The Heart Skippeth a Beat

by
NINAD JOG

It happened suddenly, without any warning. My heart started beating loudly and rapidly—so rapidly that I was afraid it would jump out of my chest and fall to the floor. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Who could I turn to? I was home alone, and the neighbors were either out at work or taking afternoon naps. Even if they were home, I’m not sure if it would have helped, as we were not on good terms with them. I grabbed the keys to the flat from the desk drawer in the living room and bolted outdoors. I climbed down one flight of stairs and dashed out of the building, unsure of when—and whether—the palpitations would stop. I stepped outside the building’s compound and started walking along the lane towards the main road in a highly agitated state. My peace of mind was gone.

The afternoon was a quiet one, hot and sunny. It was always hot and sunny in Mumbai, except during the monsoon season when it rained incessantly, and in winter when it was a little less hot but just as sunny. A fisherwoman was walking towards me, a large basket perched precariously on her head. If she had had a good day, she had probably sold most of the catch while making the rounds door to door and was now heading home. A cyclist was riding his bike on the left side of the road, taking care not to fall into the open storm-water gutters that lined both sides of the lane. At the intersection with the main road stood a hawker by his cart, loaded with yellow and green bananas, gazing at the rickshaws and scooters and cars and the occasional red public transport bus—known by its acronym as the BEST bus—that hurried along the tree-lined avenue either toward the sea, or in the opposite direction, towards Khar railway station.

The very normalcy of the world outside my home, the sight of ordinary people going about their business without any worries, had a magical effect on me. The palpitations subsided and eventually stopped, much to my relief. My heart was no longer keen on jumping out of my body. But I couldn’t take any chances. What if the thud-thud-thud started again? I continued walking.

I turned left onto the main road and walked the two hundred or so feet to what we refereed to as the Malabari’s shop, the tiny convenience store from where we bought bread and eggs and other miscellaneous items. By then I felt sufficiently confident that the loud thudding of my heart would not return. I turned around and started walking back. I and smiled at the hawker when he recognized me and grinned cheerfully at me. The bougainvillea creepers were dropping to the ground from the twenty-foot high walls enclosing the large bungalow across the street, their yellow and reddish flowers making the most of the sunshine. I looked at the tall jackfruit tree in the compound of the neighboring building to see if it had borne any fruit. It had not. All in all, it was a placid afternoon in the early 1980s in the suburbs.

I returned home, still smarting from the five or ten minutes of sheer panic I had experienced. It felt so surreal. The moment I opened the front door to the tiny one-room-and-kitchen flat where I lived with my parents and my sister, my anxieties returned. What if the palpitations made a comeback? I had to do what I could to keep them from recurring.

I went to my cupboard and pulled out a copy of Enid Blyton’s book on Brer Rabbit. I opened a page at random and started reading it. I had read the whole book before, but there was no harm in reading it again. I lay down on the only bed we had, the settee in the living room, and continued reading the book. The more I read, the more my anxiety diminished. It would be another two hours before my sister would come home from school at 4 p.m., but I was confident I could survive until then without falling to pieces.

She would go downstairs to play with her friends from the neighboring building within minutes of coming home, after changing out of her school uniform and having a cup of milk, leaving me alone at home once more. But I was not unduly worried, for late afternoons carried with them the joyful promise of my mother’s arrival home from her job as a college professor. Besides, even though my sister was not at home, I could see her playing downstairs with her friends—a sight that, oddly enough, reduced my loneliness even though I was too old to be part of her group.

It was over our evening cup of coffee, around 6 p.m., when my father had also come home, that I told my parents about the thudding of my heart, what we refer to in Marathi as dhud-dhud-na.

“How did it stop?”  my mother asked me, a look of concern writ large over her face.

“I read Brer Rabbit!” I confessed sheepishly.

I’m not sure what my parents made of it, especially as I made no mention of the fact that I had dashed out of the home and walked around in an agitated manner for a good five minutes before coming back. I don’t think I was able to convey to them the feeling of sheer dread that I felt—as if the sky was falling, the world was coming apart, and I was getting crushed.

“If it happens again, just lie down,” one parent advised.

“Drink water,” said the other.

“Breathe deeply.”

I nodded. I was not surprised, because in those days the cure for many ills was to drink water and lie down for a few minutes and whatever it was that was bothering you—be it a stomachache or a general feeling of malaise—would go away. Hopefully, this was a one-off event, and the palpitations would never happen again.

But I was sorely mistaken. Happen they did once again, when I was home alone on a weekday afternoon, just like the first time. Nothing that I had done earlier that day could have presaged what was is store. I came home from school at the usual time, around 12:30 p.m., and had stone-cold vegetables and chapatis for lunch in the tiny, dimly-lit kitchen that doubled as the dining room. Then I spent a good forty-five minutes reading the day’s Times of India, my only source of news in those days, since we did not have a TV. I eagerly looked forward to the treat that lay in store, a treat that appeared just once in a blue moon: half a cup of cold coffee sitting in the fridge, coffee left over from the previous evening because my mother or father had not had a full cup, or a guest had paid us a visit and had just half a cup. The taste of cold coffee was something to die for; it was head and shoulders better than hot coffee. If only I could have it every day!

After having coffee, I sat at the desk to do my homework, marveling at how wonderful I was feeling. Life was not too bad after all. What a striking contrast it was from other day when I had palpitations and had to rush out of the home! Surely that was history, a mere footnote in the day-to-day journal of life’s happenings.

But that’s when it happened again. The thud-thudding, the panic, the sense of dread descended upon me out of nowhere like a demon, holding me hostage in its vice-like grip. Once again, I dashed out of the home and walked in the neighborhood for a few minutes before coming back and reading Brer Rabbit. Once more, the furry creature came to my rescue, driving the demons of doom away.

When I told my parents about it that evening, I’m sure they were even more concerned. We hoped it would not recur, but alas, I had no such luck. In the next few days, the attacks showed no signs of relenting. Not only did they become more frequent, I could often bring them on just by thinking about them. Perhaps that’s how they had started the second time, when I marveled at how they history. But I became better at managing them. I did not have to leave my home when they struck; all I had to do was immerse myself in reading the children’s book, a book that was quite fitting, for I was a child, probably a seventh-grader, a year shy of entering my teens.

I soon began to dread coming home from school and being alone at home all afternoon, alone and friendless in a tiny flat on the first floor, dark and dingy, with its two living-room windows and tiny balcony facing the backs of other buildings, rather than the street—not the most gorgeous of views. The palpitation attacks became even more frequent, occurring even on the weekends when my parents and my sister were at home. I would rush to my parents at once, and my father would promptly hug me, but the attacks could not have cared less whether I was alone or in my father’s arms. They had a mind of their own; they stopped only when they felt like it. Only one creature could vanquish them—Brer Rabbit.

I had a sinking feeling that they would be my steadfast companions for the rest of my life, casting a dark shadow on my well-being and perhaps calling into question my very survival.

When my father announced one weekend not long thereafter that it was high time we consulted a doctor, his words were music to my ears. I was certain that the doctor would, in one fell swoop, exorcise the demons that had been haunting me and laying waste to my peace of mind.

 
February 2018