The Remedy
Fiction: ‘When my foot slipped, I felt a familiar sense of suspension, the weightlessness of a social pariah, a suspension that now waited with a terrible consequence.’
Our house was bursting at the seams; the shape of the throng constantly altered its insides, and inevitably, spilled out into the corridors. My younger sister, Swati, had wrangled candles from every house in the chawl so that ours would be enveloped in a warm golden glow that eclipsed the one dull tube-light. It was a jumble of bright colours that felt uncomfortable and turned everything unfamiliar. Our neighbours had gone above and beyond, fashioning the entire building into a Diwali firecracker in May. I don’t even know where the lights came from, but they blinked with defiance.
Gargi Mavshi, who had spanked me once for a bygone mistake, now patted my back with pride. “Supri! I always knew you were the smart one! You’re going to change our fortunes!”
Her words didn’t seem like a burden this evening. None of theirs did. Baba brought me a plate of batata wadas and forced one into my mouth exclaiming, “My Supri, the IITian! Bringing glory to the family name!”
I squirmed under his gaze for the first time since the party started. He had no idea of the lengths I’d gone to change my surname into a more respectable one. Any glory would be attached to an unfamiliar patronymic. One of the circuitous requirements to the legal procedure was proclaiming the change in a local newspaper. I stole or bought the entire chawl’s paper deliveries that day so he wouldn’t find out.
For Baba, his surname—the caste identifier—had never been the problem. I knew he’d never understand my reasons. It took potions of powdered bones and spells cast with salt to get into a premier institution. I wanted to start out on the right note where nobody ruined my plans. Aai had drilled into me that education was the only way to climb the social ladder: the only way to earn respect, rather than just money.
Swati was playing songs from her phone on a cheap Bluetooth speaker she had borrowed from someone. I couldn’t find much to complain about tonight. Then I remembered Aai drenched in hot oil fumes. I stepped in the kitchen and said, “Aai, you should join us. Everyone has plenty to eat.” I poured some cola in a steel tumbler for her and wiped her forehead sweat. She was wearing her best sari instead of the usual salwar-kurta. I hoped the scent of food could be aired out of the fabric.
Aaj gulped down the drink and smiled. She said, taking my hand in hers, “I knew you would do it, Supri. You have a better life written in your destiny.”
I laughed a bit at that, finally allowing myself to believe in her words.
*
Someone had written a quote in bold letters on the chalkboard: FRATERNITY is one of the deepest desires of human nature. Disregarded by my boisterous college mates, I couldn’t help but wonder who wrote such an appropriate quote for the first day of college.
I couldn’t let myself be nervous or overthink things. The atmosphere on campus forced me to be a different person. Here, scents were sharper and the colours more vivid. Every sensation quietly buried deep inside me.
There was an advantage of knowing nobody: I felt no pressure. I entered the lecture hall and smiled at anyone who kept eye contact long enough to attempt to figure me out. The ‘charter’ and social codes seemed buried between conversations and clothes. Students had already formed their duos and groups, even though many had yet to arrive. I knew that it was already hard to find people who shared one’s wavelength, but this dividing off made everything harder.
I would need a sign, I thought, and that’s when I saw her.
She was wearing a white t-shirt that read The Future is Female in black font. Her short hair gleamed ashy silver. Each movement of her head mesmerized me. Just as I wondered how to approach her, she spotted me, speculated for a moment, then waved me over.
The smile I wore almost split my cheeks.
For Baba, his surname—the caste identifier—had never been the problem. I knew he’d never understand my reasons. It took potions of powdered bones and spells cast with salt to get into a premier institution. I wanted to start out on the right note where nobody ruined my plans.
That night, our voltage at home kept fluctuating, so the fan spun fast and dialled down, as if it was suddenly exhausted. Every time its blades slowed down, I retraced the day.
Her name was Jill Patel. “Like, Jack and Jill went down the hill?” asked one of the guys, on the verge of laughing. Her own laugh tinkled and surprised everybody.
