The Tripping Pint

As I sat on the couch sipping my beer, I could still hear them. The past few days had been torturous. I was not sure if it was my insomnia or my paranoia that was doing this to me. I had never believed in the supernatural but this was the first time I was to come to terms with it.

Life had been good till a few days back. I was a successful self-made businessman with a loving family and a spouse who understood my every need. Sanjana had always been supportive of all my moves, right from the day when I decided to sell my only inheritance, a dilapidated flat in Khar, to back my new venture. I must have taken close to three years to break even during which she even pawned her jewelery to keep the household going especially with the arrival of our first son, Suchit. Must have been really hard on her yet I never realised it. All that mattered to me back then was the company. But that was not to be one of my greatest worries

Life seemed good, for years later the company had grown and the family had begun to matter more. Sunny, my youngest son, was to graduate within an year. And Suchit had already become one of the most sought after lawyers in Mumbai. Sanjana was beside me all along, bringing them up and playing the perfect host to the numerous parties I'd thrown at ours. She was forty and gracefully greying at the temples, and serene. I had failed to realise how beautiful she had grown with age. Wish I had.

But those were the good times.

As I woke up on last sunday it seemed like a perfect holiday until I realised she wasn't next to me. Not in the room or in the house. I tried calling her. The lines were jammed. Someone was monitoring my cellphone. Three years as army engineer had taught me quite a lot about espionage. And beeps.

And then I heard her. Loud and clear and incomprehensible.

I was told she’d been there for a coupla hours now. Shouting and howling and refusing to be helped. Something was terribly wrong with her face. Distraught and confused as it was, it seemed very different from the one I’d known. Interspersed with her cries were words, I now know, telling me that she was scared. Of them.

Doctors diagnosed her with a rare form of schizophrenia, one where people heard deafening sounds that others din’t and the conundrum often turned them suicidal. And they had been right. Less than a week later, I found her lying on our bed, peaceful as her face had been. Only she had cut her veins.

It took them all. My sons left me soon after. Each of them showing exactly the same symptoms. I was told it was a curse on the family, that we had wronged someone who, in death, was avenging it. I refused to believe all that agreeing with the docs that such rare multiple occurrences in the family could be a result of faulty genes. For if they were right I might have been spared.

And then, to my horror, I began to hear it. Deafening beeps that I could hear at an alarming frequency. It was driving me mad. Just as it had done to my wife and sons.
I was not to give up so easily. A life of struggles was not to end this way. It seemed overpowering now and so I ran. Trying not to think of it I worked up the courage to face it. The more I ran, the louder it seemed to get. I could now hear it from all sides. The crescendo was getting to me, and when it did, it all came crashing down.

It was dark. I realised I’d drained the beer all over myself. The stench of alcohol bringing me back to my senses. As I groped in the dark I tripped over my jug, found my alarm and switched it off.

I walked to the living room where Sanjana was setting the table up.

It was time for dinner.