The Empty Balcony

There were more living beings in his balcony than in his whole flat. He would take care of the plants and spend a chunk of the day staring at them. Zebra plants, mint, money plant, tulips and a couple venus flytraps all arranged symmetrically in the balcony. Occasionally, on evenings that arrived a little early, he would wonder to himself,”Is it because I feel at least some sense of responsibility or is it the fact that these plants provide company in silence?” – a debate that ran more like two parallel lines – running close enough to see each other, but never close enough to meet. 

As far as work was concerned, the last time he sat on his desk was three weeks ago.

He had struggled vigorously over five months to finally land this job at a tech support company, one that probably did not exist anymore anyway. The pay was humble, but so were his requisites of life. The five months he had spent looking for the job, felt like the longest five months he had ever spent. The last three weeks however? They felt like an eternity.

The flat on the twentieth floor was left to him by his parents. One could not call it extravagant, but substantial – that it definitely was. Overwhelming however, was the balcony, overlooking the cityscape, pleasant wind, cool like ocean water breezing in every now and then. On days when the mood permitted, David would sometimes feel the city and its inhabitants slowly drifting away from him. He would reflect upon his parents – their simplicity and their never ending urge to provide only the best for their son. “I don’t want to be involved in the foolery of a nine to five”, David used to say. His parents didn’t question him, but his mother continued working in the kitchen and his father would turn his eyes back to the newspaper. In the absence of the whistle of the pressure cooker and the rustling of the newspapers, his parent’s silence had only grown stronger. 

Until a year back before his mother passed away, David would hardly find time for anything. She had been diagnosed with last stage Alzheimer’s and needed constant care. Once she was gone, his unbinding freedom started to creep in like a crawling centipede, – not causing any harm but staring at him from a distance – staring with a poisonous look. 

While his mother was alive, at a time when the Alzheimer’s had not gained complete control over her, David remembered sitting in his room and charging out when he heard his mother calling out to him in a feeble voice – only to ask him if he had eaten. Most often than not he would find himself annoyed – a feeling that now frequently stirred his conscience.

“Has my son found someone finally?”, his mother would ask.

“Marriage might be for a lot of people maa, just not for me”.

“Why?”

“You know already, I don’t think I am going to be good at taking responsibilities!” David would reply in a condescending tone. He would reach out to the bowl of apples on the table, pick one up and take a big bite, chewing, with his lower jaw, a tad bit slanted to one side. In a couple of seconds he would raise his right eyebrow while looking at his mother and a sly smirk would find itself at the corner of his lips. 

One of the two rooms of the flat had been left untouched since his mother passed away, and well, all the traveling David had done in the past couple of years was going down to the grocery store and walking an extra five minutes on Sundays to get weekly medicine supplies for his mother.

The evenings saw David following a routine almost every day. There had been anomalies in the past three weeks but today, there weren’t any. He made himself a cup of coffee, kept it on the side table of the bed in his room and went out again. While he got a cloth from the kitchen, the smoke from the hot coffee went up in bleak white swirls reminding of the fleeting warmth of the beverage under the bright yellow light that protruded out of the wall right above the side table. 

He came into the room and wiped the frames that hung on the eastern wall of the room. Once he was done, he kept the cloth from where he had taken it, came back into his room, sat on his bed leaning back on the headboard that ran up to the ceiling of the room and finally picked up his cup of coffee. The swirling of the smoke had subsided and a thin film had formed on its surface. 

He opened the upper drawer of the side table and took out a pen – an old, golden Sheaffer that had now lost colour and had tiny patches of brown all over it from years of lying inside the damp drawer. Having taken a long look at the pen – almost as if scrutinizing it, he finally laid it down right beside his cup of coffee, before he finally turned right to look at the pictures that hung on the wall. 

The wall on the right bore on it, photos of David with his friends at different junctures of life. There were two among them that stood out – they always had. Certain pictures and posters had come off and gone up on the other walls over the years, but the wall to his right, by now, had created a permanent image of itself, both in David’s room and in his mind. He took a look at the one in the top right. Rin and him were posing and the bruise on his left eye was evident. 