“Yes: Jill came tumbling after! Just like that!” She turned the air around and everyone joined in her laughter. They never teased her again.
I couldn’t stop my heart from leaping.
I had a lot to learn and quickly, too. There were lyrics from K-Pop groups, and an entirely alien culture of slangs and dress codes, of places like the Hard Rock Cafe and Yautcha. Grown up on plates of Varan-Bhaat and the occasional pastry and noodles, I couldn’t wait to discover this other sphere I’d missed out on. Blood raced furiously in my veins; it was the first night where I stayed up without a wink of sleep.
*
My fingertips brushed over the word EQUALITY, carved with a cutter on one of the campus walls. Jill didn’t reprimand me to stay still, so I continued feeling the ridges of the carving.
“See? Knew this shade would work for you!” She finished dabbing the cushion on my cheek. She had brought a pouch full of makeup, and told me that the shade didn’t suit her skin tone. She had no choice but to give it to me. “After all, we can’t waste this precious stuff, can we? Thank god, this shade matches your complexion…”
I thought about how easy it was for a person like Jill—who lived in Cuffe Parade and ate specially scooped melon balls for breakfast—to give away stuff, just because she’d bought a wrong shade.
I glanced at her bowed head rummaging through the pouch, her chic hair reflecting sunlight, a curtain of polished silver. It was as if a Teflon layer coated her: no matter what circumstance was thrown at her, she remained pristine. She committed kind acts as if they sprung inherently from her. Her sharp jawline, ginger-like complexion, lithe limbs, high-arched ankles, and even that hooked nose, all added to this innate merit of nature. She rubbed that nose sometimes, as if she was conscious of it. Even the way her hair softly curled at the ends looked noble in that moment and I wondered if I could ever imbibe this peculiar quality of hers.
We were seated on the stairs in campus. Behind Jill, one of the posters on the wall was peeling off from the corners. I squinted to read the small font, BAN Reservations: Let’s dissolve reservations in CASTELESS institutions. Something under my skin fluctuated. I felt like an animal caught in a car’s headlights: suddenly on full display and an unease gnawed at me from inside. I wanted to move out of the car’s way, yet I remained rooted, as if I felt I deserved the car suddenly swerving onto me.
I switched my gaze to Jill testing out a shade of blush.
The first day when Jill had included me in her group, I swore to myself that I would do whatever it took to fit in. After all, the coolest girl I’d ever seen, had deemed me worthy enough to be chosen as her friend. If I let the opportunity slip, my life would remain stagnant. I finally got a place in the campus hostel, and could speak broken phrases of Korean, too. Sometimes, Jill’s group would make fun of me for getting on the K-Drama wagon so slowly, but they didn’t know I could hardly afford streaming service subscriptions, or that I barely had time what with a hectic schedule and keeping my grades up.
One time in the canteen, Jill suggested I colour my hair. It had always been a stubborn black since childhood, and now, I felt like an odd duck when I noticed other girls colouring their hair a vibrant red or golden brown. Another girl in Jill’s group—nicknamed Sam—had implied that my face hardly did me “any favours”, so a hair-colour change would hopefully improve my appearance. Perhaps I should’ve found her rude; instead, all I could do was list other features of myself that I felt were lacking: my unusually small button nose, my down-turned mouth, and my heavy jaw—which had led many girls at school to naming me ‘Chubby Thug’.
Jill tapped my arm and side-eyed Sam.
“Don’t listen to her, Supri, I’ll tell you a secret: masculine-featured girls are super trendy in the fashion world. I think your coffee complexion is beautiful. And don’t we all have acne? You just need to have more confidence in yourself! That’s why I wanted you to colour your hair…”
It was as if a Teflon layer coated her: no matter what circumstance was thrown at her, she remained pristine. She committed kind acts as if they sprung inherently from her.
She recommended one of those expensive salons, assuring me she knew someone there and would even book an appointment for me. I wondered if she was only pretending that it would be like putting lipstick on a pig. Or was she just being her Teflon-coated magnanimous self? I made up an excuse, that Baba wanted me to work in his office, like an unpaid internship of sorts.
