The Scientist on Vacation

There was constant typing, constant thinking, constant grumbling. Not a single moment of peace, not a single moment of bliss, there was only constant pioneering, as the typing went towards forging what could only be impossibly good ideas for what could only be a fantastic tomorrow…but a tomorrow for whom I ask, if not for the typists, the thinkers, the grumblers? What of those who stood in the shadows, set up there for show, for a semblance of warmth, for comfort? And again for whom to give comfort, if not for the pioneers of tomorrow, the typists of typists, the fantastic forgers of the morrow?

If you were to ask me—which I know you won’t because I am only there for show—I have had it with being put on a shelf for a crazy scientist. I lie there day and night, night and day, with only the comfort of knowing that tomorrow is going to be exactly the same for me. She will come in at 9am, turn on her monitor, log in, and work work work until 5pm. She will then crack her fingers–because that’s a thing that she does–pack up and go home. She may adjust me on her shelf but that’s about it. Goodness, I have had it with these scientists.

It was pouring in the streets of Curepipe. To be more accurate, it felt like a giant was unable to stop a steady flow of tears from his heart. No comfort came to him, poor soul: a single reality existed and it was that of his misery. The consequence on the mere mortals did not matter. In fact, one could say that reality curved itself around the misery of the giant, such that there was nothing to cheer up the life of the Curepipians. My oh my, it was a day to hurry even one’s foes into the comforts of home: “Here, come in my dear, let us forget our conflicts, let us bury the hatchet finally! Kettle is on the stove…or would you prefer some hot chocolate? Here’s a towel. Make yourself at home.” I must have made my point now. I must have beaten it flat onto the ground with Thor’s hammer. The day of the deluge was a day to stay in bed, a day to watch Netflix, a day to stay indoors…certainly not a day to remember to do the groceries, definitely not a day to have the car stay peacefully at the mechanic’s. And yet, this was exactly the kind of day that was awaiting Radha, her car awaiting repairs, her kitchen devoid of food.

Radha stood by a closed window in her living room, taking in the bleak landscape, trying not to let it bury her spirits into some irretrievable place in her body. A few minutes ago, she had bravely opened this very window, question of demonstrating to her younger sister that “things are never quite as bad as they seem to be on the outside.” But perhaps sometimes things are exactly as bad as they seem to the eye: her bravery had been rewarded with an unwanted shower and a big puddle of water. The malevolent chuckles had also not missed their entry. “Yeah okay, we are not made of salt,” Krishna had replied to her as she mopped the floor vigorously, “but if you want to go grocery shopping now, you can count me out.” Her Sancho Pansa out of the picture, Radha had no choice but to wait for the deluge to stop. As a sigh escaped her (and was promptly accompanied by a smirk on her sister’s face now buried in a fantasy novel), Radha decided to make the best use of her time: she might as well finish writing the first draft of her paper, due the first week she was back in Canada. Only two weeks away now, only two weeks away. She grunted. However, as she neared her room, she decided to backtrack and look into the kitchen. What a miserable sight…The shelves glared at her in their shameless barrenness, and the black ants moved up and down the wall next to the shelves, confused as to where there was food. Radha sympathetically looked at the insects: only they seemed to truly understand her plight.

However, sympathy could only help one so far: a nice cup of tea would be far more helpful to her right now. She rummaged through her travel knapsack and was surprised to actually find a decrepit tea bag at the very bottom of her bag. She dumped the tea bag into her sunflower-patterned mug, and put the kettle on absent-mindedly. She wandered over to her laptop and read the last sentence she had written: “Our biochemical experiments, together with the results from our bioinformatics analysis, suggest that there’s something we definitely don’t understand.” No need to have any post-graduate education to predict that this sentence was never going to feature in a proper scientific journal. She turned on the radio in an attempt to brighten up the atmosphere then resumed the chewing of her pencil. How to rephrase this sentence? She tried to put all her mental faculties at work but, before long, her mind was wandering along avenues that had nothing to do with science. For some reason, her thoughts kept going back to the kettle. What about it? It was just a regular kettle…Admittedly, it could have been better engineered: one should not be able to turn it on without any water inside…Yeah…She gasped and ran back to the kitchen. But lo and behold, there was water in the kettle. Was she losing her mind?

“Krishna! Krishnaaaaaa!”

“Yeeeeees?” her sister answered from the living room, the annoyance barely masked in her voice.

“Did you put water in the kettle?”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you wash the kettle with vinegar this morning?” Radha replied, finding the annoyance of her sister contagious.

“What, it is not clean enough? Should I have left some water in it as well?” came the reply promptly.

Argh. “It’s nothing. Get ready: we will leave as soon as the rain stops.”

No reply came this time; she had not expected any. Right, a mysteriously full kettle. Radha imagined that the rain must be having some kind of effect on her brain, possibly diluting it to the point that she had forgotten putting water into the kettle. She stood next to it, and stared at the ground, her arms tightly crossed. “Ping!” announced the kettle. She poured the water into her mug, and leant against the kitchen counter. As she stood there, feeling terribly useless, she let her eyes wander about the kitchen. Her mind flew here and there, unable to settle on what was supposed to be priority. She tried to imagine what it would be like to actually stay in the house of her childhood, instead of occupying it every few years when she could afford to come back home. Look at the wall’s paint; it could not hold up. The heavy humidity spelled disaster on whatever artistic endeavour she attempted in Curepipe. And yet…Smell the air, so clean, so pure, so fragrant. Yes, it smelled of rain, but it mostly smelled of home…What would it be like to actually stay here?

