I return to my apartment with a heavy feeling. The talk of my childhood always makes me feel heavy. As if I am dealing with a burden.  Then I keep thinking about what the voice was telling me about Sabina. That she has been misleading me. What did childhood have to do with something I am facing in the present!

I lay on my bed. Her question lingers in my conscience. I am aware there are many problems in me. My relationship with my parents is not like other’s. Then an eerie feeling grips me. I see a woman’s face, red and angry. Her nerves are stretched, eyes widened, lips tightly shut. Her angry face means something. Why is she angry at me? I see myself pants down; my sexual organ being cuddled by a man’s hand. I rise up. What was it? A deep sense of fear erupts in me, as if I am going to die. The woman’s face has stuck itself into my memory. I cannot get away from it. It is as if the waters evaporated long back from a pond are falling back as rain. I call Sabina.

‘Remember my childhood sexual abuse.’

She goes quiet for a second. ‘I am so sorry to hear this, Kabir. Must have been hard on you.’

‘Don’t understand. Had forgotten it.’

‘It happens. We hide our core traumas in the deep recesses of our mind. We push them back and forget them because they give us pain, make us feel uncomfortable. This is what you would have done with your experience until it came back to you. Did you see flashes?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is how they come back. Do you want to talk about it? I think you should.’

‘O.K’

‘Will come now.’

‘Only if you are free?’

‘Yes.’

She arrives in five minutes and sits with me while I tell her all I could remember. Speaking to her gives me solace. She suggests I write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. This way the memory would fade away. I do that to relieve myself.

At noon the next day, I go to office. After an hour there is a knock on my door. I turn my head to see Sabina bending down and waving her hand through the glass. I stand up and open the door for her.

‘Hi.’

‘Come in.’

She takes a chair and sits down.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Alright.’

‘I came here to talk about the research work.’

‘Done some lit review. Mostly on altruistic behavior. Think it is needed.’

A smile evolves on her lips.

‘Yes, let’s work on this. I will build the model based on it. Can you write the lit review from what you have read? I would like to read it and get more clarity. We will nail it, Kabir.’

‘Will send in a few days.’

‘Cool. But make your mental health your priority. I don’t want you to overstress yourself. You have your classes too.’

‘Yes. No worries.’

When Sabina leaves, I sit for some time staring at my laptop immersed in thoughts about the lit review. I decide to go to the faculty lounge and get coffee. Walking through the office corridors with my head down, I hear a voice.

‘Hello, how are you?’

I raise my head. No one is there.

‘I am good.’ I reply and go ahead. There is no one in the faculty lounge. Fetching coffee from the Nescafe machine, I read newspapers for about an hour feeling comfortable in the beauty of silence. A silence, interspersed by the dim noises of trucks moving on the road some distance away.

In the evening, I feel alone and an urge for beer. There is a liquor shop outside the apartment we are living. I buy a Budweiser can and a mixture packet. In my apartment, as I open the can, Sabina calls.

‘Drinking,’ I say.

‘Kya baat hai Professor sahib! Akele Akele.’ she laughs at the other end.

‘One can.’

‘Wait. Should I come to your house?’

‘Sure. Let’s buy some more.’

‘Yes. Then meet me outside your building. We will buy beer and then go to your apartment.’

I keep the can in the fridge and go downstairs. She is standing in a short skirt and semi-transparent top.

‘#$% #$% #$% #$% #$%^. #$% #$% #$% #$%^&* #$% #$%. #$% #$%^ $ !@#$%^&*& #$%^&. #$% $% $ #$%^&* #$%^&* #$ #$%^&* # #$%^. #$% #$ #$% #$%^& #$% #$%^ #$ $% #$%,’ said the sexual voice.

‘Shut up you sisterfucker.’ I shout. She turns towards me.

‘Voices?’ she asks as I reach her.

‘Yes. God damn voices.’

