The struggle doesn’t lie in remembering the tiny details now but to grapple with reality once you’ve already realized the truth. I always believed he loved the recliner I placed beside the window because he could admire the sight of the birds flying against the silhouette at dusk. It was a sight to behold.

Little did I know . . .

January 22nd, 2018

‘Did you know that the Arctic terns travel from the north to the south every year?’ he asked.

‘Really?” I questioned.

‘Yup. Every year. Every year they get to see the entire earth’

‘Ah,’ he sighed.

‘Must feel nice. No?’ I said.

‘You bet’ he said.

‘Where would you travel if you could?’ I asked him.

‘Amsterdam’ he blurted as if the answer lay at the tip of his tongue. I casually smiled because I knew the reason- We had a mutual love for marijuana.

‘But of course, I need the money’ he added.

‘You look well off. Why don’t you ask your parents?’ I made a suggestion.

‘They won’t give me the money.’

‘They don’t allow me to carry bank cards either.’ He said, forcing me to abruptly end the conversation. I couldn’t make another nasty comment to a guy I met about a month ago about his parents, however, I had already started judging them.

Sometimes I just rest on the recliner at his favorite time of the day as I take a “deep drag of a joint” the way he liked to call them. He was right. Watching those birds fly had a profound effect on us. It was… liberating. Watching them fly, I couldn’t help but compare him to a lab rat, the reference to which, I presume, you’ll agree upon shortly. But of course, he did not know. How would he? And neither would I if it wasn’t for that night.

And sometimes I blankly stare at the smoke rising from the joint wondering like every other day now, how things would have played out differently had I stopped him and just like every other day I don’t think it would have been in his best interest.

‘At least he’s free’ I say out loud forcing myself to believe that I made the right decision. Just like every other day.

We called him School. Originally the name was supposed to have the Tsk sound to it. Tsk..cool, Tsk for the “self-proclaimed” but the effort to bring the Tsk sound was overruled by the convenience of pronouncing it as plain old School.

School hated his mother. And his father. And he wasn’t very fond of his sister either. But I know he was smart enough to realize that his hatred towards the family stemmed out from his mother. ‘We’re not a family. We’re just four people living together’ he once told me.

He loathed his house. But of course, having a prison for a home, you wouldn’t enjoy either. Every day he longed for one thing, he longed for his favorite time of the day. He couldn’t wait to get out of the house.

February 8th, 2018

‘I haven’t seen my parent’s room,’ he said.

I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t ask anything. But I believed him. The heaviness in his voice had dictated it all.

Do you know what terror smells like? It reeks of sweat. And let me assure you that I am not a judgmental person- I had never judged anyone in my life before. However, I’ll let you decide-

March 2nd, 2018

Final’s week

School rested his back against the yellow wall of my studio apartment at the exact spot atop my single bed while his feet dangled mid-air. The book lay on his lap every night before every exam every semester while I flipped a pen between my fingers, spun around my chair trying to recall the fundamentals of the topic I had read before which I had to explain to the guy who was always a topic behind me reading for the first time.

‘Bro my brain can’t register information for a long time so there’s no point starting early’ said School to the question I asked him every semester.

I knew it had more to do with his lack of interest in engineering than his senseless argument because as far as registering an information went, he could recall any event that involved booze and marijuana. Looking back now it wasn’t the booze or the marijuana, he remembered because he was around people who actually cared about him and so did he.

Regardless, every semester felt nostalgic. But this semester I witnessed something for the first time.

‘You ready for a new topic?’I asked as I spun my chair towards the bed.

‘HELL YEAH’ said School with a fake enthusiasm.

I smirked.

‘Ok. this topic is more like an extension to - ’ I began while School folded his book and casually glanced at his wrist watch.

He startled me when all of a sudden he shot up from the bed searching for his bag.

‘You’re leaving?’ I asked.

He did not answer me. I could make out that he was mumbling under his pursed lips. I noticed his forehead started to drain like a cracked pipe. Sweat leaking out from his forehead like the crack in the pipe was getting bigger every second. He was terrorized. The psychological burden was too heavy for him to handle.

I let the silence spread through the room.

I should have been back by now.

I should have been back by now.

I should have been back by now.

He mumbled on and on.

‘Bro I’m sure your mother will understand’ I said.

He gawked at me. ‘No she won’t. She doesn’t trust me’ he replied searching for his bag like a musk deer searching for the forbidden smell. It was nowhere.