Jill must have seen the flash of longing on my face at her offer; she had patted my hand sympathetically, saying they would book it once the internship finished.
Her words gave me hope, yet burned like molten lava underneath my skin. I felt like I had a demon inside me and she was performing an exorcism. I was becoming purer, enlightened by the day.
Jill’s was an Apple tribe: almost all of them had the latest versions of MacBooks and iPhones. I had to desperately search for a used iPhone, but Abhedya—another one of Jill’s friends—recommended that Apple had better software, and that I shouldn’t carry fake Chinese products. I lost most of my data while transferring it between the models, but being around Jill made me wonder that maybe it was worth it.
Sometimes after lectures, Jill and her friends went to the mall. She invited me often, but I never bought anything or ate out with them. Since school times, Baba had told me that I should hang out with people of my ‘background’, those who shopped from Colaba street markets, and ate from the corner tea stalls or Shiv Sagar—not out of novelty, but out of necessity. I decided to not speak to him about college, even though he asked every day. He wouldn’t understand that what I learned here with Jill’s group was a narcotic I couldn’t give up. It was more than the slang they used, the cafes they visited, or the trending issues they discussed. I finally felt like I was climbing and reaching a place of social respect, where my dignity could be intact, and I didn’t need to justify myself to anyone.
On another of our trips to the mall, I wore a skirt I’d altered from ankle-length to my knees. Jill was there with Sam, Tanushree, Chetan, and Abhedya. They cherry-picked items from window displays of shop after shop. They were planning a trip to Korea next year; their Korean had gotten so much better that they joked that they would fit right in. My gut burned as I thought of what excuse to provide if they asked me if I was in.
I lagged behind the group, one hand fidgeting with the skirt’s hem, the other texting Aai, letting her know that I was safely preparing for bedtime at the hostel room. Navigating the new iPhone had become an exasperating task, even though Jill said I’d get used to it soon. The interface was so alien to me. At first the novelty and bright colours seemed exciting, but I glared now at the gleaming, sensitive screen. The simplest operation seemed like a chore.
Jill suddenly grabbed my hand and pulled me away. She checked to make sure that the rest of the group hadn’t noticed, and then sneaked us through an opening in the facade of a store under renovation.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Are we allowed to come in here?”
She giggled and hushed me, “I think the workers have gone for a break. Don’t worry!” Her blue dress fluttered as she turned and skipped on the floor covered with plaster dust.
The smell of paint hit my nose violently, the bone-white walls so blinding that they almost made me dizzy. Jill’s grip tightened on my hand. I glanced tenderly at her as she pulled out a tube of lip gloss, saying I needed a touch of colour. She looked around to check that no one was had followed us, and said, “Pucker your lips for me a little, come on.”
Her hooked nose slid in front of mine as she dabbed the wand. My lips tingled, maybe this gloss had menthol for a plumping effect. I wiped my sweaty palms down my skirt.
The next time I looked up, Jill moved even closer. I could feel my heartbeat racing violently.
They say you remember your first kiss the day you die. It’s nostalgia and you never shake it off. For me, however, it was the first time that I faced myself, the first time I let myself, the first time I became myself.
It was nothing short of magic.
And then… we were discovered: the rest of our group found us. Jill dashed out, leaving me before I could zip up my jeans or button-up my blouse.
A few minutes later, she returned from the washrooms, marched up to her friends. “You found us in our little situation!” she said in an offhand, jokey manner.
She refused to meet my eyes afterwards.
The following day, a Chetan spoke to the girls in our group for advice with women, until he suddenly turned to me. “But I don’t think the lezzy’s suggestions would work!”
Abhedya, Sam and Tanushree laughed. As I trailed behind them on the way to the lecture, Tanushree glanced back. “You don’t look like a muff-diver…”
*
I stared at the word LIBERTY in one of my sociology textbooks.