‘You eater of shit. You ask us to keep quiet. We will not be quiet. You disease born, man of pain. We will fuck your arse. Go and buy alcohol and put it inside your arse.’ They keep going on as we walk towards the shop, buy beers and return back to my apartment. They keep going as I am talking to her. Today for some reason they would not shut. But I stop myself from reacting to the voices. I am sure she could see the discomfort on my face, the tension, the contraction of facial muscles. But she is understanding and lets me be the way I want to be. We are drinking now. When it is too much, I say.

‘Voices. Come at the wrong time. Cruel.’

She thinks for a while.

‘You know I have been reading this book I told you about. It contains accounts of people who heard voices and how they got rid of it.’

‘Yes, name?’

‘Living with voices by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher.’

‘Yes.’

‘The central theme of the book is to accept the voices as a part of your normal self rather than fight them or be afraid of them. The book contains accounts of many voice hearers. I was amazed to find that many of them feel that the voices they hear are of people who have given them the trauma.’

‘Other people?’

‘The voices are inside you but they come because of the trauma suffered in the past. They take the voice of the trauma giver.’

‘I suffered trauma?’

‘Oh god Kabir, you don’t even realize this. You were sexually abused and you had an alcoholic father and schizophrenic mother. You told me you had seen domestic violence at your home. And then there was this broken heart at the Institute and an indifferent guide. How can you not go through a trauma?’

This time I take her seriously. I have never associated my problems with whatever she has been saying. I had been flowing in with her, doing what she told me, not because I believed she would get me right, but because I valued her friendship. This time I understand her argument. It is the first time in my life I clearly and consciously realize that I had been troubled in my childhood. That some people and the circumstances had given me a trauma. I had been suffering all the time but the conscious realization had never come. I had never sought the reasons for the suffering. Her point gave me a reason. And where there is a reason, there is a cure.

‘Yes, problems in childhood?’

‘You can see this now. Your voices could be the result of trauma you suffered. The voices could be of the trauma givers. How many voices do you hear?’

One of the voices is abusive to me, one is sad, and one of the voices, the one I hate the most is sexual. Then there are the voices of The-light and the faculty. I say this to her.

‘Can you connect these voices to the people in your past?’

‘People of the Institute, yes. Other voices, no.’

‘Like do these voices sound like someone in your past?’

I get tense as if I am appearing for a competitive exam. I need her help.

‘Need your help.’

‘Yes. Let’s do it.’

‘The abusive voice?’

‘You said your father was alcoholic. Did he abuse you and your mother after drinking?’

‘No. Not me.’

‘So, the one which is sad could be your father’s voice?’

‘Yes, it’s possible.’

‘And you said your mother would rage and abuse you all in your childhood?’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘So, the abusive voice could be your mother.’

‘Don’t know. Difficult.’

‘Yes, it is difficult. But you have to try. You need this understanding before you can clear out your situation.’

‘Maybe it’s my mother.’

‘And the sexually charged voice must be your childhood abuser.’

‘Sure of it.’

 ‘Good. Every time a voice speaks you have to recognize who it belongs to. Then we will go to the next step.’

‘What next step?’

‘You have to talk to the voice. Do you have your own voice, a voice which follows your instructions?’

‘No.’

‘You need to get in touch with your visceral thoughts. You need to develop your own voice. Talk to yourself. Let your voice speak. Internalize it.’

‘Will try. Difficult.’

‘It is. But everybody has their own inner voice. You would have it too. You have to discover it. Take a few weeks to discover it.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then there is something I want to ask you. Would you be willing to come to Kolkata with me and meet someone who is an expert in helping people like you out?’

‘Your father?’

‘No. Not my father, but someone I can assure you has the means to get to your troubled past.’

‘Classes?’

‘We will go when the semester ends. During the vacation. Till then you develop your own voice and try and talk to these voices you got.’

‘Would be willing.’ Any sort of hope in my situation is welcome.

‘Let’s prepare for it then. I am sure you will be a better person once you do what I say.’

