Not an alcoholic

Fifteen pairs of eyes turned expectantly on me.

My mouth turned dry. As each woman introduced herself and described the agony of addiction and despair that had brought her there, my heart sank further.

By now I knew the introductory formula. “Hi, my name is Cynthia Rodrigues, and I am…”

I paused. The grandmother next to me squeezed my hand. Other heads nodded encouragement, willing me to lay my burden down.

But I couldn’t bring myself to complete the statement.

The others, veterans of many an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, interpreted my hesitation as fear, shame and denial.

Fierce confusion assailed me. The women around me, a mix of ages (the youngest 14, the oldest 73), and socio-economic and educational backgrounds, had been honest about their own truths. How would they take mine?

“…NOT an alcoholic.”

Shocked gasps escaped the lips of the women. Granny’s hand shrank back, as if it had touched something slimy. On the faces of the others, I saw the equivalent of doors slamming shut, suspicious eyes peering from behind peepholes, while I stood, suddenly unwelcome, in the hallway.

The leader of the group, a girl in her 30s, frowned at me. “You should not be here,” she said, her dulcet tones chilled beyond recognition. “You have no right to infiltrate our privacy. These are vulnerable women who are trying bravely to write a new future for themselves. How dare you make a mockery of their efforts?”

“I-I didn’t mean to intrude,” I babbled. “Didn’t Fr J talk to you? I’m a trainee reporter, assigned to do my first piece on female alcoholism; Fr J said I could interview a few women, those willing to talk, and write their stories using fake first names.”

The meeting was over. Through the veil of tears that threatened to pour down, I saw the hostility and anger on their faces and stumbled out of the room.

Stepping out of the fortress that was the Kripa Foundation-run free rehabilitation centre for female alcoholics, I walked out and sat down on a broken wall near the pavement. My spirit was crushed and crumpled up within me.

A tiny part of it was worried that my writing career had crashed even before taking off. The features editor of the newspaper that had hired me on a trial basis would not be too thrilled about the story-that-wasn’t.

But a greater part of me was thinking about the shame and the humiliation of that meeting. Of being accused of wrongful intentions. Of being seen as a betrayer. Of knowing that my dream of touching my readers’ hearts with the stories of these hapless, alcohol-addicted women was blown to shreds.

I walked to the phone booth across the street and called Fr J. At the sound of his hello, my tears tumbled out. I hadn’t falsely claimed to be an alcoholic. I hadn’t gone there to mock them. Why had they been so quick to misunderstand?

At his request, I knocked on the doors of the centre again, much subdued. Fr J’s phone call to the centre helped.

Not everyone spoke, but many did. The old granny, the teenager, a college student, a doctor, a diplomat’s wife. Together they shared their stories, hopeful that some other woman might learn from their nightmares and seek help.

Listening to them and writing about their ordeal helped me realize that there is often a thin line between our sanity and desperation. But for the grace of that line, I might easily be the one to complete the statement that I had once tripped over.

(This post has been written for the Weekly Challenge at Yeah Write.)

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

I surveyed our Christmas crib with satisfaction.

Dad, ever the DIY-type, had crafted a stable and a manger out of some leftover wood. Hay, stitched together, made up the thatched roof. We had strewn sawdust on the floor to simulate the desert of the Holy Land. In this humble setting, we placed the figures of the Nativity.

Wheat grass, cultivated days before, made up the foliage. A large sheet of paper painted blue with many silver dots and one golden star made up the skyline.

I thought we had done an awesome job. And yet our crib did not make it to the shortlist for the Christmas crib competition. The judges said it lacked authenticity. They gushed over someone else’s, and said it looked “sooo real.” Ours would too, I promised myself.

Mentally stripping our crib down to the parts of its whole, I diagnosed just where our crib fell short of realism. It was the skyline. It didn’t look real. It was just varying shades of blue -- cobalt, Prussian, navy and indigo, merging together, the silver dots, masquerading as distant stars, and the golden star leading the wise men to the stable. We needed real stars, I decided.

I didn’t know how to catch a falling star and the desire hung amorphously in my mind. The following April we headed to our hometown in Goa for our summer holidays. On one of our trips to the numerous beaches that dot Goa’s coastline, I chanced upon the answers to my need. There they lay along the shore. So many starfish that my eyes widened in surprise.

Excitement coursed through my veins. I touched one of them gingerly. Tentatively. It wriggled slightly beneath my fingers. Then stayed put. I looked around. My cousins and brothers were all busy having fun, laughing uproariously as they tried to ride the waves. My mother and aunt were sitting on the shore under the benign shade of some coconut trees, guarding our picnic lunch and flip-flops.

Suddenly I felt deliciously conspiratorial. I had to find a place to stow the starfish, without anyone seeing me. The idea of having starfish stand by for stars was so ingenious, I didn’t want anyone else in the world having it, not even my cousins. And I wanted the judges’ jaws to drop when they saw our Bethlehem skyline.

Running towards my mom, I peered in the bag containing our lunch and took out an empty polythene bag. Back to the beach I raced, my feet tripping quickly across the hot sand. Bending down, I picked about ten starfish and dropped them in the bag. Once we got back to my uncle’s house, I put the starfish in a Mackintosh chocolates tin, and slid the tin in the dusty darkness behind an old cupboard.

We wouldn’t return to Bombay until mid-June. There was plenty of time to pack my prized find in my suitcase. My heart at ease, I enjoyed my holidays.

Until they turned their noses up, wondering about the smell of dried fish. Had tom hidden a dead rat somewhere?

The holidays became dreary. I longed for school.

No one owned up.

Dad noticed the air of despondency. And the story tumbled out. He didn’t say a word about selfishness or greed or the loss of life. And yet how keenly I felt his unspoken disappointment.

The starfish were buried in the backyard. No one else cried.



The new judges that Christmas thought our crib looked refreshingly simple. I thought of those starfish then.

I still carry that dead weight.


Being eight is no excuse.

(This post has been written for the Weekly Challenge at Yeah Write.)