I don’t know what is worse – spending an entire agonising evening trying to come up with a profound, witty and original column or expe-riencing forty seconds of roof, walls, floor and everything in between shimmying as if on an audition for So you think you can dance. The difference between the two is that you can’t die from the first one.

Earthquakes are great for perspective, if nothing else. One moment I was there peering into the computer screen, boring into every word, phrase and sentence like an oxyacetylene torch, determined that nothing should go amiss, and no reader out there would have a chance to snigger at a howler or a printer’s devil. I was also feeling grouchy that I had missed lunch, it was too hot, my significant other had not called and on top of it all, it was my bad hair day. In this mood you don’t particularly count your blessings or think of God or even be angelic towards your fellow colleagues. Your mouth hardens in a thin hard line, two nasty furrows squat on your forehead, and your eyes look through people as if they are vapour. You are impervious to the cerulean blue sky beyond, the sunshine spilling over the trees and the sidewalks, the lovers strolling hand in hand, and the grubby school children singing in the school bus. You fall into the trap of assuming that what you are doing is the most important thing any human being has ever done, and that the future of mankind depends on what you accomplish at this moment. Then, the next moment, there is that shudder from deep within the bowels of the earth. Everything around you – the computers, tables, chairs, the fans, wardrobes are rattling. People are scrambling and making for the door with incoherent cries. And you, the cold, ruthless professional with the unwavering focus, are a blob of jelly, screaming with fear, unable to decide whether to stand there and face whatever was coming or make a dash for some blessed place where the ground wouldn’t heave like this. This personality change in me – from confident career woman to hapless lily-livered coward – was so dramatic, so radical and took place within such a short time span that no one would be able to believe I was the same person. I didn’t.

When the ground stopped shaking, there was a titanic Jekyll and Hyde kind of struggle between my two selves. To my eternal shame, the coward took over and made me flee homewards, without letting me even pause long enough to lock the door. The next morning, my friend and colleague gave me a big thank you, smiling quite ironically. “Why?” I asked warily. It seemed I was screaming so much that she was worried I would pass out or something, and her concern for me distracted her totally from the terror of being in the middle of a quake. “Glad to be of service”, I muttered and hid myself among my papers for the next two hours as the story spread like a ripple and raised laughs.

Half an hour after the quake, still shaky and barely able to have lunch, the phone rings at home. It is my older son from Delhi. What was I doing? He wants to know. “Nothing much”, I say, not wishing to divulge any details of the ignominious scream fest. “Was there an earthquake in Guwahati?” “Yes”, and I let loose, like a dam breaking, a torrent of words, with the eloquence and exaggeration typical of a drama queen. “Had any buildings been flattened? Were there casualties?” He asked. “Well, no”, I said lamely. “So, it hadn’t been really big after all”, he concluded, the relief clearly evident in his voice. A friend of his, it seems, had rung up saying there had been a really big earthquake and told him to find out if his folks were safe. As we conclude our conversation, my son suddenly gets very angry with his friend for giving him a scare and rants against him. I go over the conversation later on, and it hits me then that the quake, far from being a deadly enemy, had helped me discover how much our son still loved us. When our children grow up and move away, there are times we feel we are no more a part of their lives. But his tense voice, the relief coming in later, showed he needed us, loved us and was scared something unspeakable had happened. I can imagine him frantically dialling our cell numbers (switched off) and then the landline, willing us to pick up the phone, perhaps imploring God to spare us. So now, after hardcore professional and lily- livered coward, I discovered also a maudlin mother residing within the same body. They do take up a whole lot of space and lead to a whole lot of confusion, but at least no one can accuse me of not being interesting.

The kind of split personality you saw in me just now is also symptomatic of Indian television. On the one hand you have goody-goody TV serials like Balika Badhu and the others pushing sanitised family values, women in ghunghats touching the feet of elders and on the other, you have reality shows like Sach Ka Samna, where men and women get paid to confess to their dirty secrets. These shows bring out the voyeur in us and also serve to encourage socially unsanctioned behaviour by making it appear that such acts are more common than we think. After actress Rupa Ganguli’s revelation of her divorce, loss of custody of her child and her live – in relationship, a Lucknow housewife who was in a similar predicament got hit by the blues, just decided her life wasn’t worth living, scribbled a sentimental suicide note, and popped off to kingdom come, without so much as a by your leave. We have heard of kids trying to imitate Shaktiman and coming to grief but an adult? Was her conscience on cold storage till Rupa appeared on screen? Why could not she take responsibility for her divorce and the loss of custody of her child? Its sad but true. Indian women have advanced with only cosmetic, superficial changes. A married woman strays, or gets divorced, or has a live-in kind of thing, but she still yearns for acceptance and society’s respect. She still craves for certainties and is terrified of flux. She wants to have her share of the fun and the action, but can’t bear it when fingers are pointed at her. She is yet to be comfortable in her skin and say to hell with the world. The burden of feeling she has sinned sits so heavy on her that she longs to go back to that prison where she has no right to any feelings or choice, but is deified as a Goddess, when in reality she is as good as one of a herd of cattle-meek, placid, bleating helplessly.

Oops, I did it. Used the word cattle. After all the trouble Shashi Tharoor got into, I should have known better. The harmless cow almost cost Tharoor his ministership, but do you think it has cut into his popularity ratings in any way? Not by a long shot, let me assure you. Because the educated, English-speaking class in India love the idea of a suave, smooth talking writer who twitters, has a sardonic sense of humour and is photogenic to boot. He is considered a refreshing antidote to the crude, pan-chewing, semiliterate lout who shoots betel-nut juice at press conferences and rubs the balls of his feet or cleans his ears at every available opportunity. Tharoor may be a tad impervious to the political correctness of mentioning the bovine species, even if it was done in jest, but the uproar it evoked among his partymen only had Tharoor loyalists laughing at them, for these netas seemed clueless about the meaning of Tharoor’s expression, which was not meant to be taken literally.

As I sit here giving the last finishing touches to this piece, I realise that the long evening has passed and though the beginning seemed as painful as having a tooth extracted, I have progressed quite smoothly and feel liberated at being able to laugh at myself. The cheerful babble of television and the fragrance of dinner wafting from the kitchen are welcome signs that life has returned to an even keel after the big shake. Outside, in the night beyond, I can hear the roll of thunder, see lightning streaking across the sky. What if there is a quake and a storm together? What if you are struck by lightning just as the earth opens up to swallow you? Readers, please ignore this drivel. It’s only that lily-livered coward within me hyperventilating as usual.

indrani.raimedhi@gmail.com

website: www.iraimedhi.com

Indrani Raimedhi