Chapter 1: Remember the day I set you free?

It was a Sunday afternoon. Actually it was that time of the day when the afternoon gives way to the early evening and the heat of a Delhi summer begins to soften. I lay in bed watching you sleep. If I stayed perfectly still, I could hear mummy muster every inch of her strength and hold in the tears that would’ve killed your childhood.

Mummy came in and asked me to wake you up and take you outside to play. Hurry up, the smudged mascara on the corner of her right eye, begged. You were still a child. Too young to see, to hear and to know. I was expected to understand and not question. I was seven. A full two years older than you were.

I shook you awake but you just whimpered and turned away. I told you we could go to the swings and I would make you fly. You woke up and asked me if I would stop if you felt afraid. I nodded with a suspicious smile. We both knew you were never got scared on the swings. You jumped up in your frilly frock, and we trodded off to the backyard.

I pushed you. And high up into the air you went with your tiny legs dangling, your hands grasping the sides of the swing with all your little might. While you flew, thrilled and shivery, I could see Mummy and Daddy in the living room. I saw Daddy right behind the door to the backyard, with a big brown box and a small faded suitcase. Suddenly the childish delight in your eyes gave way to an unusual fright. You begged me to stop and jumped off the swings and began running to the door. You had seen Daddy.

I caught hold of you, and sat you down by the swings. I told you that Daddy was sick. And he needed to go away for a while. With silent tears in your afraid, innocent eyes, you asked if he was going to die, And if he did, ‘who would open the tight bottle caps?’ I assured you he wasn’t going to die and he just had to live away for sometime, and Rama Auntie next door had strong arms and would open all the tight bottle caps that Mummy and I couldn’t, if need be. Before I could finish the sentence you ran back to the swings, all assured and a child again.

‘Look mummy I can fly on my own now, without didi’s help and am not even scared a teeny bit’

Last year you turned seventeen. I called you at midnight and you were all impatient to hang up and go back to your friends. You wouldn’t even let me finish my rendition of our song ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’ You cut me right when ‘Marvin Gaye’ goes ‘To keep me from getting to you’. I hung up. I wished you were a child again and I could make you believe in things as easily as I made you believe in Rama Auntie’s strong arms by the swings that summer day.

Yesterday, Mummy called me up. She couldn’t hold in the tears this time. She told me you were very sick. She told me you had been battling deep depression for more than a year now and in the last few months had given up on everything. She told me you had slashed your wrists and were found curled up and alone in your apartment. She said you were in a hospital, not waking up. She said you had to go away for a while.

I asked her if you were going to die and if you did who was going to sing the last paragraph when we recorded ‘our’ version of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’
She replied that all would be fine, and she would do sing it or Pooja Auntie would. She had a particularly raspy voice, perfect for the song.

I sobbed through the night, wishing for the first time ever, that I had been the innocent, gullible one on the swing. That I had been the one whose childhood had not been killed.

(Based on a true story)