The Ashtray

Ten minutes, that was all she was allowed. Ten minutes to be in his nest, to feel the depression his body had made on his mattress, to be alarmed by the mess that was his room. He had many things to show her; books he treasured, his old photos, a carved wooden pipe, significantly insignificant tit-bits which held puddles of their moments together and finally, an ashtray. As he retrieved each item like a conjurer pulling out rabbits from a top-hat, her kohl-lined eyes danced to his tune. They popped out, smiled, inviting… and then without warning they drooped, sad and silent, complaining. The ashtray was a remnant of the past that she wanted him to forget. The black bird in the now reddening sky swam in a tide that threatened to break barriers and flow any moment. He loved seeing that pointed nose twitch, her eyes become red and swollen, her lips tremble. Cheekily, he brought the ashtray close to his nose and inhaled deeply, his face a picture of bliss. She gathered the folds of her sari and her tender feet slid into her sandals, she was about to leave but then something held her back; it was rather, someone. The twinkling, naughty eyes met the tearful, complaining ones. The ashtray lay forgotten on the table….

Coming out of the court-room Lisa could not help smiling. She had broken out of her prison; bonds built upon love and trust had been suffocating her in an iron grip for long. Lisa drove around aimlessly for a while wondering what she wanted to do first thing after attaining liberation. She looked over at the dashboard; she seemed to notice the ornate silver cross for the first time. Rick, ever the god-fearing Christian! The cross was one among the many sacrifices she had made for ‘them’. Lisa brought the car to a halt and clawed at the cross frantically. Her determination was accelerated by sheer desperation and in a few minutes the cross lay on her palm. With maniacal pleasure she threw it out of the window. No place for a cross in an atheist’s car. Humming a tune she unlocked the door to her apartment. A wave of all that was his’ hit her, suddenly. The painting on the wall, his books, his tooth-brush, his perfume, his smell…. Braving tears, chiding courage into herself Lisa set about throwing all that was Rick’s into a huge carton which would join the day’s trash. Sleep evaded her that night, she was sure that she had forgotten something. She switched on the lights and ambled aimlessly along the corridors and finally settled down on the living room couch. Her sleep-starved eyes fell on something that was another reminder of her dreary past, a crystal ashtray, his’. She never smoked and she detested people who smoked, yet, the ashtray had found a place on her coffee table. The day he left the house, she had cleared the ashes, yet to this day she finds it full of dead ashes and dying embers. Lisa could just toss it onto the nearly full carton but it will hardly make any difference. Her life is in itself an ashtray of the dead past and its dying embers….

Waiting outside Nambiar doctor’s cabin, Janaki kept a relentless flow of questions rolling. Her father knew just what was to be done with her, he asked, “Janaki, do you know what doctor sir will do if children do not keep quiet?” Janaki did not know. “Well, he will give you an injection on the tongue”. Horrified, she kept her questions to herself. Nambiar doctor surveyed them through his enormous spectacles and then peered into the lab report. “Janaki, right?” Her parents nodded. He looked at the child who was playing with the paper-weight (wondering if she could ride a hippo at the zoo). He detested moments like this though they were inevitably a part of his life as a doctor. Looking into his own interlocked hands he said, “These days people get diseases at a very young age but there is always hope as medical sciences have advanced. Your daughter has cancer, I suggest you get her admitted here at the RCC at the earliest”. Her parents sat there shocked, seeing many dreams being charred to death in front of their eyes. Janaki would soon learn that reality never spares anyone from needles and injections. Janaki spent three months of the summer within the walls of the pediatric ward watching the dilapidated television, waiting for transfusions and chemo sessions and writhing in her bed as excruciating pain took possession of her eight year old body. Great things were promised to her; new clothes, toys and a visit to the zoo to see her beloved jirapps, a return to her innocent, untainted life and greater were promised by her; a graduate, a doctor, a mother…. Promises are meant to be broken and on one Thursday evening, as her mother fed her, she vomited blood and joined many others who had lost the battle against the crab. For her mother and father, the light of their lives had been doused but for the unsympathetic world, she was just another spent stub that joined many others in the huge ashtray….

For someone who does not smoke, I feel I have an ashtray too many on my table. One is for the many ideas that make great beginnings but fail to progress into great stories (masterpieces they promise to be) and another for the million dreams, for the castles I built and those that many kind-hearted others built for me, and yet another, my own graveyard where part by part I kill myself as the hour suggests. On a lonely night, these are no company but then if I take a pinch out of each and inhale, it leaves me with a concoction of tumultuous memories, varying emotions, loud voices and even louder faces. They are the dregs of my life, the proof of my existence, my comfort and my sorrow, my prized possessions and my burden. As much as these ashtrays remind me of what I could never be, seeing them full always (no matter how often I empty them) makes me proud of having a rich bundle of experiences. And as much as I realize that ending up in the ashtray somewhere, sometime is inevitable, I can strive to keep the flame burning bright as long as I can. With the hope that this bit (and the others which I want to follow) will not end up in an ashtray, be it mine or yours, I begin three months of isolation with a foretaste of the impending despair.