We finish the first can of beer. She opens another can. I generally did not drink more than one but today I feel like drinking.  It all made sense. My voices are connected to my past. A gloom fills me. It is not my fault that I hear these voices. It is the fault of the place I was brought up in. It is the fault of the people, the situation I was forced to live in. It is the fault of my genetic pre disposition. They are the reason I have to put up with so much shit all day along. I want to shout out loud at my parents of being like that. I want to hit both of them for getting me into such a dismal state. Why couldn’t they live peacefully? Why weren’t they like other parents: caring and nurturing putting up a happy family. We finish the second can of beer in silence. I am lost in these thoughts. Sabina is tapping on her mobile. She finishes her second beer fast, gives me a hug and leaves for her apartment.

I see that she has left her joint on the table. The sight of the joint starts a turf war with my emotions. I had smoked some in my college and now, after all this, want some relief from reality. Assuming that Sabina would not come back, I pick up the joint and light it. I take the smoke inside, relish it, and then puff again. After a few puffs, my blood starts running fast, my head starts spinning, and I see again, after a long time, The-light and the devil standing in front of me.

‘So how are you Kabir? Do you still believe that I made her pregnant?’

‘I don’t think he believes it any more. He does not believe we are connected.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ I say. ‘You are the figment of my imagination, my hallucination.’

‘How can you hallucinate us so properly? I can believe that you could hallucinate me, I being a man like you. But, think, how can you hallucinate this beautiful woman, standing in a sari, smiling the most beautiful smile of all? Is it possible for a man like you to bring forth all the style and the expressions this woman has?’

I see The-light walking, smiling, moving her hands over my hair, looking at me with a question mark, her body so pure and so beautiful. Yes, he is right, how could I bring all this through my mind? It seems impossible. She has to be there for this. I have never seen her in this form, how could I be her? This is nothing sort of a miracle.

‘You could be right. But there is no way we are connected.’

‘There are mysterious ways, my dear. Mysterious ways in which the world is connected. Go to your balcony and sit there. We will give you the treat of your life.’

I take a stool to my balcony and sit there seeing both The-light and the devil in the sky. I sit there the whole night as they talk, joked and make me smile. They are so good at it, they are so good together. The devil tells me that he is like her father. He shows me how a man should behave with a woman. Not the way I did but the way it should be done. He waltzes with her, takes her to a restaurant, takes her to movies, and makes her laugh and exult. The-light shows me all her colors. There are stars on her, magic in her hands, as she tells me she would give me back my strength and confidence. Every move she makes, every word she speaks, fills me with a certain sense of pleasure. The sight of her for me is like honey, like amrit, as if I have taken a dip in the holy waters of the Ganges. It is as majestic as the Himalayas, and as serene as the lovely beach in Gokarna. It is a beautiful night, one of the most beautiful of my life. I cry once at the fact that I could never be with the real The-light. But she will always be with me, she says. And this form of hers is much better than the one in real life. So why not keep it and be happy. The devil nods his head and comes close to me whispering ‘keep her this way. She will always be yours.’

A sense of remorse at what I did to them fills up in me. I should apologize to them someday, I think. Next day I write an apology mail to all the people I had involved in my mails when I was at the Institute. I get a reply from all the males. None of the females reply to me. I keep waiting for their reply for a few days and then lose hope.

During the rest of the semester, I try to develop an inner voice of my own. It is in some way there, I used to talk to myself like everybody else. I have to internalize it and hear it like a voice. I did this by speaking slowly and then trying to read the same thoughts through an inner voice. It was difficult initially but after a while a little voice of mine develops. It is a soft-spoken voice. I work on it and gain confidence with it. This is the only voice under my control.

When the semester ends and we have checked our copies and submitted the marks, Sabina is to fly to Kolkata. I book my tickets with her and take a hotel recommended by her, ready for my next rendezvous. Life for me is to take a new turn.