But wait! She detached herself from her dream brusquely. What had happened here? The wall’s paint seemed to have deteriorated to the point that it was almost as if someone had tried to peel it off.

Bizarre, she reflected as she poured water into her cup, getting ready to savour the last of her stock of earl grey and vanilla. The radio was audible from where she stood. “Gooooood afternoon Mauritius! Let it be a good afternoon for you all, especially for those of you in Curepipe! Grab a hot chocolate and a good book, don’t let that rain spoil your mood. We are here with the best programming on Top FM!” Aah the rain. Since it had been raining continuously for two weeks now, it was impossible for the deluge not to find its place into every single conversation or thought. Radha took out her tea bag and mechanically went to her potted fern–one of her many attempts at livening up the place. She was about to drop her tea bag into the pot when she noticed that her fern was drooping. Puzzled, she bent to the level of the pot: too much rain outside, water mysteriously appearing in the kettle, and her fern drying out? What kind of world was it coming to? But no, the fern was not drying out. Rather, the bamboo branch she had fixed into the ground to support it had disappeared. She took a deep breath.

“Krishnaaaa!”

“What did I do now?” came the reply petulantly.

“Did you knock out the fern in the kitchen? Accidentally?” Radha knew it was not a fair question but she felt she would rather be called a dictator than not investigate. This time, Krishna actually came into the kitchen. She stood with arms akimbo, her foot rhythmically tapping the ground. She looked ready to fight back…verbally at least.

“You know that’s not fair. I’m an adult, alright?”—she had just turned twenty—“Why on earth would I wish ill on a plant?” And then her anger evaporated just like that. “My little grey cells suspect that you’re finding someone to blame for your shenanigans…” The change in her tone was so brusque it was comical. “Are we up to no good here?” she finished, the very image of a mischievous elf.

There was an age gap of eight years between the two sisters but it was meaningless to her. Radha had seen sisters who could not look at each other out of inexplicable exasperation. She had also seen those who could have been Siamese twins—while not being actual twins—a very rare occurrence. As for her and her sister, their relationship remained an outlier to any attempt at classification. Radha sighed exaggeratedly. “Well now that you mention it, the police is probably looking for us because—”

“Pim-Pom!” A horn cried, breaking off her story-telling. The makatia vendor driving on his motorcycle, in the middle of a rainstorm? Hats off to such dedication! Then only was it that Radha realized that she could not hear the rain drops hammering on the windows, and that there was a shy brightness to the kitchen. It had miraculously stopped raining. “Pim-Pom!” the horn announced again.

Krishna burst into life: “I will get my purse! You try to stop him!”

Quickly, Radha opened the door and sprinted out. The motorcycle was heading away from their house but was only a few meters away.

“Marchand! Marchand!” she cried out. The vendor must have heard her as he pulled on his brakes. “How much for ten?” she asked, panting slightly. Ten loaves was probably too much for two people but, the way she saw it, life was incredibly short.

Krishna joined her at that moment: “How about twenty instead?”

A few minutes later, the sisters returned to the house, both happily munching on makatia loaves. A small respite before they went out for groceries. As they entered the kitchen, Krishna left to get ready while Radha decided to finish her tea. As she was savouring the complex mixture of earl grey, vanilla and ground coconut (from her makatia), she considered whether red was a better choice for the kitchen walls than beige. Beige was not even her favourite colour. It was in the middle of these meanderings that she saw a fluffy object move from the corner of her eyes. She moved her head quickly in the direction of the movement…but there was nothing left to be seen. Curiouser and curiouser. Intuition led her eyes to the ugly patch on the wall where the paint seemed to be peeling off…and somehow she was not surprised to find that there was a small hole that had suddenly made its appearance at that exact same spot. She frowned deeply…

…then released the tension from her forehead. It was just a hole in the wall. That’s right: just a benign hole in the wall. Radha looked away and started humming nonchalantly. “I am ready to go do the groceries!” she said aloud. She advanced towards the kitchen door at a leisurely pace, taking in the beauty of the world, the fragrance of the air after a heavy downpour…Just how life could be beautiful on holidays…She put on one of her oven gloves; maybe she could bake a nice cake right before going out this afternoon, eh?

Then, like a leopard, she jumped to the hole in the wall and caught—with a hand made precise by hours of pipetting into gels—a … fluffy thing. She heard a tiny screech—or maybe she had only imagined it—but mercilessly tightened her hold on…whatever it was. She brought out her hand, a smirk on her face, and then stared till her eyes felt like they might pop out.

There: the white teddy bear that she thought she had left on her shelf in the lab.

A blink later, her hand was empty.

All illustrations by Nirvana Nursimulu

Originally published in the October 2017 issue of the SickKids Training Post