Śṛngāram (Love): Kamini’s wait
Kamini’s friends laugh at her when she says she loves weekdays because she could go to the office. ‘Really, Kamu? What on earth is wrong with you?’ they ask her, bewildered. Careful not to give away too much, she replies that there is nothing wrong in liking work. What she doesn’t tell them though is that there is one moment she waits for every day that she goes to work. For Kamini, it had been a rather long wait – to discover love in her life – the kind that stirs your being and touches your heart deeply. And now, just two months into her work life, she had fallen in love. Suraj, her senior colleague, had arrived in her life, shining and radiant, like the glorious sun! Now, every day she waits for that one moment, pregnant with hope, desire and love, when by some divine ordinance, her eyes would lock with Suraj’s, before they would both look away, gasping for breath. A moment she thinks she could live her entire life in. Like it was some kind of bubble in which she could exist forever, untouched by the cruel realities of worldly life. Kamini struggles to express herself and she knows Suraj does too; yet she finds supreme joy in her wait for that one moment, to rejoice the unconfessed-yet-reciprocated love that has graced her life.
Bībhatsam (Disgust): Bhumika’s wait
Bhumika thinks she can’t handle it anymore. The past ten days have been an ordeal – her breasts feel sore, her thighs ache, the cramps in her pelvic region suck the life out of her, her head feels like it would split open any moment because of the pain. This entire wait for her period to arrive drives her mad – she is filled with disgust for the world and its unfair ways of working. She curses nature’s methods of creation; for making the female body the centre of all suffering. Bhumika takes one good, long look at her pre-menstrual self in the mirror and loathes what she sees there – a pale, ghostly, disgusting version of herself. Nothing seems to lift her spirits – not her favourite gulab jamun, not her favourite Coldplay music, not her favourite shade of lipstick. Even her warm, snuggly quilt annoys her. Yet, she pulls it over her herself, turns to her left, and drawing her legs close to her chin, tries to rest, waiting in disgust, for the trickle of menstrual blood.
Hāsyam (Mirth): Harshini’s wait
Harshini’s cousin, Praveen, tells her with a goofy grin on his face that there’s so much humour on the Internet these days. ‘Stand-up comedy, YouTube channels that crack you up…there’s just so much, you know…’ he tries to convince a visibly unimpressed Harshini. ‘Oh yeah, I did check out a couple of them,’ she replies nonchalantly, ‘sadly, they don’t even make me smile.’ Praveen decides that his mission for the day is to get his (did he think stubborn, in his head?) cousin to LOL at least once. So he takes her through the entire universe of online comic content – see this, see that, he says, only to realise that it is just him who is laughing boisterously.
Harshini is evidently losing it, in this wait to find mirth in the online world. ‘Oh God, Praveen,’ she sighs, ‘enough man, let’s just end this, shall we?’ ‘One last thing, please, please,’ he says, opening a video. In it, there’s a man disguised as a woman, playing a Hindi-speaking mother, and a rolly-polly teen (just like Praveen, Harshini thinks) speaking to her. It shows the typical mother-son tussle and Praveen sees that Harshini is starting to get amused. Five minutes into the video, the mother tells her son to go buy vegetables, while the son is busy playing a video game. “Mein tujhe subji leke aane ko bol rahi hoon, aur tu PUBG khel raha hai,” she says, sniffing into her pallu, and Harshini bursts out laughing. ‘Of all things, this?’ Praveen thinks, but he is relieved that his wait to make his cousin LOL is finally over!
Bhayānakam (Fear): Bhavya’s wait
Hospital visits were not new for Bhavya. But this time, things had taken a turn for the worse. Her father’s health had deteriorated over the last few weeks, just when they were thinking that he was recovering fairly well after several rounds of chemotherapy. That morning, he had woken up, coughing blood, and Bhavya had rushed him to the hospital without wasting a moment. And now, standing outside the ICU, she watches her father, lying pale on a bed, with multiple tubes attached to his body. She is surprised to see how calm his face looks after all the struggle. Bhavya recalls their conversation from two nights ago. ‘Bhavya,’ he had told her, ‘Here you are waiting for me to live life again, when all I am waiting for is to die, and say goodbye…won’t you let me go?’ Recalling this, fear grips Bhavya, and she thinks that her father has possibly reached a point of no return. ‘Is he clinging on only because I don’t want to let him go?’ she wonders, as she waits to know of her father’s fate, with fear in her throat and tears in her eyes.
Adbhutam (Wonder): Amulya’s wait
Months ago, when her gynaecologist pointed to a tiny speck moving about in the screen, Amulya strained her eyes to catch a glimpse of it. ‘That is your baby,’ the doctor announced, and Amulya was filled with a sense of wonder she hadn’t experienced in years. ‘The heartbeat is at 164 bpm,’ her doctor said, and Amulya was stunned. Here she was, housing a living being, the size of a speck of dust with its heart beating so fast, that she would nourish with her blood and life. For her, her pregnancy had been a wait full of wonder. She had watched her foetus grow from a dot to a framework of bones to a body with flesh and blood to a fully-developed infant. And now, lying on the bed in the labour room, screaming her lungs out in pain, she gapes in wonder, with her heart in her mouth, as her gynaecologist pulls the life she had nurtured within her, out of her womb into the real world – the end of a ten-month-long wait.
