How a near life moment changed my life

I was six weeks pregnant, or it may have been eight, when the pain caught me unaware. When I look back now I think I can tell with pretty accurate precision the exact moment that little thing which was not yet a foetus tore its way through my left fallopian tube. It didn’t live to tell its own story. Hence it falls to me to narrate the journey of that soul that never was, and how she—I just know it would have been a she—changed my path.

I call this my near life experience. For it was in almost giving birth to a new life that I stumbled across the courage to really live my own.

I remember clearly the first line of poetry I wrote. It’s a very distinct memory. I knew then I would write. A lot. It took many, many years; a few lifetimes; many reinventions to actually give some shape to what my five-year-old self had seen.

Emerging from the haze of morphine at the hospital—thank god for drugs—I switched off my cell phone and went offline for a month.

A full four weeks.

A first and never since.

In the silence that followed, I looked into the eyes of my husband and saw real fear: he didn’t want to lose me.

I didn’t want to die either. Not yet.

And yet I could have. And I would never have written all that was in my head, that which I saw so clearly.

In my weakened state-of-mind, I clearly saw the many generations of thwarted writers in my family—yep, I come from one of those families where everyone writes, but no one ever gets published—shake their heads sadly at me. They had thrown down the gauntlet.

Was I going to do it? End this pathetic, self-pity filled story stretching across time?

Perhaps it was being put deep under by the anaesthesia, for I am told it really is a little like dying. Well the closest one comes to dying without actually… dying; when you are sedated enough for them to cut into you. Maybe it was that which dropped me deep into myself, enough to touch the stuff that really mattered. The debris hidden behind decades of conditioning shot to the top.

So when I switched on my cell-phone and plugged back into the real word, I knew what I had to do. Write those damn books.

My second book The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer about a screwed up teenager, who comes of age in a Bombay on the verge of complete annihilation is out November 13. It’s released by Amazon White Glove, through Jacaranda Literary Agency.

About The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer

A girl desperate to rescue her best friend, a cop willing to do anything to save the city he serves, and a delusional doctor bent on its  annihilation. When Ruby Iyer’s best friend is kidnapped by the despotic Dr Kamini Braganza, she will do anything to rescue him. Anything, including taking the help of the reticent Vikram Roy, a cop on a mission to save Bombay. The city needs all the help it can get, and these two are the only thing standing between its total destruction by Dr Braganza’s teen army. As Bombay falls apart around them, will Ruby be able to save her friend and the city? Will she finally discover her place in a city where she has never managed to fit in? And what about her growing feelings for Vikram?

Ruby Iyer Diaires. Entry 3

RUBY IYER IS just another scared, screwed-up teenager growing up in Bombay, until the despotic Dr Kamini Braganza kidnaps her best friend. Now, Ruby will do anything to rescue him. Anything, including taking the help of the reticent Vikram Roy, a cop on a mission to save Bombay. The city needs all the help it can get, and these two are the only thing standing between its total destruction by Dr Braganza’s teen army. As Bombay falls apart around them, will Ruby be able to save her friend and the city? Will she finally discover her place in a city where she has never managed to fit in? And what about her growing feelings for Vikram.

Ruby wrote almost daily in her diary from the age of ten, till she left home at sixteen-and-a-half. It is from here I picked scenes from her early life.  They have been chosen in chronological sequence but are in no specific order of importance.

Diary entry – 3

TEN

I have always been addicted … to adrenaline. It’s right in the middle of my summer holidays. The sun ripples through the fronds of the coconut tree. Placing my hands on the low wall, which separates my apartment block from the one next door, I heave one leg onto the top; the other still dangling down. Balancing the full weight of my body on my arms, skinny biceps vibrating with tension I pull up my other leg, scraping it against the rough edges of the wall in the process. Heedless of the thin stream of blood, trickling down my left knee, I survey the scene from my now-superior height of four feet nine inches, plus another five feet added by the wall. I look down at the scattered boys and girl assembled below.

Ruby Iyer Diaries

“Dare you,” pouts Sid.

“Ha!” I snigger back. I am taller than him—for now—and am going to prove just how much braver too. I stick out my tongue; and am instantly rewarded by him rolling both eyes towards his nose and sticking his tongue right back at me.

