Bottle Of Fear

My eyeglasses crush under the wheels of my son Adi’s toy car as he drives it with gusto. A triumphant smile lights up the four-year-old’s face on overcoming the hurdle on his path. With dark fury in my eyes, I run from the kitchen with the ladle still in my hand, behind my son, thinking of an appropriate punishment for him. The perpetrator flees and runs around the dining table to save himself. How could I leave it on the mat? Before I could stop to think, the demons in my head are speaking through me. 

‘I will lock you up in the bathroom, do you understand?’ I yell at the top of my voice. Fear spilling from his eyes, he tries not to cry.

It thrusts a dagger through my heart. I am back, locked in the bathroom of my childhood home, where sunlight was a rare guest even at noon. I was six at the time. 

‘Let me out,’ I had pleaded between my sobs.

The smell of pigeon poop from the nest in the window lingered in the air. The dark, damp loneliness and the rough stone floored bathroom floor were my companions. Two of my friends and their mothers were visiting us. I heard one of the mothers pleading with mine to let me out. My crime that evening had been that of accidentally ruining my school bag with mashed bananas. My mother had packed two ripe ones along with sandwiches for tiffin.

When she finally opened the door, a wave of embarrassment swept over me as I faced the guests. The horror from the night before, when my mother had suspended me in the air by grasping my hair, was still fresh in my memory. I was a thin child. Fear ran in my veins. All I wanted to do was stay out of trouble. Yet, the next day while returning from school in a shared rickshaw, I hit a girl. It wasn’t my first time. That girl retaliated. My cheek burnt at her slap and I wailed as the rickshaw’s wheel ran over my glasses that had been flung to the road. 

Upon entering home, my mother asked me to shush. My father was asleep in the bedroom after his night shift at the factory. I tiptoed to the dining table, praying that my mother wouldn't notice my missing glasses. She served Aar fish, my favorite, probably trying to make up for the severe punishments. The lid of the rice pot slipped from her hand and crashed on the floor. We went still, waiting for the worst. My father was up much before time. I blocked my ears to shut off his angry yelling hurling towards my mother.

Adi runs to the bedroom. I barge in and kneel and look into his eyes.

‘You know I need the glasses, right?

‘Sorry,’ he says, throwing his arms around me.

I sigh and remember how dark bathrooms still scare me.