Chapter 2, Page 1
As we drove on, I noticed that my wife didn’t text her mother about our whereabouts, which was uncharacteristic of her, and so I asked her if she wanted to send her mother a message or speak with her. I then handed her my phone and watched as she swiped aimlessly at it, and stared blankly and said “It’s ok. I don’t have anything to say right now.” My fear growing, I parked the car at the side of the road and asked my wife to choose a restaurant as was our custom; she would choose the restaurant and I would drive us there. I typed in a few restaurants into my phone and handed it to her once more. She took it quite confidently at first and I closely observed her as she browsed through the results. She scrolled up and down repeatedly with that same glazed and blank look in her eyes, without taking anything in. I watched as she only looked at the pictures as she handed the phone back to me and said “anything is fine as long as it’s vegetarian.” While the vegetarian part of that sentence was reassuring, it did nothing to calm my nerves as it was still in that strange voice that wasn’t hers. I was at my wits end trying to possibly devise a way to ease the spirit out of my wife; if indeed she was not herself, but I didn’t yet lose my rational mind; I needed to be sure that it was the princess of the castle that had possessed her. I’m not sure how that knowledge would’ve helped my current predicament, but perhaps devising ways to test my hypothesis was keeping me from completely losing my mind. I took the phone from her and looked at her and asked, “Are you sure that you don’t want to choose the place?”. She looked at me blankly and her face broke into a faint, strained smile and she said “Anything is fine.” I picked a vegetarian restaurant by the name of Cream Centre from the map and on we went. The drive to the restaurant was uneventful, save for my racing heartbeat. I would occasionally look at her through the mirror to see if I could find my beloved wife somewhere on that, I must confess, commanding and royal presence. At this point inexplicably, I felt a sense of bereavement as though I lost my beautiful wife. I longed to hear her comment on my bad driving or cracking up at silly things that passersby would do. I held on to the hope that once this spirit had left her, all will be well; hoping and praying; that this was all just a passing nightmare. We reached the restaurant and I found a spot to park the car. We got down, and walked towards it, she walked ahead of me as I followed her. I watched her walk and could see the upright proud pose in every step she took, the chin held high looking down on her subjects. It seemed to me that she was taking in the surroundings and wasn’t quite happy with what she saw; with what the city had become in the years gone by since she had passed. I hurried on behind her till at last we reached the elevator that would take us to the restaurant on the first floor. I pressed “1” once we walked in and the doors shut in front of us.
In the elevator, I noticed that the restaurant name was written on either side of the button, to the left was English and to the right was Kannada. I thought perhaps I could try a few tests to confirm if this was indeed the princess that I was speaking to. I feigned not being able to read the font beside the button as it was too small and asked if she could help, you know, to confirm if we were headed to the restaurant. She pointed to the Kannada font and said that it had the name of the restaurant. I found that a bit strange, my wife did know Kannada well and knew how to read and write in Kannada, but we, as most of us English medium schooled were, were much more comfortable reading English. I asked her the word for vegetarian in Kannada, this in my mind would be a step towards confirming if she was truly possessed; I realize now as I write this, I hadn’t quite thought this through. She said “shakahari” in an impatient and dismissive way that took me by surprise. I had never heard the word before, and this particular phrase that she spoke, now inched me closer to the conclusion that the princess was indeed the one speaking to me right now. I decided to play along and keep the princess happy and if I’m being honest I was scared for both my wife and myself at this point. We entered the restaurant and asked the waiter for a table for two and were directed to sit at a rather small table beside the glass window facing the road. Having been seated as comfortably as we could, I asked the waiter for the menu. Once again, I showed the menu to my wife; in hope that something in the menu or our conversation would trigger my wife and bring her back. The princess (from here on, I refer to my wife possessed by the princess simply as the princess) scrolled through the menu in much the same way as she scrolled through my phone earlier, just flipping through looking at the representative images. She first said “anything is fine” and continued looking through the pages, without really taking anything in. On my insistence she pointed to an image of an italian sizzlers dish. I must say that while I was mostly resigned to the fact that my wife was now the princess, the lingering hope of jolting her back into her body remained. I mention this now because my wife hates sizzlers and the steam that emanates from the dish, so this choice struck a blow towards my efforts in that direction. The warm ambience of the restaurant was at odds with the cold chill growing inside me. Nevertheless, I still had some control over my thoughts at that point, and stifled the swirling spiral once again. I instructed the waiter to bring her the Italian sizzlers, a one by two tomato soup, and I ordered something mundane for myself. I say mundane because I don’t recall what I ordered for myself and given the circumstances, can you blame me?