Yah! Whatever. I’ll show you now! 

As light as a ballerina, I walk across the narrow surface of the wall towards the adjoining coconut palm. One of its long fan-like leaves hangs suspended. I tug on it, to make sure it’s firmly attached to the tree trunk.  Then, holding onto it, I raise myself to the tips of my feet.

Angling my head up towards the sky, I let the sunrays warm my face and neck, enjoying the little rise in my pulse. Then, as my heartbeat speeds up to tango with the blood now pumping through my veins, I jump.

“Kreegah Tarzan Bundolo,” I scream at the top of my voice, sailing through the air, over the heads of my friends. I look down at Sid as I cut through the air near his nose. He raises his hand pointing towards something behind me.

Yah! Right, no way am I falling for that trick now.

The ground rushes up to meet me.  I head straight for the pebbled mud just past where the group is standing, and hit the ground with such force that my nose slams into the dirt. Something hits me on the back of my head. Sid! How dare he? 

I shimmy up to my feet, my hands still grasping the palm frond, to find the kids laughing at me. One of the boys is literally rolling on the ground holding his side. The large leaf has come loose in my hand; it now drags behind me as if a large cape.

“Ha! If you are so strong, why don’t you wear your underwear over your pants like Superman?” The boy bursts out between his guffaws.

“She can’t, because she is a girl,” replies another. The look on his face suggesting he smells something horrid in the air.

“But you are a girl. So, how can you be Tarzan? You should be Jane,” bursts out the only other girl in the group. I walk up to her, more distraught than I care to admit. I don’t know why, but it seems terribly important to clarify, “I am Tarzan.”

“No, you are not!” The girl pushes her face right back at me, so we are nose to nose. Losing patience, I lift my hand and slap her. Thwack! To see her features crumple, you would have thought I had socked her hard. For all that, its just a measly little slap. She bursts into tears. Can you believe that?

Sid goes up and comforts her. “You really shouldn’t have Ruby.” He looks at me sadly. As they walk away, Sid still holding her—as if she is going to die any moment—the girl looks back at me and sticks out her tongue. Then, turning around she places her head on Sid’s shoulder and continues her incessant crying. She holds her hand to her cheek for good measure.

So much for female solidarity. I learn that lesson quite early in life.

From the author –

This was just a taste of Ruby Iyer’s life.  Read the complete Ruby Iyer Diaries here. Enjoy Ruby’s story in The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer. Follow @RubyIyer and on Facebook. Subscribe to my newsletter.  If Ruby intrigues you then please do mention her to your friends 🙂

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Ruby Iyer Diaries 2

RUBY IYER IS just another scared, screwed-up teenager growing up in Bombay, until the despotic Dr Kamini Braganza kidnaps her best friend. Now, Ruby will do anything to rescue him. Anything, including taking the help of the reticent Vikram Roy, a cop on a mission to save Bombay. The city needs all the help it can get, and these two are the only thing standing between its total destruction by Dr Braganza’s teen army. As Bombay falls apart around them, will Ruby be able to save her friend and the city? Will she finally discover her place in a city where she has never managed to fit in? And what about her growing feelings for Vikram.

Ruby wrote almost daily in her diary from the age of ten, till she left home at sixteen-and-a-half. It is from here I picked scenes from her early life.  They have been chosen in chronological sequence but are in no specific order of importance.

Diary entry – 2

TEN

Sometimes it feels as if I have been scared all my life… Tried very hard to belong, know what I mean?

At school during recess, I sit with my tiffin box on my thighs. My arms are placed over it; palms demurely folded one on top of the other. I take care to cross my legs just so. Making sure there is not even a tiny flash of my panties. Just as Mother Superior taught us.

I sneak a peek at Tania’s lunch. Cucumber sandwiches: nicely cut, crusts taken off, and chocolate chip cookies on the side. Of course I don’t want any of hers, I am not going to ask her. It looks so nice.

“So, what have you got?” Shali asks pointing to my unopened box. “Nothing…” If I keep peering at Tania’s tiffin, perhaps she will forget about me?

No such luck.