In the months before mid-terms, I’d learned that just because someone kisses you doesn’t mean you’re dating. It had been two weeks since our entanglement. Sometimes, I yearned to take Jill in an empty room. I wanted to stop her in the halls and clarify if we were ‘going out’ or not. She’d been so adept at avoiding confrontation.
Sometimes, I felt that I preferred being an outcast than just her friend.
Meanwhile, all around campus, I found a dozen posters on banning reservations haphazardly stuck on the noticeboard outside the lecture hall, replete with scribbles. The next day, they spread everywhere in the building like fungus. My deer-in-headlights feeling resurfaced at their sight. I remembered the surname I had discarded; the secret birthed a nest of snakes that writhed and consumed me.
I was a Kaikadi, a Scheduled Caste tribe of basket-weavers, once nomadic. Back in Nagpur, even after Independence, Baba’s family name always carried an inescapable odium. Colonial scholars had called us immoral and devious, so he used to say in my childhood.
Now in a self-inflicted solitude around campus, I found myself curled into corners, earphones plugged in, listening to music or podcasts, anything that kept me away, hidden. I had found a podcast called ‘The Samoh Gaze’, on the politics of caste. Every day, I found a spot on the neat lawn where the oldest, strongest trees had survived a human will for symmetry and destruction. Here, I listened to Samoh’s words, soothing the angry nest of snakes in my chest. Sometimes, a breeze from Powai Lake caressed my cheek or ruffled my hair and I took that as a comfort.
Samoh expanded on many thoughts that had crossed my mind: When I found myself in Jill’s group, I always felt placed outside their bubble of conversation. I bent at awkward angles, trying to fit my limbs in a box they offer, a box that was far too small for me. Sometimes I even caught myself resenting Jill. Why did she always go with their flow? Why did she brush off my hurt? Why did she not see me even as she looked at me? Wasn’t college supposed to be more mature, with more room to explore than school?
I thought I finally had what I wanted with Jill. Was I too young for it—this abstract idea of social validation—or had it always been an illusion?
In eloquent vocabulary, Jill and her friends often reflected on the headline news of the times: internet freedom, the CAA bill, and protests around the country. They had readily filled online petition forms, and shared protest sites or updates on social media, too.
One day, news spread on campus that a Dalit student in the engineering department had committed suicide. Some of his classmates were planning a candlelight vigil. I asked Jill if we should join them, but Abhedya cut in. “It’s too risky… Some of these students are going too far, claiming it’s an institutional murder.”
Jill agreed. We had all received an alert from the faculty office, discouraging anyone who wished to join the vigil. ‘The gathering,’ it read, ‘is a group of rabble-rousers.’ We were asked to concentrate on our mid-terms.
They say you remember your first kiss the day you die. It’s nostalgia and you never shake it off. For me, however, it was the first time that I faced myself, the first time I let myself, the first time I became myself.
The protests and vigil continued, and I regretted not joining them in person when the third consecutive student suicide was reported online.
*
On the last day of mid-terms, as I left the canteen, I saw Jill and her group enveloped in cigarette smoke and low chatter. Jill held a stack of BAN Reservation! flyers. They saw me from afar, and immediately came over to surround me.
“Hey, are you really one of those quota students?” Jill asked, loud enough for everyone in the canteen to hear.
“But she looks normal!” Tanushree peeked from behind her. “Her surname doesn’t sound ‘quota-like’…”
“We couldn’t tell at all from the way you dressed and talked,” Sam said. “I saw your form and it said you’re an SC, is it true?”
Their faces blurred into a huge monolith. I could hardly separate one voice from the other.
“Do you know how many general category students couldn’t get into colleges because of people like you?” Abhedya asked. “Don’t you feel like a parasite?”
“Are you going to whine about reservation in the toilets and canteen too?” I felt someone prod my arm.
“Can’t believe I let a leech kiss me!” one of them said in disgust.
Jill. Jill was now just another one of them.
The nest of snakes writhed in my stomach. I pressed my hands to mouth and ran to the bathroom. My guts emptied violently into the toilet bowl, and with it, went the path I had carved in the social system here, just to be seen and heard as just another person.
