“LIVE AID”

The power of music

LIVE AID

Rituparna Mukherjee

Purnima has had a particularly hard day at school. She and her colleagues don’t see eye to eye on many things and she is aware of her own silent tyranny. She wraps up her work and is about to head home when Kishore calls. She has lost all orientation of days now, she mostly forgets by midday which day of the week she’s supposed to dwell in. His phone call rattles her. Why is he calling, she wonders. Then it hits her, it’s a Monday, his off day, his day off till sometime in April and then she’ll be muddled all over again, adjusting her days to his erratic work schedules and timelines, nights and days coalescing, circadian rhythms losing their meanings. She has deep dark circles under her eyes, sometimes when she squints over examination scripts, she remembers the time when the letters on the answer scripts didn’t float around aimlessly, when she used to leave remarks on the margins for the students irrespective of whether they would ever get to see them.

Purnima’s phone rings again. The tone seems harsher this time. She clutches the phone in her hand and sits under a banyan tree right outside her school and answers the phone in a tired voice. The voice on the other side wants to know why she isn’t home yet. I was correcting scripts, she says, I forgot it is your off day today. She hears the phone click on the other side and nods to herself, it is going to be a long day. Kishore is hungry. He wants food. She is the giver of food. Sometimes, especially now, she feels that she has ceased to be the wife and is merely the caregiver, the provider. She picks up her bag and decides she will walk home, delaying her arrival as far as possible.

Kishore has an autoimmune condition. It has a fancy name— Celiac disease. When she heard it for the first time from the doctor, she couldn’t really place it properly in her mind. She was just noticing Kishore changing shape, sometimes bloated, sometimes emaciated, always irritable, not being able to digest the slightest gluten, his intestines revolting and waging a war on his body. Food items had to be thrown out of their lives like redundancies. Sauces pooled and given away, flour treated like the original sin, every meal portioned, every spoonful tasted with suspicion. Caution spread wings inside their lives, it stole inside their minds. Hunger was everywhere. Kishore was hungry very frequently and the constant forays into the kitchen wrung Purnima dry. Meanwhile, she often found herself standing forlorn outside pastry shops and pizzerias, her mouth watering unbidden and eyes watering in shame at this unbridled lust. She started gaining weight, gorging on food that was forbidden at her household. Cafés seemed homelier, she started taking up freelance assignments to support her expensive habit and between everything, she felt herself being pulled constantly in different directions. Kishore would often look at old google images of her and comment on how svelte she used to be. How her jowl didn’t have guests. How age didn’t affect her knees. Purnima didn’t protest. It was a secret she held on to dearly.

Purnima unlocks the door. Kishore comes and says, hungry, fruits. They talk in monosyllables mostly. She nods, puts down her bag and opens the refrigerator looking for apples and pomegranates. She goes inside the kitchen and as she chops the fruits, she dreams of a zesty Caesar salad and her mouth waters again. Kishore stands uncomfortably close. Theirs is a violence of the mind and his words pack quite a punch. She inches away and he looks at with hurt and anger. She immediately summons a practiced smile and pushes the plate of fruits towards him. He walks away and she lets out the air she has been holding inside her chest for long.

She hears him switch on their smart television and YouTube comes alive with its customary start up sound. She hears him poke through the options and knows he is searching for something specific. She tries to think back on who purchased this television four years back, who paid the EMIs for it, if she were to ever leave him who would get the television. There are just too many objects in her apartment. Will she get the womanly things? Will he take away the Marshall, that rare cognac leather soundbox that has her heart? Her insides feel like her supply cupboard, choking at its seams with objects, some necessary, most bought in habit, things that keep falling on her whenever she opens its doors. She watches online videos on organizing, makes elaborate plans to set a day aside to clean out that cupboard, she never gets to it.

Purnima hears a deafening roar on television and wonders if Kishore is watching some old game of cricket. And then she hears the opening piano strains of Bohemian Rhapsody play followed by that beloved voice. Freddie, she smiles and moves unsteadily to the door of her sitting room. Kishore looks at her in a silent invitation, his sudden smile warm, open, inviting, he looks suddenly young. Purnima cannot stop herself from smiling back. She comes and sits next to him on their spacious couch. He moves closer as she stares rapt at the television, her lips moving silently. His thighs touch hers and his unusually warm body worries her, do you have a fever? She gets up to reach for the thermometer and he pulls her back and nods. He offers her a slice of apple; she nods and gestures for him to eat. The lack of words between them doesn’t worry her anymore. It has settled on her skin like the melanin spots she has been getting for a few years.

Kishore’s smile is lively still, and Purnima finds herself slowly relaxing. She is transported to an old empty room ten years back, floors a little chipped, the damp walls ringing with laughter, their first rental, right after their marriage. They had nothing aside from a mattress, a floor mat, a few melamine utensils, a non-stick frying pan and a television that was delivered just thirty minutes back. Kishore fixed the smart stick to the television, and she happily chirped that she wanted to see Freddie Mercury sing on her new television. She enthusiastically typed LIVE AID and there he was in a flash, on her television screen, his loving energy charming the crowds, controlling them like pure magic can! And as she sang along, she looked vivaciously at Kishore and said brightly, isn’t he just brilliant? He nodded, bloody brilliant! And they watched how the crowd danced to the tune of Radio Gaga, Freddie looking every inch the Pied Piper. He had looked at her then, drinking in her soft beauty, smiling as she danced awkwardly, thoroughly enjoying herself. He heard her chatter incessantly about how Freddie injected life into an otherwise underwhelming concert, how it was absolutely meant for history books. Kishore perhaps expected her to inject some colour into his own staid life. Purnima still thinks she bled out drop by drop till she turned wan.

They sit side by side at that couch, foot tapping to the rhythm of Freddie’s songs, smiling, Purnima opening her reticent mouth and letting her voice out after a long time, swaying and singing to ‘We are the Champions.’ Kishore looks at Purnima with inexplicable emotion, fork fidgeting with pomegranate seeds. Purnima holds his hand, smiles and thinks how this feels almost like before, not quite like before. She looks at his thin, bowed frame and her heart wells in tenderness. Her phone buzzes and she puts it away. Later, she thinks exhausted. She looks at Freddie and thinks how this was his penultimate burst of glory on stage before AIDS ate at his body little by little. She considers all the dues she has paid, all the dues he has, won’t these dues have value?

Syncopation Literary Journal, vol4, issue 2, May 2025

https://syncopationlitearyjournal.wordpress.com/volume-4-issue-2/