‘But you have an exam tomorrow’ I remarked.

He did not speak.

He was anxious.

He wasn’t searching anywhere. But the panic wasn’t helping his rationale.

‘So your mother will scold you if you fail the subject and scold you if you stay out studying as well?’ I pointed out the irony.

My eyes were laid on the bag but now I wanted to observe how he strayed this way and that. I wanted to see how long it took him to find it on his own.

I could now see his shirt was soaked with sweat and the odor had reeked the room. I could see that he felt like a prey to his predatory mother. It was unsettling. I was nervous for him.

He was silent again.

I should have been back by now.

I should have been back by now.

I should have been back by now.

He started repeating. He kept muttering to himself. He was terrorized. Terrified of his mother! His mumbling began to terrorize me as well. Hopelessly I got up and reached the recliner to point the bag.

Boy, was he relieved!

‘Why don’t you just disagree with her once for Christ’s sake!’ I yelled.

‘I tried it once’ he said, lifting his books from the table in a hurry.

‘And?’ I questioned.

‘And…’ he hesitated. ‘It’s not worth it’ he said.

I wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to imply. ‘WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?’ I yelled. The curiosity in me forced me to raise my voice higher.

He did not speak. He handed me his cell phone while he packed his bag.

This was the tipping point for me.

And he took the timetable to his heart like a Muslim takes on the Quran.

‘This is madness’ you’d probably say if you found out that School was in his third year at Maharashtra School of Engineering then.

School had a window of three, seldom four hours on his own. It’s no wonder, thinking back now, why he was so impatient. Restless all the time. He had to move, constantly. At the very least, walk around. I have an O.C.D to hold a pen in my hand every time I get high but ever since I met School he always asked me if he could hold the pen. I am now certain that it was his innate desire to experience the thoughts I did when I held the pen. He had to have it. He wanted to feel it. Gather all the experiences that he could during the brief window. During the “AS YOU PLEASE” window. So you see it wasn’t just the majestic sight of the birds that he so profoundly gazed, but rather their freedom.

I believe marijuana gifted him that freedom, helped him experience everything from a different perspective in a short period. He was desperate to explore. And marijuana helped him explore, mentally at least.

He definitely must have felt like a lab rat!

Journal of Indian Medical Science published a paper suggesting that a person ought to at least get out of the house for three hours a day before it might trigger the onset of hallucination. The research was conducted by a renowned psychologist Dr. Ankita Kulkarni. Only later did I find out that Dr. Ankita Kulkarni was the mother of my dear friend. She allowed School just enough window for social interaction as he pleased.

It was his favorite time of the day and most of the time he enjoyed doing his favorite thing: Sitting by the window on my recliner and smoking marijuana.

I believe it made him forget his misery.

‘He must have balls of steel to be smoking’ you’d probably say if I tell you that Dr. Ankita Kulkarni beat her twenty-five-year-old daughter when she caught her drinking alcohol with a leather belt of yet another doctor in the family- Dr. Akhil Kulkarni.

‘I hate my parents’ the suicidal note of a forty-year-old man in Wisconsin read.

‘He was very childish. He irritated us all the time.’ the two prisoner parents of the forty-year-old man defended themselves with when their neighbor filed a complaint against them on the grounds of ‘Aggressive violence and torture’.

I tell you this because Dr. Akhil Kulkarni is the neurosurgeon who discovered new neural pathways in the brain of the depressed forty-year-old man.

December 24th, 2017

I found School to be a very enigmatic character from the day I met him. He was a noob at playing guitar but he had already started to think he was Jimi Hendrix. He liked composing and he sought appreciation from his audience in a subtle manner, as if his tunes were cool. Hence the “self-proclaimed”.

Childish if you’d asked me then. I can only assume now it's because his mother never appreciated him.

‘Play it cleaner’ I advised a guy I had never met before.

What intrigued me more about School was his fascination to try exotic meats like a rhino or a horse and not so exotic ones too- like a dog.

I also asked him what his parents did but there was no response. He didn’t tell me they were doctors then.

‘We’re not a family. We’re just four people living together’ he said. I don’t know what drove him to reveal that information to a stranger. He wasn’t an introvert but he certainly didn’t express his feelings either.