*
I had just walked out of the last exam paper of the mid-terms, Political Science, reviewing the answers in my head. One of the questions inquired that we identify the person who quoted the following sentence: “JUSTICE has always evoked ideas of equality, proportion, and compensation. It’s simply another name for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” Couldn’t it have been framed differently, I wondered, instead of in a multiple-choice format? Wouldn’t it be better, if all of us—Jill and her friends, too—were asked to probe Dr. Ambedkar’s words more critically?
Jill’s group had cut me out after they outed my ‘quota-student’ status. They had learned that I was a Kaikadi. Now, I avoided most of the hallways. I thought my heart would stop from the humiliation after my secret was known, but it beat almost forcefully under everyone’s collective gaze and whispers in the hallways. I began avoiding most of the hallways, seeking refuge in the more isolated stairwells. The sight of endless flights stretching up, blunted the sound of my loud heartbeats.
That day, the door to the stairwell on the third floor opened with a keening sound, as I sat on the topmost step. I didn’t know how they found out my usual haunt, but I heard the familiar, raucous laugh of my former friends suddenly echoing across the stairwell. Eight faces whom I thought I knew, rushed at me so swiftly that my breath faltered.
I thought I finally had what I wanted with Jill. Was I too young for it—this abstract idea of social validation—or had it always been an illusion?
Nothing could’ve prepared me for what they did next.
Abhedya, who was the tallest in the group, shouted at me, “Hey Miss Quota! Ah sorry, Supriya! Long time no see! Why haven’t you visited us?”
“I did,” I offered, in a voice too small to be heard.
I looked over at Jill, unable to control the brimming tears. She seemed to be indifferent, however, checking her phone like she didn’t want to get involved, as if this confrontation wasn’t her idea. Sam stepped closer. I got to my feet and shrank back on the edge of the step, my legs now shaking in fear. Abhedya sniggered. The rest of them moved in closer to corner me.
I don’t remember if I was pushed, or if my own sense of balance quavered. But suddenly, the ground beneath me shifted. I had forgotten about the flight of stairs behind me. When my foot slipped, I felt a familiar sense of suspension, the weightlessness of a social pariah, a suspension that now waited with a terrible consequence.
I tried to grab at something: a hand, a rail, but everything was too far away. The smooth walls slid over my sweat-covered palm. Pain shot through my skull, spine, and elbows on impact with the stairs. The landing caught my rolling body, it’s cool glossy tiles intensifying my agony.
And then, mercifully, I was embraced with warm unconsciousness.
*
I didn’t know how much time passed before I woke up. There was no sensation in my limbs, but this came as a relief. I had nowhere to go. I felt a heavy fog in my head, leaving me anxious, and searching for something unidentifiable. The apricot walls lightened and darkened, but I couldn’t predict the pattern. My own voice echoed at me when I slept. A keening sound of laughter sometimes suffused through the fog. I opened my eyes to the ceiling, my gut aflame, unable to wipe the sweat-beads rolling down my ears.
Sometimes I saw Aai, Baba, Swati: their blurred faces, filled with anguish. Their words arrived in my mind jumbled and muffled by the fog, and stayed around like tender lullabies. I felt grateful that my body couldn’t respond to my commands. I wanted to remain in this state of suspension forever.
One time, Jill stepped into my field of sight. The dense fog slowly began to dissipate. Her face betrayed no emotion. Pretty as always; in control of the room, like always.
I felt an intense urge to get up, but it only resulted in a slight twitch of my finger. I saw her mouth move.
“I didn’t know this would happen,” she said. “I never thought things would go this far.”
In bits and pieces, the memory of the accident returned: the keening door leading to the stairwell on campus, Abhedya’s towering frame, Sam’s vicious glee, Jill’s indifferent gaze into her iPhone.
When Jill left the hospital that day, I couldn’t decide if she went too early or too late.