“There’s something there? Show me!” Snatching up my box, Shali runs away. “Hey!” I stand up shocked at her audacity. Then, skirts of my navy- pinafore flying over my thighs, I give chase. She is taller, has longer legs.

I am lighter. Swifter.

She runs past other girls scattered around the playground. Each one cheers her along as if she is the winner of the race, and I am the runner up. I am conscious of eyes boring into me, assessing my every move. It’s as if I am starring in a movie on the big screen, instead of running in a school playground.

I hate the attention.

I don’t like coming second, even more.

Pretending I am invisible I give chase, and catch up with Shali just past the badminton court. I grab the braid streaming behind her, yanking her back. For a second there, we form the two arms of an inverted ‘V.’

“Ow!” She screams, dropping my tiffin box, and holds her head in pain. I pull once again, so her neck snaps back with the force. My feet slip on the mud and falling to the ground I hit my cheek. Still I don’t let go of Shali, bringing her down with me so we are both on the floor. I am fuming. She is of course crying. What a weakling!

One of the girls has come up behind us and picks up the box that has burst open now. “Oh! Look… Dosas (rice & lentil pancakes)!”

All the fight goes out of me. My secret is out. I never seem to bring the kind of Westernised, sophisticated food my friends do. It’s not because of my lack of trying though. I have begged and begged at home to be given sandwiches instead of dosas… Food that marks me out as being backward, traditional. It’s just that Ma is never around, and Sarita only knows how to make Indian food. I mean how difficult can it be to pack sandwiches for lunch right?

I have never hated anyone as much as I hate my parents just then.

The crowd gathers around us, faces peering down at me. One of them helps up the still sniffing Shali to her feet. Everyone’s staring at me as if they expect me to lose it again and attack one of them.

I am sorely tempted to stamp my feet in frustration.

Instead, I stare straight back, sitting up cross-legged now; not caring that the rough stones are biting my legs throughout the cotton of my pinafore. One of the girls picks up the tiffin box and lifting out the remaining dosa she gobbles it down.

“Yum!” She looks at me. “I wish I could bring home cooked food everyday. All I get is sandwiches,” she grimaces.

OMG! I’d give anything to exchange my food for hers.

“Yeah, I know. My Ma loves me so much, she cooks it with her own hands everyday. And now she spilt it.” I look to where Shali is looking at me with disbelieving eyes. My tone wobbles, very convincingly. I have learnt how to play the victim really well from Ma. After all, she’s had a lot of practice with Dad

This was just a taste of Ruby Iyer’s life. Here’s the complete Ruby Iyer Diaries. Enjoy Ruby’s story in The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer. Subscribe to my newsletter.  If Ruby intrigues you then please do mention her to your friends 🙂 

The Ruby Iyer Diaries – 1

RUBY IYER IS just another scared, screwed-up teenager growing up in Bombay, until the despotic Dr Kamini Braganza kidnaps her best friend. Now, Ruby will do anything to rescue him. Anything, including taking the help of the reticent Vikram Roy, a cop on a mission to save Bombay. The city needs all the help it can get, and these two are the only thing standing between its total destruction by Doctor Braganza’s teen army. As Bombay falls apart around them, will Ruby be able to save her friend and the city? Will she finally discover her place in a city where she has never managed to fit in? And what about her growing feelings for Vikram? Ruby wrote almost daily in a diary from the age of ten, till she left home at sixteen-and-a-half. It is from here that I picked out scenes from her early life.  They have been chosen in chronological sequence but are in no specific order of importance.

Diary Entry – 1 

TEN

THE SOUNDS TRAVEL through the layers surrounding me. I am snug in my warm, little world. I am ready to go.

Impatient, I kick out, only to come up against a barrier. Trapped! I throw out my fists. I know I will only come up against the same barricade. Yet, that does not stop me.

I long to be free.

Then, a voice soothes as music filters through the fluids I am swimming in. It’s lush, solemn and gentle, dramatic and lean all at the same time. Entranced, I listen. Then I am moving, swaying; flowing back and forth, up and down.

It is hypnotic: pushing all other thoughts away from my mind, replacing the chaos with white. I quieten.

The music is haunting, trying to lull me to sleep, but I can’t. For, beneath it all is an overwhelming feeling of unhappiness.

