Unexplainable - Slice Of Life Stories

🎧 Slice Of Life Stories “Unexplainable” #Podcast - The past can be a merciless shackle, and breaking out of its cruel grip can seem almost impossible.

I was filled up to the brim with sadness. It tingled in my body, and my hands were actually trembling. My breath came in short gasps, as I looked around, and everything was familiar. How could that be? I’d never been here before. I stumbled in confusion, and my husband gave me a cautionary look.

But it turned quickly to concern. “What’s the matter, love? Why are you so pale?” He escorted me to a sofa and I sank gratefully into it. Someone ran up with a glass of water, and there was a minor hullabaloo. I was so embarrassed to be causing a fuss, that I made a huge effort and pulled myself together over those gulps of water. But I felt almost sick with the agitation.

The check-in formalities were completed where we sat, so as not to inconvenience me, I suppose, and we were escorted upstairs to our room. As soon as we left the lobby, the strange feeling passed and I felt completely normal again. Our room was delightful, with a splendid view of distant mountains. Still and quiet and - peaceful. I didn’t know what it had been downstairs, but I was glad it was gone, whatever it was. I waved away my husband’s concerns.

After a rest and freshening up, Gopal, my husband, suggested we go down again. And the agitation started rising instantly in me. I tried my best to hold it in, but in the lobby, the sadness rose like a tide. At the front desk, Gopal asked if they had a reading room, or library, and, of their own volition, my eyes rose up to the wall on the left side of the lobby. There was nothing to see there except a blank wall, and I stared at it dumbfounded. There should have been a long glass panel running right across. I don’t know how I knew that, but I was certain of it.

The young man at the desk asked me cautiously, “have you been here before, ma’am?” And I shook my head, still wondering about that missing glass wall. Gopal assured him we hadn’t. “We used to have a reading room up there, on a mezzanine floor, but it was closed up and we shifted the reading room elsewhere. I’ll take you there,” he offered, coming out from behind the counter.

“That seems like a good place for a reading room,” Gopal said, “especially if you could look down into the lobby through some large glass windows. What have you put there instead?” I promptly stumbled again, and Gopal steadied me, as the young man babbled something about some offices, and Gopal announced petulantly that he didn’t think that wasn’t a good use of prime space.

The rest of the evening passed easily. We chatted with another older couple and made a kind of resort friendship. Gopal changed one of the TVs in the room to a sports channel, on mute, of course, and after that the two men left us women alone to discuss our families and where we lived and other inanities. It was comfortable. But the pleasant interlude was hung over by a cloud. I was fearing having to go through the lobby on the way back upstairs. I couldn’t explain the dark feeling I experienced, and didn’t want to mention it to anyone, even to Gopal yet.

For all that fear and tension, I slept like a log that night and awoke feeling fresh. I prodded Gopal. “Shall we go for a swim before breakfast?” I asked him. “Always so enthusiastic, Anjali,” he grumbled sleepily, but from his tone I knew we were going. I got up happily, setting out his trunks so he’d have no excuse, and got into my swimsuit, carefully avoiding looking in the mirror. It was too early to go around scaring myself, I grinned.

The water felt fresh and cool. The sun was already out and the air was warm. The poolside was green and calm and pretty. And the only flea in the ointment was having to pass through the lobby. I just steeled myself and walked quickly. But I stumbled again in my panic, and Gopal admonished me, “why are you always in such a hurry, Anjali? If you’d only go slowly and carefully, you wouldn’t stumble. One day you’re going to fall.”

The resort was a pleasant place, other than that one thing. We played carroms with our new friends, and Chinese checkers. We read books and magazines. We had our morning swims. We watched movies. We went on what were politely called treks, but were really a drive, a relaxed amble in the fresh air, a picnic, and a contented drive back, during which many of us nodded off in the coach.

One day passed, and two, and three, and my misery on passing through the lobby abated not a whit. So on the fourth day, as Gopal dropped off to sleep in the afternoon, I told him I was going out, heard his grunted acknowledgment, and escaped. I marched up to the front desk, and told the young lady there authoritatively, “I want to go up there,” pointing to the blank wall covering the offices.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” says she. “Those are offices, and guests are not permitted.”

“I want to see the GM then,” I said calmly. They tried every trick they could to divert me, but I was mono-focused. It took a bit of stubbornness on my part, but they finally gave in. The GM and two young women escorted me. All hovering and still trying to talk me out of it. I walked firmly towards some point in the lobby, where there was only a wall and potted plants, and said, completely dazed as to how I knew this, but now used to being dazed by all this strange stuff, “there was a winding staircase here.”