“What happened?” Rin asked.

What had happened was that David’s father had yet again come home rather more lively – like he did when he got drunk. He was otherwise a very soft-spoken man, helping his wife out in the kitchen, seeing to David’s maths homework and taking out the trash on time. But the spirit turned him into a living contradiction – to the extent where he failed to recognise his son when he went to get his father from the pub. 

“A thief! A thief!” The old man said as his punch landed hard on David’s left eye – with strength trying to scare away a stranger that his father believed was trying to steal from him. 

David had elaborated the story in a rather humorous tone, taking away the intrinsic problem that actually existed and replacing it with trivial hints of shallow jokes that made the story seem like a rather funny recollection of the previous night. 

“C’mon, don’t tell me he actually punched you!” Rin asked with eyes growing bigger with every word.

“Oh no! I definitely would have lied, if I had to gain something out of painting my eyes black before coming to college, but you see, doing that would do nothing but cause me to miss the first class. Well? Sympathy? I wouldn’t mind it but I don’t think I could go to the extent of painting an eye to do that Rin!” David’s smile clearly showed on his face as he finished the sentence. 

“You word-weaver!”, Rin said right after she found her breath. She went on to laugh for a couple more seconds and then reached into her bag and took out a Sheaffer pen – shiny golden with a trim of blue at the open end of the cap.

“Here! Keep this. Write your stories down!”  

The two of them had a hearty laugh before Vir came in. 

“What is it?”, Vir asked, his face clearly reflecting his nagging unease of missing out on the joke.

“I’ll tell you later.” David said. “Would you take a photo of us now?”

Vir threw a sly smile at him. Rin tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down before Vir said to David,

“Come on. Give me your phone.”

Rin held up the pen as if giving an award and David with his chest puffed up and a smile that ran from one ear to the other, held the upper end of the pen. 

The scene was captured forever in the frame but the emotions behind it had managed to walk far away from this world.

When two people have similar tastes in life, it is easy to become close. However, what brought Vir and David closer was the similarity of problems they faced at home. The very nature of the problems remained unknown to the rest of the world but the birds at the park witnessed them sitting on the bench and talking about how suffocated they felt. The discussions never led to conclusions, but the emotions transferred seamlessly between them. 

The cup felt cold to the touch. David picked it up and took another sip nonetheless. He then opened the lower drawer of the side table and reached towards the end of it. After a brief search the tip of his index finger finally felt it. He took out a cigarette, stained from having stayed in that corner for years. He fetched his lighter from the same drawer and before lighting the cigarette, took another sip of the coffee. 

At the center of the wall was a photo of David and Vir – a rather rare item on the wall considering it was seldom that the two took a picture together. 

“Are you home?” Vir asked over a call.

“Yes. You want to come over?”

“I’ll be there in 10.”

It had rained that evening and reflection of headlight from the cars glimmered on the wet streets. The tail lights drew long strands of warning on the tarmac. Once Vir arrived, the two of them indulged in the same conversations they had had for years before Vir asked,

“Do you remember Frank?” 

“The one who put glue in Ronnie’s pants?” – David questioned back.

“Yes … .yes.” Vir confirmed as the two of them laughed, but Vir stopped short rather quickly and said, “he passed away last week”.

“What? How?”

“Heart attack, funny world brother” – Vir said. 

“I don’t know what to say”. 

“Nothing, I shouldn’t have brought it up like that. You tell me. How are things at home?”

“Same old, same old.”

David walked up to his wardrobe and from behind the shirts arranged in coloured sequence took out a packet of cigarettes. He lit one and offered the other to Vir. 

“No, Vir said,” – this was contradictory to Vir’s nature but David did not think much of it to question him.

“Well, just in case you feel like it later” – said David as he kept the cigarette on the side table.

David had just got himself his first camera. The two of them had an elaborate discussion about it and the use cases which could potentially give David a financial return on his investment. 

“Make yourself a portfolio as quickly as you can. You are good, I am sure you will find yourself a team to work with. You can start by covering weddings, I’ve heard they pay well.” Vir said.