Even though I knew more about School than any of his other friends I still can’t comprehend if his traits were by his conscience or were imposed upon him as a part of an experiment orchestrated by his parents. His mother may be trying to start the depression while his father may be studying new neural pathways. You’ll understand why I’m saying this because of that night that changed it all -

May 4th, 2018

8:45 P.M.

As we lay cross-legged on the bed holding cards in our hands and discussing the tax systems in India, I couldn’t ignore the way Rahul so keenly analyzed School before he sent a message every time the joint passed around the circle and landed between his fingers. School had his eyes as red as a rose yet he still inhaled it deeply while Rahul dialed the fingers. Rahul was a mutual friend of ours. It was in his apartment we occasionally smoked.

Who was he sending? I wondered.

I tried to divert my train of thoughts to the music and the discussion because I also couldn’t ignore that marijuana sometimes made me paranoid.

But the observing-and-typing continued as the joint passed around but nobody else in the room seemed to notice.

I kept wondering.

And wondering. I also wondered if I was delusional at the moment.

But I kept wondering until I realized that everyone had their eyes on me because somebody had asked me a question and I had remained silent for about a minute or more. I had no answer so they quickly turned away leaving me with my train of thoughts.

At that moment I figured that I was in fact delusional because of the toxins in me. This paranoia was getting out of hand. They were my friends and I was thinking god-knows-what. I deducted that the paranoia had its roots on the music so I urged Rahul to change the song.

I don’t know how long he took to change the music but the next moment I was in my senses, he had left his phone on the bed to go to the washroom.

I carefully looked around. The discussion was still on.

Realizing that this was the only way to get rid of the paranoia once and for all, I pretended to lean forward to change the song from the cellphone -

What I witnessed was the strangest thing ever. My paranoia had revealed something I wouldn’t have believed if I were sober. The conversation read-

Rahul: He has smoked about 2mg today.

Doctor Ankita: OK. But don’t let him exceed his weekly dosage.

Rahul: Ok.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. School was right there discussing while I read something I could hardly digest. On one hand, my morale begged me to tell School whereas common sense warned me otherwise.

At least not now! I thought.

11:45 P.M.

There was a knock on the door. My mind reasoned that it must be a knock that echoed from my neighbour’s door through the depth of the narrow corridor. I was preoccupied with other important thoughts.

Did I just read that in the evening? I thought. Are you sure you’re not delusional? I asked myself.

I struggled. I couldn’t sleep.

I tried to comprehend the reason behind the text exchange.

I contemplated hard on whether a mother could ever experiment on her child like that.

Who gave her the right to play with her child’s psychology? I asked myself again and again. Over and over again.

How could our friends be in on this?

The reality was hard for me to grasp.

Knock!! Knock!!

Whoever knocked on the door banged it hard enough for me to accept that it was indeed in my apartment, but again my mind reasoned it must be yet another friend of my neighbour’s who took the wrong turn based on the direction sign that hung on the common space that sent his guests to mine and my guests to him, the sign that our landlady never bothered to change. Even School was confused the first time.

I was absorbed in my thoughts.

That brief conversation I read was giving me the longest chill ever. I was shivering.

But then the door started to tremble.

Cursing the person who forced me to get up from my bed, I went to open the front door-

And there he was!

I saw School with a huge traveling backpack.

Without a doubt I knew what he was up to. The only question was why?

Had he found out too? I asked myself.

‘Why?’ I asked out loud.

And for the first time in my life, I saw his eyes sparkle with tears which he was bravely holding back- He hesitated. I could see the struggle was real. He gulped. ‘My mother asked me- ’ He paused.. . ‘asked me to have sex with her’ he said feeling ashamed as he spoke holding the door as tightly as he could. I knew he had summoned all his courage to utter those words because the next moment he couldn’t hold back his tears any longer.

The flooded tears clearly begged me to say something.

But I remained silent.

Poof! And just like that, I forgot everything. Forgot to invite him in. Forgot about the conversation I read earlier. Forgot that he stood in front of me because all I could think about was the suicide note of the forty-year-old man.

I don’t know how long I froze for because everything seemed surreal when he turned around and disappeared into the darkness. And somewhere in my heart, I wanted him to leave. Leave his misery. I couldn’t help but think about the suicide note of the forty-year-old man. I didn’t want that for School.

It has been a year since I last saw School and I don’t know if I’ll ever get an answer from him. So I ask you Detective- Did I make the right decision letting him go?