Learned Helplessness

A casual glance would indicate that the platform was deserted except for a handful of entities. Exactly what one would expect at dawn. An old man huddled up at an appropriate distance from a tea stall; shrouded in a dark tattered blanket. A portly man’s head rested against his oversized chest. He did not need a blanket. He sat on the other side of the stall. A mongrel at a more conservative distance from the warmth; its fur unpleasant, dusty and flea infected. It was no wonder that it flinched.

The night’s stupor was pervaded by footsteps and a rattle of wheels on uneven tiles. The chaiwala jolted awake to consciousness and he looked at the pair expectantly. The uncle paid him no heed, looked away and limped along resolutely while the nephew timidly shook his head in acknowledgement. The chaiwala sat down smiling. The cold would soon do his bidding.

The boy and his uncle sat on the cold stone bench at the end of the platform; far from where the roof and its hospitality ended. This is where their coach would arrive.

The boy’s teeth chattered. He did not reach for the sweater in his bag. His spine was reserved only for necessities. He did not indulge in tea even as he eyed the stall intently. Sloth, not stoicism kept him cold. The train would take at least an hour to arrive. He did not suggest to move to a warmer place. He chose not to sully his stellar record of passivity.

The AC two-tier was a habitat the boy was used to. But it was startlingly dark. He had simply not envisaged that the lights would be switched off at a time when most of the world was asleep. He had no choice. He asked his uncle to help him carry his luggage to his seat through the sinister alley plagued by over infestation of currently comatose Homo Sapiens.

He survived the trip but the train had started moving and that was an obstacle that his uncle could not surmount. Unless…

“Pull the chain!”, the uncle cried as he hobbled towards the exit. The boy did nothing. It was fear, not apathy. But as he stood there frozen the train began to retard.

As the early birds chirped, the train chugged away from where the sun rose, bringing it closer to the coast. The boy perched upon his upper berth noticed tourists of various nationalities, all aboard the ride to an economical yet luxurious hedonistic haven. The boy was not going there to party. Instead, his endeavour was to complete yet another semester of college. He was more of the same. A cliché. An engineer lured into the vocation with a promise of security. The incongruity between his desires and his obligations had robbed him of vigour.

The boy’s nose scrunched up and his lips curled down. He looked at his palms with his back hunched and legs crossed. His chest throbbed and something heavy settled into his stomach.

Had someone pulled the chain for him after noticing his inertia? He could hope that his uncle would think it was him who did it. Unless, of course, it was his uncle himself who had had to do it. That would be embarrassing! He couldn’t help but spiral down the thought process. His worst memories began plaguing him. At first, they made him cringe but he had a way of romanticising his shortcomings. He was an expert at assigning blame.

It had been his childhood that had ruined his life. If only his parents…

The boy had started reading up on Freud’s ideas. Millennials are experts on getting traumatized every other day. There are quite a few ways of solving problems but playing the victim card is the most efficient.

The deus ex machina in this boy’s life was, simply, a girl. She was not half as beautiful as her long blonde hair, but that did not hold significance. What did, was the ease with which she operated.

She had one backpack which she tucked beneath the seat in one swift motion after taking out a book from it. She flopped her feet on the other end of the upper berth perpendicular to his and settled down snugly to read. The boy was used to looking at his luggage three times in three minutes to make sure it was safe and here was this non-native damsel who was clearly not in distress, as she backpacked all over the quirkiest country in the world.

She shone through bright and dispelled all his festering thoughts. The pit in his stomach whimpered and whined and it fizzled out leaving something much lighter in its wake. His lips curled up and his heart fluttered. While he furtively glanced her way his mind was whirring in action. He remembered something that he had read but had never had been able to internalize – that a human’s life was just a momentary blip and that oblivion is inevitable and nothing really mattered.

He smirked thinking of all the tormented people who care about trivial matters when they could die any moment. He had changed though. Nothing could hold him back. Especially, rejection from someone he barely knew.

He decided to test his newfound powers on the girl. He shifted closer to her and tried to look confident as he tried to say “Excuse me…”

Nothing but a guttural croak escaped his throat. The fair maiden looked up in alarm. He tried to smile to reassure her while trying to regain his voice and the resulting facial expression only exacerbated things until he finally spoke out.

“Hi, do you speak English?”

The girl beamed cheerily at him. He took that as a yes.

“Where are you from?”

“Argentina!” the girl said revealing her perfect teeth in a wide grin.

“Oh, so you speak Spanish too.”

The girl gave him another one of her signature smiles which he could now discern as an affirmation with more confidence.

“What are you reading?” He utterly hoped that it did not sound like an interrogation. If only he had been an extrovert for the past nineteen years because it felt like it had all been leading up to this.

“It is about a European anthropologist who visited Nepal and ended up marrying a Nepali,” she said passionately.

“It’s a big plus if you are fascinated with the culture of the country you are visiting, right?”

Was he failing at this? But the girl was still smiling. Was she nice to everyone or did she like him?

“I love India!” she looked radiant “I have been in the subcontinent for three months now.”

“Three months?” he gaped as he fiddled with the strap of his bag.

She was serious about the whole “I love backpacking across strange lands with rustic cultures” act.

“So you have been around!”

She laughed harder than he thought she would.

As she described her adventures he noticed how utterly carefree she was. She had saved up enough for a few years and had put most of it on travelling. She did not have a plan but would go where ever the road took her. She had a visa to tour Australia which she could extend to a year. Apparently, it was possible to work odd jobs and sustain a never-ending trip across the world.

The young man became pensive. He gazed at her sky blue eye as she beamed at him.

“I am going to do it too.” he finally said.

“Do what?”

“What you are doing”

Quite incredibly, her grin widened.

“Well, do you know any good restaurants in Goa?”

He did. He knew more about Goa than her as of yet.

They were close to their destination. As he pulled out his phone, she settled beside him.

Conscious of the proximity between them, he embarked on the quest to find her the perfect restaurant for brunch. He, of course, assumed that she would be eating alone and had not hinted that she preferred company. But as the train drew closer to their stop his heart beat faster. She was perfect and he did not know what to do about it.

The train stopped. He laboured with his luggage. She, with absolute elegance, slipped on her backpack in one swift motion.

They managed to stay together as they traversed the crowd.

The boy had already given up hope of ever wooing her. He did not know how they did it in Argentina, or anywhere, for that matter. Nothing really mattered yet the boy had been too nice to bother her with his company. The butterflies in his stomach had turned into rocks once again.

At the exit, they turned towards each other.

She smiled at him.

He tried to.

Learned Helplessness

by

M.R. Deepak