Mindful

In the way that he occasionally did, and almost always in matters of money, Mathew began to fixate on the meditation app. The next day. “It’s called Chill but it costs Rs 4000 a year. That’s not so chill, alle?” Rhea didn’t disagree. Since they had moved to Ernakulam she had lost her life, her friends and the ease of her quasi mother tongue Hindi but all that would have been bearable if Mathew wasn’t suddenly earning three times what she earned. They now rarely thought for two minutes before buying anything but if ever they did it was when Mathew commented about something she had bought in her admittedly thoughtless way. A visiting Delhi friend had recommended Chill. Nayantara had lay on Rhea’s couch. She was perfect from her pale pink toenails to her blue-dipped hair. Rhea had subscribed to Chill while Nayantara was still mid-rave about the calm and focus the app had bought to her life. Then she had forgotten all about it.

After work that evening, when Rhea was soaking dried fruit and nuts in rum and looking up her mother’s Christmas cake recipe, she remembered that conversation with Mathew and was annoyed afresh. When did she ever ask him what he was spending his money on? She ground her teeth, caught herself at it and stuffed a great handful of the chopped apricots in her mouth. She wiped her hands on her jeans. Then she thought, as she did at least once a day, that Mathew would never do such a thing. Her parents admired how neat he was and, occasionally, sighed regretfully that she still wasn’t.
She switched from the recipe back to her Korean show and was about to prop her phone against the oven when she got a notification from Chill. “Coping with self-esteem issues with trips to the fridge?” She was startled and amused. Algorithms had got cute. So cute that she could imagine the phone had heard her her grind her teeth and then gulp down those rummy apricots. I Spy With My Digital Eye.

“Hello Chill, got ESP?” The sound of her own voice didn’t startle her anymore. She had become a full-fledged talker to self in their 15th floor apartment. She clicked on the notification and a sweet little pastel animated fridge offered to talk her out of emotional eating. She abandoned the cake prep and wandered into her beautiful sea-green living room. All their visitors looked at her messy, frizzy hair, looked at the living room and immediately complimented Mathew for it. Surely, it must be his elegant eye.

She sat down and put on her headphones for the guided meditation. She was startled by the pure gold of the man’s voice in her ears. She sat up. “Gently close your eyes. Allow your mind to wander like a puppy. Watch it, don’t scold it. In time we will teach the puppy to sit down. We will teach the puppy to sit again and again but today is not that day.”

The voice in her ear reminded her of one perfect winter afternoon when she and a college friend had lay about in Lodhi gardens. They had been slightly drunk and the grass slightly damp but with sunglasses on and several layers of shawls Rhea remembered feeling like she had been quite ready to die that moment.

Two nights later she half-watched Mathew pack for a trip to Prague to hang out with one of their big paprika vendors. The spice company his school friend had founded frequently sent Mathew abroad. Tonight she felt less annoyed with him than usual, even when he was sending her all over the house to find him things, continuously reciting stages of his travel plans. She was four sessions down on the peace and quiet series in Chill. She was breathing differently, she noticed. It was slower, more measured. She sat quietly while Mathew bustled about and then saw the notification on her phone. Chill said: we are proud of you, aren’t you proud of you?

As soon as Mathew was out of the door she put on her headphones and lay on the planter’s chair in their balcony. She had looked up the owner of that golden voice after two sessions. On Tuesday, she had looked at Kabir’s photos on Instagram and felt lit from within from the kindness in his eyes, his lean, otherworldly body. On Wednesday, she considered giving up meat. She also felt disproportionately upset at the number of women commenting on his photos. She felt upset thinking about it now. She picked a module on honesty, adjusted the volume and prepared to drown in Kabir’s voice. One hand scrabbled about her purse for a cigarette.

The next Saturday Mathew took a sudden detour from their discussion about their mutual funds to ask whether she had cancelled all her subscriptions. “You don’t need three music streaming apps, Rhea, do you? These little things add up.” She deleted two music apps and felt as if the couple of ropes tying her balloon to the ground had been cut off. She looked at Mathew, adjusting the angle of their projector to watch IPL and wondered whether their lives were wholly imaginary. Perhaps, he was imaginary. Perhaps, Kabir was imaginary, too. An AI fantasy on an AI beach. All was imaginary except for that voice in her ear. Now that she had personalised the settings Kabir’s voice whispered her name in his ear. Close your eyes. Scan your body. Begin at your toes.

Mathew was saying something but Rhea pretended not to have heard. She picked up her phone. A notification from Chill just below a notification about a good deal on biryani. “People are not what they seem to be, Rhea.” Kabir was beginning to sound like a newspaper horoscope, Rhea thought to herself in mild irritation. A new notification popped up. “Running out of empathy, Rhea?” On her sea-green sofa she jumped. This was a bit too much. She stuffed her phone under a cushion and went for a walk. But without her usual music playing overly loud in her ears she found herself unexpectedly accompanied by the choir of competing voices in her head. She hated them. She should have brought her phone and Kabir along.

When she opened the door to her house she smelt a pink pepper sample Mathew had brought home the previous evening. He was watching IPL.
She breathed in the pepper and immediately imagined herself gliding in the long green dress Keira Knightley wore in Atonement. Why? It came back slowly. She had once taken a personality test run by a perfumier and the test had dazzled her by identifying a perfect perfume for her one with pink peppers in it. They had gone to watch Atonement together in Delhi. A second string of memories. She remembered that fancy French perfume had a Pondicherry connection. From Instagram she knew Kabir lived in Pondicherry. She stuffed her running shoes into the shelf, dropped her socks in the laundry bag and was astounded by a stack of stray thoughts. One of her voices was scheming a girls’ trip to Pondicherry only so she could bump into Kabir.

Watch the puppy? The puppy was totally out of control! She went to the settings to uninstall the damn app once and for all.
A new notification. “Aren’t you impressed by how the universe is responding to your needs? We are impressed.” She stared at her phone. Another notification. “Fix your head and you can fix your hair later.”
She put her headphones on to listen.

Nisha Susan’s debut collection,The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories, will be published by Context in 2020