My escorts were looking pale and terribly stressed. They redirected me towards another staircase and a kind of inevitability settled over me. I walked up to a spot, and, as had now become the norm, it was a blank wall. I pointed to it and said softly, “there was a washroom here,” I looked around me. The big picture window that should have been there looking into the lobby, was now another wall. The tables and chairs and reading paraphernalia had disappeared. Everything was sterile and different, but the old images were imprinted clearly in my mind’s eye. How did I know all that? I cannot tell you. I do not know.

The GM was sweating profusely, and looked like he was going to pass out, but he pushed up a chair for me, and I collapsed heavily into it. And it came over me like a wave, and after fighting and resisting it all these days, I sat there and let it wash over me. ...

I scurried into the washroom. It was dark, and dingy, and damp, and depressing. The mirrors were brown and clouded. I looked for a light switch but couldn’t find one. Anyway, I needed the loo, so I pushed on through the dimness. Water drip drip dripped everywhere but the floor was oddly dry. I pushed open the creaking loo door and was exasperated to see the latch was broken. There was no hook to hang my handbag on either, and I had to push it back on my shoulder. To make matters worse, no matter how hard I tugged, my trousers refused to come off, and I was getting panicky. Finally, I just gave up, and left the loo. I tried to wash my hands, but there was no water in the rusty taps. Feeling utterly infuriated, I pulled open the door and there were three strange women standing outside. One stepped up and embraced me. A total stranger. Yet I felt an immeasurable comfort in her embrace, a great sadness, and a deep compassion. I’m so sorry, my dear,” she said kindly, pressing her warm hands into my back. I could feel their warmth through my shirt. “But you are amongst friends. We’ve all been there, my dear. We understand your pain. And we understand you.” I can never hope to describe the liquid feeling of release I experienced. The letting go, and the gush. I stood there in her embrace, and then in those of the other two women, and something that I had held hard inside me for fortyseven years, was right out there in front of us, and was washed away by their loving eyes and gentle touch. I was released from an imprisonment I hadn’t known I was serving. But now that it was gone, I could feel the massive difference. ...

Long ago, when I was very young, and newly married, and Gopal and I were trying to start a family, I had miscarried. The physical pain had been the most I’d ever experienced in my young life, but the emotional trauma, a hundred times that. A thousand times. I don’t know a number large enough to describe it. It had almost broken me. I’d taken ages to recover, and been too scared to face conception again. My demons lived inside me and tormented me day and night. Finally I’d conceived, and carried to term, and my babies brought happiness back into my life. But they couldn’t erase the old pain. The two lived side by side within me. I learned to live with the darkness. It was my most faithful bedfellow. Over the years, it hardened and calloused and formed itself into a dark black bezoar that I carried within me, but never acknowledged. I lived and functioned in the light and happiness that my children brought into my life, and then their children, and while I stopped thinking about my darkness, I never forgot its existence either. Who could I share all this decades-old misery with? And the answer is, of course, nobody. In the embrace of those three women, that darkness was brought out and exposed to the full light of their compassion and empathy, and somehow it softened and melted into something different. Something I could hold without pain, only with love. And something I could live with. I cannot explain any more than that. ...

I discovered myself slumped in the chair. The GM still looked faint. The three women were gone. In front of me, only the solid wall. Water was offered, and I drank it thirstily, as if it could wash away the debris within me.

It turned out I wasn’t the first. There had been a few women before me. All ages, all vintages of experience. There had indeed been a washroom there, decades ago. Part of the reading room facilities. Even walling it up had not reduced its power. It still drew it’s intended victims to it. No one knew who the three women were or what their sad stories were. There was no explanation for the strange episodes, but no one had ever complained. I could understand that. Those women had absolved me of a secret guilt I had carried for decades. Nothing had changed. But everything was changed.

I asked that they help me back to the lobby, and was relieved to find it no longer filled me with dread. I needed to catch Gopal before he came down. I had a lot of explaining to do. Explaining things that had no explanation.

#Sadness #Agitation #DeepCompassion #Downstairs #Lobby #FrontDesk #NothingChanged #EverythingChanged #ReadingRoom #Library #ResortFriendship #DarkFeeling #Swimming #Carroms #ChineseCheckers #MorningSwim #NewFriends #Infuriated #Picnic #SecretGuilt #OldImages #StrangeWomen #FaithfulBedfellow #WashedAway #Miscarried #PhysicalPain #OldMisery #EmotionalTrauma #NoExplanation.

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