The snakes inhabiting my chest hissed louder, screaming out to my Kaikadi ancestors, urging me to brew a remedy, to weave an identity that would be true to myself.
In the following days, I willed every joint, every nerve and synapse in my body to work again.
Balloons of scenes followed one after another: A scorching sunset. My feet swallowed by the sand on a beach. Crows scavenging through a ‘Clean India’ truck. Tatters of a flag on the street days after the Fifteenth of August. Sunlight through the wide windows of a public library. A withered Ashoka before monsoon. Neighbours in the chawl washing their clothes in a line. The crocodile at Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Aai’s Varan-Bhaat. A school of pigeons taking to the sky at the traffic junction, only to nosedive back into the Kabutar Khaana. Baba carrying me on his shoulders when I was six across a flooded street under the flyover in peak monsoon. Jill’s sticky fruity lip gloss. The inescapable blanket of her sweaty citrus. The giddiness from the paint fumes of the shop under renovation. The taste of bland sugar from a fancy Pavlova she fed me. Azaan piercing the sky in the faint light of dawns. A cat brushing her tail by as I sipped expensive coffee. The steaming Gul poli I used to break carefully for Swati when she was younger.
I sensed the blood pump leisurely inside me, gushing through the bloodstream, rising, forging into a whirlwind. My finger trembled as the feeling exploded. I raised myself up, limbs wavering in weakness, mind howling in pain.
Swati said that I had spent seven months on the hospital bed.
The snakes inhabiting my chest hissed louder, screaming out to my Kaikadi ancestors, urging me to brew a remedy, to weave an identity that would be true to myself.
*
The college had allowed me to defer a year if I didn’t cause trouble or speak about ‘institutional murders’ to journalists and the investigating committee.
I was walking along the symmetrical gardens on campus on a cloudy day when I bumped into Jill. She invited me to sit on the neatly trimmed lawn, under muggy, damp air. Her hair was no longer a silver curtain but what I assumed to be her natural chocolate brown.
“I came to collect some certificates, for my exchange programme,” she said, hesitatingly. “UPenn accepted my application. After what happened, I didn’t want to stay here anymore…”
I gave a small sardonic smile, “Me too. But I need to finish the course.”
She commented offhandedly that I’d changed my phone back to the Chinese model. I replied that I couldn’t get used to the Apple interface after all.
Her face was weighed down as she spoke; she had a look of pity, and it was the same emotion that softened my anger at her now. I admitted that I still listened to K-pop, but didn’t add that I had stopped learning Korean.
I told her that I had changed my surname back to Kaikadi. Jill nodded quietly, but was unable to look me in the eyes.
“Jill,” I asked gently. “Did you really like me? Even a little bit?”
Her face shrank. “You won’t believe me Supri but I liked you since the first day of college. You seemed so straightforward, unadulterated. I know what you’ll ask: Why I did all those … things. But it just seemed easier to crumple it up and toss away, like a page full of confusion and mistakes.”
My jaw tightened. “You could’ve just talked to me, you know? You could’ve asked about me, about my background, my name… Why didn’t you?”
I wanted to say so much more, but in my frustration, the words vanished before I could string them together. I stood up erect. In that sudden movement, I pushed off her guilt because it wasn’t my burden to bear. I owed her nothing. Her Teflon coat no longer seemed noble. I realized I’d never needed her magnanimity. I only needed her to be aware of who I was.
Now, I turned toward her face, observing every detail: her hooked nose and the piercing, her small ears, ginger skin, feline eyes. “We’re holding a vigil for the first anniversary of that engineering student,” I said. “His name was Darshan. You’re free to come, if you wish.”
And then, without waiting for her reply, I walked away.
***
Samruddhi Ghodgaonkar is an aspiring novelist and short story writer. She explores gender and identity in contemporary times through her writing. Her short stories and literary reviews have been published in The Inklette Magazine, Verse of Silence, Usawa Literary Review and The Bombay Literary Magazine. Substack: samoh.substack.com. You can find her on Instagram: @the_inkhorn_prism.