My Ma’s misery wraps me in swathes of grief. Lonely, she is so lonely. Adrift in a world where she does not belong anymore. As if she has been pushed into doing everything against her will. Is it possible to feel such despondency? It’s dark enough to cloud the spotless silver of my mind. I can scarcely move now. What is it that perturbs her so much? Trapping her in this dismal reality?

When I tell her about this, my first awake memory, she dismisses it: “no one remembers what it is like to be in the womb, I can tell you how it was to carry you though,” she continues. Once she gets going, there is no stopping my Ma. She is like a fireman’s water hose: unplugged, and out of control. Nothing can withstand her frustrations. “You were the most violent baby ever. So restless I thought you were going to tear your way out. Not like your brother. The calmest child he was.”

Just another day, when I have disappointed her.

There really is no way I can make my Ma happy. It’s going to be many years before I realise that. Perhaps I never will.

Right now, I am a ten-year-old trying to figure out the ways of this world. A place, where grown ups tower over me. Where if I don’t do as I am told I am punished.

Where I am always being told to share my things. Today is when I decide I simply don’t want to share my home with another kid.

He is an adorable little doll like creature, my brother. He crawls all over following me, wanting to sleep in my bed, to play with my toys. He simply wants to imitate me. I guess I should be flattered.

He slithers towards the balcony, and standing up holds onto the grill. Above the parapet is vacant space. Opting to keep the flat stylish, Ma’s decided not to have any grills put on top of the bannister. Sanjay places his chubby little hands on the railing, looking through the grills. I lift him up. He is a heavy baby. Little Mr. Pleased-with-himself he is.

Not as skinny as I am. I am told I started life much like him, quite weighty. But the weight just slipped off in my third year. Its probably the stress of having to take care of my Dad while my Ma is away on yet another of her endless social engagements. That was until little bro—Sanjay came along. The boy she had always wanted. The child that almost never happened: conceived so late in life he is heralded a miracle. Ma didn’t have time for me earlier.

She has less for me now.

I kiss Sanjay on his cheek. He smells of baby powder. My lips touch his pale, pink cheeks and my tongue comes away with the taste of fresh cheese. I am enveloped in a white, sugary rush of affection.

Ma says he smells like himself but also like her.

I hate it.

I heave him up at eye level with the railing. So tempting… It will be easy to simply push him just that little bit over the edge.

I turn away still holding him in my hands. A wail sounds from the baby, attracting the attention of both Ma and the nanny she’s hired for Sanjay. But Sarita keeps me company instead. For, Ma will not let her darling out of sight. Surprise, surprise, she is the first to reach me: Ma covers the length of the room, in a single leap. I have never seen her move so fast. Ever. She snatches up her precious son.

She has no idea how close she came to losing him.

If you like Ruby’s Diaries, then do read her story The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer. 

World’s best keeper of secrets : Ruby Iyer Diaries 6

Ma is away on one of her transatlantic journeys: this time in Europe to research her ancestry. Of late, she is more preoccupied than usual. I should be upset that I don’t feature more in the list of things important in her life. Truth is, I am relieved I don’t have to bear the brunt of her sharp tongue any more. If words could kill, my Ma would be a champion murderer.

No, I don’t mean to sound cruel, it’s just a fact of life…  Know what I mean?

Dad’s on an extended research trip, too. Of course, he is so absent minded, he’s not there even when he is in the room. Yet I miss him. He is a warm, comforting presence, full of big bear hugs. And besides, he really has a great sense of humour, which often has me in splits… Most of his jokes go over Ma’s head, which of course is half the fun. It should be cruel that we share a laugh at her expense.It’s only right that I get back at her in some form.

So, when they are away, I have full reign of the house. I am not alone though. Sarita, Ma’s trusted cook and housekeeper is there, along with Hari, her husband who is also our resident driver. This couple has dedicated their life to taking care of us. When Mum is mad the only person who can calm her down is Sarita. Sarita also knows all of Mum’s tastes: in food, in clothes… In men.There I’ve said it aloud.

She is the soul mate Ma never had. 

But I don’t grudge Sarita her facetime with Mum; for she’s always been there for me. 

