house. One fine day, this girl was out milking the buffaloes – they have two buffaloes in the house – and she told the man to lower the volume on his music system. He brought along some acid in a plastic bottle and that was that.

And now, I was out walking and there was this man following me, with a plastic bag with something liquid inside it. My body was all tensed up, as if ready to roll or duck or run, if need be. But then suddenly, he turned a corner and was gone. I stopped, when I sensed that his footsteps weren’t echoing mine any longer and for a moment, I stood there, uncertainly, looking up and down the street, but couldn’t spot anyone. And then I ran home. Literally, with my slippers flapping and echoing down the evening.

Sometimes I think that it isn’t normal, this sort of fear and suspicion of strangers. But then, there’s that girl. She was normal once but if you saw her now, you wouldn’t call her normal, although she speaks normally and cries normally and goes to the courtroom and tells her story to the judges and lawyers and television crews. She told me too, speaking quite normally. But it was so terribly abnormal, this whole thing. It has been almost six months since I saw her, but just the thought of her, of that neighbourhood where it must have happened, of the hospitals and skin grafts, it is enough to make my heart tighten and then beat like it will implode.

It is hard to let go of the fear, but sometimes, I do. Sometimes, I just sit around, engrossed in books, pen, paper, screen, in a public place. Or I just sit on the side of the road and look without really seeing. And then, suddenly, the thought comes to me that I am not looking. That I have not been alert, that I have not been suspicious and anything could have happened and if it did, I would not have known what hit me.

It is funny, you know, about being prepared. One feels like one must be prepared, but for what? I don’t know I could do much even if I was alert. I could duck, I suppose. If something did happen, that would minimize the damage. Like that girl at the office. She could have been suspicious and that would have given her half a chance, maybe. She could have tried to run, even though that guy did live in the same house. I cannot get it out of my head, how she kept saying ‘how was I to know?’, as if she felt the need to explain herself. To justify not having been suspicious. To not have been afraid by default. To not have been paranoid. And then I start thinking about all sorts of things, like why people grow up if this is what they’ve got to grow up into and why I’m bothering and so on.

I know, I know. One must not dwell. Negativity and so on. Okay, I won’t go on about it any longer. About Sunday, I don’t know if I can make it. It is starting too late, isn’t it? If you could pick me up – just give me a missed call and I’ll step out – and then promise to drop me back, even though it is in the opposite direction for you, I’ll come. But it will be alright even if you can’t. I’m not that keen on going.

Love,
A.