Sharing a room with cockroaches - and the thing is they stay for free!

We were all ready to move into this house, a 1 BHK, Rs. 15,000 a month  a little too much for our meagre salaries but we thought we could still somehow get by. The 15th of September - the most awaited day in a really long time bringing with it a simple joy of settling down. We imagined such happiness around that little apartment - a simple happiness but abundant. It was this nice, cosy place with an alfresco balcony behind towering glass doors and the view - a monument of epic proportions, gracefully aging, reminiscent of a glorious past, battling with immortality. And we were to settle there in that house - somewhere between now and then - to settle between two indefinite threads of time, definitely. And we'd sit in the balcony on two low chairs, with coffee steaming from our cups kept neatly on a round, wooden table - the glass doors rendered translucent by the milky vapour rising from the coffee and from our mouths, on a still winter morning. And in that stillness, we would find our refuge, safe in our haven, looking at the greying monument as voices would come trickling up to us as if they were something distant, far away. What would they be talking about? The pleasure of voyeurism experienced from the nest of our quiet contentment! And in the evenings, as the cold ash grey of the day would give way to the amorphous gold of brilliance at its edge, we'd talk about the passing of that day - little things, trivial things that happen so that the day could happen. Such would our happiness be. Such happiness I had imagined.

But then, at the last minute, at the pinnacle of our flickering hope, things took a sharp turn.

The house had been already given to someone else while we had been measuring the size of happiness in perfect ignorance! It had been given to Sridevi's friends! Charged with a numbing anger, we marched to the landlord's house. And although we understood, all attempts at reclaiming the house would prove futile, we still had to do something. And so, we abused the fraying old man, questioning his deceit. All we wanted to see behind that stone face was an apology, an admittance of an error; all we wanted to see behind those murky grey eyes was a glimmer of remorse. But even such pleasure was denied to us behind his iron wall of 'I don't know' and 'I know'.

All hope obscured by treason. All expectations burdened by the heaviness of longing. All happiness prolonged.

What could we do but look for another house? Exhaustion, langour and disappointment would not allow us to search with the same excitement again. But we did find a small apartment immediately in a neighbouring building and it was relatively cheaper. Even though this place was nothing like the previous one, we knew we had to take it, more out of defeat than anything else.

We moved in - N and me. A.JL would be staying with us for a few days as well. We had only brought our luggage in, when A.JL grew cold, his eyes widened and his limbs were flailing in distress. He had seen a cockroach. A tiny one but reeking of everything disgusting. Little did we know then, that one cockroach signified the existence of a thousand. N, being the most masculine in that company, killed the poor hexapoda with all his weight amassed in his foot while the two us cringed for our lives. Oh the horror! But then, again, like an old man defeated and aging, I asked, "What can we do?" - that hopeless question that lets you resign, makes you surrender. So, we had to make the best of what we got. That following evening, we rushed to Munirka, N and I, to buy mattresses, bed covers, pillows, pillow covers, a dustbin, toilet paper and of course HIT to exterminate the roaches.

It's been almost a month now since we moved in. A.JL left us for what now seems eternity. And N and I have stayed back, in that hole of a house, being denied all sunlight and air, to dwell in darkness, battling daily with ghosts, infirmity, hunger and cockroaches, trying to remove all vestiges of the past of that room. Perhaps, habit, that great deadener, has helped us adapt ourselves to the dinginess of that place or perhaps we have simply grown inured to the damp walls and the foul smell they emit. We are not happy there but neither can we afford to be resentful anymore. And even though unhappiness, dear companion, has returned with all its might, we've somehow managed to find some peace. C, thankfully has been there to lighten this burden. And occasionally, in our smoky driftings, hallucinations and sparse mirths, we find the courage to get by.