Raudram (Anger): Ranjani’s wait
Ranjani married Ashwin on the 15th of March 2010. Everyone – their parents, grandparents, relatives, neighbours – had been totally convinced that theirs was a match made in heaven. Having grown up in a conservative family, Ranjani trusted the decision of her elders and agreed to marry Ashwin, assuring herself that he was indeed the man of her dreams. The first few months of her marriage had been a breeze – the novelty of everything making for a smooth ride. But just as Ranjani was beginning to believe that her initial nervousness about her marriage was perhaps uncalled for, Ashwin’s abusive nature began to rear its head. What started off as petty fights moved on to gaslighting and soon, Ashwin began revealing excessive narcissistic behaviour. He teased her, made fun of her likes and beliefs, trampled her dreams, buried her self-confidence, cut off her friendships, constantly monitored her actions, blamed her for all problems, and turned into a control freak.
Having endured two years of Ashwin’s abuse, and pregnant with their first child, Ranjani now sits at the table, waiting for her husband to come home for dinner. She waits with anger simmering inside her as he refuses to pick up her calls following a nasty fight in the morning. After an hour, Ashwin saunters in, speaking into his phone. Once he hangs up, she asks him, ‘Ashwin, why weren’t you picking my calls?’ ‘My, my, how dare you raise your voice?’ he barks and seizes her violently by her hand in a first sign of physical abuse. At that instant, all the pent-up anger resulting from her fruitless wait for things to turn better, come gushing forth; and Ranjani slaps her husband on his face and storms out of their house, seething with rage.
Kāruṇyam (Compassion): Kirti’s wait
It’s been six years since Kirti lost her best friend, Rashi. Rashi, Kirti recalls, was a lovely person, full of dreams and hope – always willing to lend an ear to anyone who wanted to be listened to. In a cruel and ironic twist of fate though, Rashi committed suicide because she was depressed. Kirti shudders when she thinks back to the day when they discovered Rashi lying motionless on bed, after consuming an overdose of sleeping pills. That day Kirti had felt guilt pierce her heart when she thought of how she hadn’t the slightest clue of what her best friend was going through. Why didn’t she, for once, think that Rashi may have needed help? A bit of compassion, a shoulder to lean on and cry? That regret drove her to pursue psychiatry and turn a therapist. Six years on, the goal she had determinedly waited to achieve comes true and Kirti sits in her private clinic. The board with the words ‘Kāruṇyam: Listening with Compassion’ hangs in front of the building and Kirti waits to lend a compassionate ear to anyone who wants to be listened to.
Vīram (Courage) : Veena’s wait
For a passionate violinist, fractured fingers are possibly the worst nightmare. For weeks now, since Veena broke the fingers of her left hand in a freak accident, she has continued to gaze at her violin with a broken heart and despairing eyes. Every time a new tune played in her head, she would itch to run up to her violin and bring the magic of that tune out of her fingers. It was hell when she couldn’t. But, the worse thing was this slowly diminishing confidence, this unsettling, nagging fear of whether she would ever be able to play the violin the way she used to. With such terrible thoughts crowding her mind, she would, during her every visit to the physio, ask him if she would ever be able to flex her fingers like before. And each time, Dr. Sridhar would patiently tell her to continue doing the exercises and add, ‘All it takes is courage.’ Today, after an arduous wait of three months, she lifts the violin in her hands, runs her fingers over the strings and the bow. She positions her left-hand fingers over the strings, holds the bow with her right hand, and begins to play a tune very, very slowly. Her fingers feel numb, frail, and stubborn – all at once, and a pain shoots through them. For this wait to end, all it takes is courage, she tells herself and begins to play again.
Śāntam (Peace): Shruti’s wait
At 5:45 in the morning, the alarm clock promptly wakes Shruti up. From the moment she wakes up, she is very conscious of every second ticking by, fast and furious. She brushes her teeth, switches on the coffee maker, puts the milk to boil, keeps the rice in the cooker, does some groundwork for breakfast and lunch before her cook comes in, gets her kids’ lunch boxes out to the table, fills their water-bottles…and then, she wakes her older one first, gives him a cuddle and a kiss – and then a steaming cup of coffee; she serves her husband coffee too, by this time, and in the few minutes left before waking her younger one up, has a quick mug of coffee herself.
Shruti’s younger one needs a lot of cuddling and cajoling to get her out of the bed. Shruti answers her many (often disconnected) questions patiently, gently motivating the sleepy-eyed toddler to get up and get going. In between, she checks on her older one if he has all his books in place, pushing him to go for his bath. Then she makes the little one drink her milk, takes her to the washroom, gives her a bath, puts on her uniform and combs her hair. By 7:15 am, Shruti ensures both of them are at the table, and the cook is almost done with the cooking. While they eat breakfast, she packs their snacks and lunch, admonishing the siblings to gobble up their food without arguing between themselves unnecessarily. And when they are done, she sees if they have worn their socks and shoes properly, does a quick check of their bags and hands over the lunch bags to their father, who would drop them at school. By the time the three step out, she is already waiting to just collapse into a heap and take a deep breath. After she has hugged the kids and waved cheerful goodbyes, in the calming early morning emptiness of the house, she puts on some gentle music, flops into the sofa, and begins reading the newspaper while drinking steaming hot tea. This peace she had waited to enjoy since getting up, she thinks, nothing in the world could come close to it. Nothing.