Of Silent Chairs and Mute Memories

Her name was Chameli. Once the jasmine flower she was named after, she had folded back into the bud that she had been a long time ago. Against the misty morning, in her delicate white dress, she looked radiant. She had been beautiful, and there were those who remembered that. Time had flown, though, and she had been trapped in her memories, and become that delicate flower bud once more. She had laid out the chairs in the field just the way she remembered it. Li’l Jo Singh, Mr Bakra, Mowgli Man, Alice Kumar Chautala, Maikalal Jaikishan, all members of the short-lived A-Team. She had long forgotten their real names, but their strange faces were still as vivid as the quirky names she remembered. That’s what they remembered her for, coming up with strange names. So lost was she in her memories, that she had forgotten her own name as well. She was Champa Chameli, presiding over this morning’s meeting on the dreary, bleak, misty morning.

I had hoped to catch her off her guard, so I moved through the empty chairs as silently as I could. Past experience had shown me that the trick worked – take her a bit by surprise, maybe startle her just a little bit, and she’ll suddenly become a lot more relaxed. Give her the illusion of being in control of me too, at just the right moment, and suddenly I would find myself a part of her little game, her periodic dance with the past that haunted her so much.

I crept closer and closer, and just when she was standing up after straightening an imaginary chair cushion, I leapt forward and whispered ‘Boo’ right into her ears. It didn’t have quite the effect that I had hoped. Instead of being startled, she turned around with a smile and said in her cute, little-girl manner, ‘I knew you were right behind me. You’re not good at trying to be a ninja, Makdee. You’re late for the meeting.’

‘I’m sorry, Chameli,’ I said with a smile. ‘I got caught up…’

‘In a web?’ asked Chameli, but I knew it was a rhetorical question. It was a joke at my expense, something that she found incredibly funny. I had no idea why she came up with the name Makdee, a spider, for me. I wasn’t a member of the imaginary A-Team, so Chameli didn’t really need to give me a name. I could have been me; but I knew she was scared of reality now. She preferred this dream world of nonsensical names and silly, childish games now. Somehow, I had become a part of that as well.

The chairs were laid out in the same way as they had been since I had known her. It had been so long ago that I don’t even recollect how and when I met her for the first time. Maybe it was at one of these meetings. Maybe we saw each other from a distance at a café. Maybe we met over lunch, and shared a meal a long time ago. I didn’t know anymore, and she was too lost in her delusions to care too much about those trivial things.

I had a job to do, though. I had to shake her up a little bit, give it another try. Maybe the infinity-plus-one-eth time would do the trick. I wanted to be tactful about it, I wanted to stall for a while, and I wanted to not tell her the things I knew she didn’t want to hear; but these were things that weren’t in my hands anymore. I existed only for Chameli now, and she had made me up for a reason.

‘Who’s the guest of honour today?’ I asked her as I took my seat next to her.

She giggled shyly, and said, ‘It’s Jaikishan; he finally told me that he loves me. Alice was wrong; didn’t I always tell you that?’

‘Why do you call him Alice? I mean, he’s a guy after all!’

‘You look at him! I’m sure he’s gay; he’s so effeminate after all. Besides, he likes it if I call him Alice,’ she said matter-of-factly, running a hand down her beautiful white dress.

‘Chameli, there’s something you should know,’ I began again, knowing well that it would be a fruitless endeavour. I had done this enough times to know it, but it was my job. It was precisely why Chameli had conjured me in her mind – so I could try, time after time, to snap her out of her hallucinations and back into the real world. ‘Chameli, are you listening?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m listening to you, Makdee,’ said Chameli absently.

‘You’re dreaming again, Chameli. It’s time you woke up and went back to your world. The people in the meeting, they’ve all gone, they’ve left. Don’t you want to know what happened to all those people? Wouldn’t that be good, to know them in real life, instead of inside here, only inside your mind?’

‘Oh, Makdee,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘Why do you come up with the same story every time? Look, Jaikishan will be coming soon; it’s going to be our first date. And Alice told me it would never work out!’

‘Chameli, Alice isn’t real,’ I said, taking another shot at it. ‘Alice lives inside your mind. Jaikishan exists only in your head. They’re not real, not here at least.’

‘Shush, Makdee!’ said Chameli, standing up suddenly. ‘Jaikishan’s here! You stay here, Alice will keep you company. I’ll see you later, ok?’ Another sudden smile and she ran off a little way off the cluster of chairs. I was sitting alone again, surrounded by phantoms just like me. They couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see them – it was an arrangement that seemed to work just fine. My job, my purpose, my destiny, that wasn’t coming along so well, though. I could see Chameli animatedly holding a conversation with the thin air in front of her, no doubt speaking to Jaikishan. Things were going exactly as I had always known them to be. In a bit, Chameli would be lost, and there wouldn’t be any purpose for me to stay for the day. Would I leave then, though? Would I be able to walk away?

Chameli was taking Jaikishan’s invisible hand now. I knew I shouldn’t be watching this, but I couldn’t help it. She was putting his imaginary arm around herself, and getting lost in his warm embrace. I wondered, as always, if I should stop her or not. I knew I wouldn’t in the end – I never did. That wasn’t a part of my reason for existence.

She melted in his arms, invisible as they were. She crumpled to the floor, and lay down still. It would be over soon, I told myself. This day would end soon, I told myself. Beyond the circle of chairs, I could see Chameli kissing a phantom lover, a ghost-boyfriend from the past. I could see the beads of sweat glowing on her skin, could see her writhing with pleasure in the soft grass underneath her. It would be over soon, I told myself yet again.

But it wasn’t Chameli who had complete control. I knew it would last yet another lifetime; I knew Chameli was lost just a little more, yet again. While I could do nothing but sit and wait, and watch her falling in love yet again with Jaikishan – the imaginary, invisible man Alice had been wrong about.

~

Inspired by Magpie Tales. I looked for the source of the image, and found that it's by Rosie Hardy.