So this trip—with Mum and Dad both away, and me being able to do whatever I want around the house— starts exactly like any other. I run through the living room screaming at the top of my voice. Then back, this time tracing my path across the sofas, leaping onto the chair. Springing back I use it as leverage to high jump over the antique central table. Ha! What a thrill.

All through this time there is no sign of Sarita. So, I go in search of her, bursting through the door at the back of the kitchen, into the little room that the couple share. It’s the smell, which hits me first: the reek of unwashed bodies, of food gone bad, of unwashed clothes: a dry, bitter, mouth-curling odour that makes me want to turn tail and run away.

I am rooted to the spot. For I have walked in on Hari raising a rolling pin to hit Sarita, who is on the floor.  Her one eye is swollen shut, and there is blood dribbling from a cut to her lip. She raises her hand to protect her face, and even as I watch Hari brings the stick down on her hand—Thwack!—The stick breaks in two. Sarita cries out, cradling her arm. Surely the bones of her forearm have broken too?

Then, I am leaping at Hari, flinging myself at his back, holding onto him, refusing to let go. I am small, just a little higher than four feet, and my ten-year-old spirit is a long way from being broken. It’s the first time I truly feel that funny little fizzy feeling at the base of my spine: a violet burn bubbling up as if the cauldron of a wicked witch. Hari’s a full-grown man, almost six feet tall. Thankfully he is quite skinny, like Indian men from less privileged backgrounds tend to be. I hold onto him: a monkey latching onto the trunk of a tree. Except in this case it’s a moving tree.

He bellows in anger, stamping his feet, trying to shake me off. I hold on, digging my nails into his shoulders, which only gets another bellow of frustration from him.  

Sarita crawls to the corner, like a cat slinking away to lick its wounds. Compressing her body, she wraps her arms around her legs. Trying to flatten herself against the wall, she makes her body as small as possible as if that will make her inconspicuous.

The movement draws the eye of the demon on whose shoulder I am perched. With a howl he leaps forward, the rolling pin raised in his hand like a weapon.

It’s the first time I wished I had a real sword in my hand too.

Instead I bend down and bury my teeth in his neck. I am Dracula, I taste his blood. Once I get past the gagging stench of his clothes. I shut my eyes against the horrible, sour, scent of his skin. And, something else. It’s a sharp, lingering spoor. Like when I sometimes walk in to the living room the morning after Ma has thrown a party, and the remains have not yet been cleaned? It’s the persistent smell of rancid alcohol. Ugh! Not even mouthwash is going to get rid of that acrid flavour on my tongue. His blood dribbles, over my chin and still I refuse to let go. With a shriek Hari drops to the floor. 

He rolls over, once, twice, like a bear trying to get rid of a leech. Crunch—I hit my head against the floor. I am stunned sufficiently enough to loosen my hold on this horrible man, who immediately breaks free. He crawls… The other way to the door. After putting enough distance between us, he finally gets to his feet. Now that he is safely out of my reach, he turns to me.  His eyes bore into me. Fear, resentment… Revenge.

I meet his gaze bravely. I am quivering inside but I will not let him see that. I’ve overheard Dad say how you have to always kick men in their balls. I jump to my feet and throw my leg at him. It’s not elegant— I’ve just started learning the basics of Jiu Jitsu—but it suffices.

He bends, over and howls. Just like a dog in pain. Taking advantage of his temporary helplessness, I push him out and shut the door. When I walk towards Sarita, she shrinks further into herself. I notice for the first time that her kurta is torn. Pulling off the towel from the hook on the back of the door I throw it to her and she wraps it around herself, shivering as if it is zero degrees temperature instead of the almost forty-degrees summer heat we are trapped here.

She raises eyes streaming with tears to me: “Don’t tell your Ma… Don’t tell anyone. Please, I beg, you. If you do I’ll lose my job.”

That’s me alright, the world’s best keeper of secrets.

 If you knew the number of little not-to-be-shared-with anyone nuggets I carry around in my head, you’d mistake me for a porcupine; each of these mysteries drilling their way out of me, trying to escape. Soon I am going to run out space for all of them. What then?

Pre-order The Ruby Iyer Diaries here – the prelude to The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer.  Follow @RubyIyer on twitter or online Ruby Iyer