“Let’s see, the portfolio is important though – I agree”, said David as he nodded in agreement to what Vir just had to say. 

“Come here, let’s see how it does in a fairly dark room”.

David and Vir sat side by side as Vir pointed the lens towards themselves and pressed the button instinctively hoping they were both in the frame if not anything else. The photo came out rather blurry but still clear enough for the general facial features of the two boys to be understandable. 

When David heard the next morning, he got up and left in a hurry. The previous night, Vir had returned home, had dinner with his parents, had a little chat with his mother and then went up to his room before taking some poison. No letter, no reason, no complaints. It was as if he tried to do it in a way that would not disturb anybody else. David initially felt nothing when he saw his friend’s lifeless body, all sloppy and pale, but then he sensed a piercing pain spreading out in his chest like a spider weaving its web. He rubbed his throat with his fingers, his fists tightened and a sheet of anger and confusion draped his thoughts making the talks of suffocation he had with his friend ever so prominent.

That night, when David finally came back home, he took a look at the cigarette that was left by his friend on the side table. He kept it at the far back end of the lower drawer and never smoked a cigarette since then. The photo that remained in the camera from the previous evening had then been printed and framed on the wall. 

The smoke from the decade old cigarette went up in a straight line before traversing into strange curves as it rested between his index and middle finger while David observed the photo of him and his forever young friend on the wall. As a deep sigh escaped his mouth, he reached out to his now, completely cold coffee and took a big sip. He put down the cup and then took a slow, long drag of the cigarette.

He left his phone on the bed and for the first time in a long while he slowly walked to the other room. He took a look at the photo of his parents that hung on the wall next to each other. Looking at his mother’s portrait, he asked,

”Why didn’t you ask me to do better?”

David stood there and remembered, 

“The idea of being alone is a peculiar concept son” she would say. “It can bring about a sense of emptiness. What would you do when your father and I are gone? Not having someone to take are of is probably as worse as not having anybody to take care of you, if not more!”

“What”, David would ask.

“There’s a time for everything in life dear. Once that is gone, there is no escape from the solitude you are craving.” 

Little did David understand what his mother meant then, but standing there in front of her photo, now when she was gone, he thought of his mother’s words and a faint smile found its way to his lips.  

He then slowly walked out to his balcony and took a look at the tulips – now closed up at night. Indifferent to what was happening around them, the flowers had already gone off to sleep. David heard a fly buzzing as he leaned on to the railing of the balcony. 

“Will Rin’s kids ever hear about my funny story? Will they ever hear about me for that matter? Where is Vir? Has he been at peace? Does maa still care about if I have eaten? Did father ever regret doing what he did?” The questions ran through his mind while the city seemed to be at the farthest; the darkness staring back as if waiting for David to commit the slightest mistake so it could punish him. The regular breeze seemed not to be interested in visiting that day. David stood there and felt his heart sink, as if he were being swallowed by overwhelming grief while he failed to understand what was causing it. Everything and nothing finally seems to have collided. 

He swayed his palm when the buzzing of the fly came disgustingly close to him. After quite a few gestures and swing of the palm, the buzzing only seemed to get louder. ‘I feel tired ‘ – ‘Guess I should just sleep’ – he thought to himself as he stretched his arms out wide.

He felt the wind gushing across his face and the world seemed to go up. The bats flew upside down and the city that always seemed to drift away from him, galloped rather hurriedly in his direction. The lights became brighter, and the sheet of confusion and despair slowly seemed to slide away. His parents’ silence did not seem to bother him anymore. His stomach churned and he felt his breath getting shorter. The unbinding freedom that used to give him a poisonous look, seemed to have disappeared. He had never felt so light earlier. 

David heard a loud thud and woke up in his bed – “When did I get back from the balcony?” he thought to himself, tucked cozily under a blanket. The thought of going out and seeing what had happened did cross his mind, but he felt too comfortable to get up. He pulled the blanket up, felt the softness of the pillow as he pressed his head against it and quickly fell off to sleep. As people gathered in their respective balconies to see where the thudding sound came from, the buzzing of the fly in David’s empty balcony stopped. The venus flytrap had gotten its meal!