Down a Dark Alley

I had apparently gained too much weight and it was driving my blood pressure to unhealthily high levels. A congenital hearing problem and bad eyesight had been my only health issues when I was a young man. Now, on top of everything else, my bones hurt, head pounded and my temper flashed off and on like brief spurts of madness.

I had finally taken myself to the doctor, an increasing necessity in my 55^th year, and she had insisted on ‘lifestyle’ changes. “Mr Das,” she had said, “You must walk for an hour and eat only what the dietician I am recommending to you here, (she wrote the name down on her prescription pad, before tearing it off with a brisk rip), tells you to.”

This had been a week ago, and I had yet to do anything that had been prescribed. Early mornings were not my strong suit, barely dragging myself out of bed half an hour before it was time to leave for work. And then I came home only in time for a dinner high on calories and low on nutritional value, perhaps an hour of TV, then sleep. However, today a flash of temper at work had ruffled a great many feathers. To a point that I was called in and told a repeat of such a tantrum would endanger my job.

I desperately needed to put in five more years before I could retire so that my aunts and cousins and even my nieces and nephews would not get on my case about what I was doing with my life. They had just recently stopped trying to get me hitched to an assortment of ill-favoured women. That and of course the fact that I needed the money and the retirement pension, so I couldn’t afford a further fracas of today’s nature.

I decided I would walk after dinner. Baby steps to start off—half an hour would be fine today. After I’d changed into my walking gear, grunting over my shoelaces in discomfort, I took the stairs to the narrow walkway that circles the entire complex. If one took a complete round of the property, it amounted to about 800 metres, so 4–6 laps constituted a respectable distance to walk a day. The paths were desolate, it was after all 11 at night, and unbeknownst to me a mild mist of drizzle had started up, driving away even such late walkers as me. But since I had decided to walk it had to be done. Who knew if I would feel like it again tomorrow? Best to take advantage of today’s good intentions. Taking my hearing aid paraphernalia out of my ear and shoving it into the deep pockets of my jacket (thankfully that had a bit of a waterproof quality), I began to walk and ruminate, as was my wont, though I struggled not to dwell on the disastrous episode at work for a while and focus on other things.

I was walking at as steady a clip as was possible on the slick bricked pathways, passing hedges and low-lit buildings that I could barely see through my rain dewed glasses. At one point I thought, what the heck, and shoved my glasses into my pocket too. It wasn’t helping me much anyway.

No doubt the rain was going pitter patter, and the leaves were rustling under it but I was, for a blissful half hour, tuned out from all external stimuli. All I needed to focus on were my feet hitting the paving, put one foot first then another, and then repeat. It helped to keep things simple on days like these.

I had got halfway through my first round, near the back gardens of some villa style developments at one end of the complex. My thoughts were inadvertently slithering to how matters stood at work before I yanked them back with effort to more relaxing matters of contemplation, when I felt a change in the atmosphere. It is of course an idealization and romanticization of how we deal with our lack of one sense by saying that our other senses make up for it, which is patently not the case for me since I needed glasses too; but I will say that when I have taken my hearing aids off (which I do whatever chance I get because they get hot and uncomfortable sometimes), I can often tell someone else has entered the room, for instance, by just a shift in atmosphere. The room from an empty spaciousness acquires a more loaded, pregnant feeling that presses on me. Of course, how insistent the pressure is depends on the type of person who has entered as well. I believe people who don’t need hearing aids have this sense too, just that they don’t use it as much.

Well anyhow, I felt it. It mattered little to me, since I was not in a mood for a late-night chat, so I made a mental note that I was not alone and forged on. I was just about to round the bend near the pocket-sized playground that housed a swing and see saw set for toddlers, when a small round rubber ball rolled up to me, glossy wet, brick red and cracked through the middle. It appeared so suddenly that my attempt at evasive action made my legs tangle up and I stumbled, only avoiding falling flat on my face with an outstretched palm.

My temper flared in a moment, as quick as if a matchstick had been scraped hard against my brain. I straightened up and looked around. Inside the astro-turfed cricket net area, beyond the wire meshed door swinging slowly in the breeze, I could make out a pale shape in the dark at the end farthest from me. It was small, ergo, a child. I picked the ball up and instead of throwing it to him (or her, I didn’t know yet), I stuffed it into my pocket with one hand and drew out my glasses with the other.

“Hey!” I yelled, possibly louder than I intended, “this is no time for fun and games, I nearly fell down because of your damn ball!”

If there was an answer, of course I couldn’t tell.