Chapter Two: The Boy Next Door

"I am a servant of the wind, riding high on its will, but alas! I fall by the wayside each time it stops to catch its breath."

Tanmay Sahay, (Diary entry from sometime in 2006)
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(ELEVEN MONTHS LATER)

Jayant had been here only a week, and was clearly struggling, trying desperately to adjust to his new environment. He stood out for more reasons than one, the obvious being that there was a resolve wich never escaped his facial expression, like a constant tensing of the forehead muscles. He was here with the singular aim of coming clean. This was something uncommon at Rhoserchan.

He also held the distinction of being the only Indian at the facility, and the only other coloured face you could see apart from the day shift Janitor. The difference between them being that the Janitor was your chronic socialite, making small talk with anyone and everyone and Jayant was the local recluse, confined to his thoughts as a matter of lifestyle.

Jayant's skin tone, flair for music and his characteristic Kurtas made him attract more than his fair share of attention. Almost everyone at the centre had tried to approach him, talk to him and he had declined to say more than a 'hello', or 'how are you today.' But the only person he spoke to for more than ten seconds, that I can recall, was the catering incharge, in an attempt to request for some Indian food.

As for me, I didn't make any attempt to speak to him because in my mind he was competition. He was much better looking, despite the hunched back and shadows under his eyes that looked like black holes. Add to that his fantastic choice of music had me green with jealousy. He had cropped hair, and no tattoos or earrings. Even so, if you saw him you knew he was someone deeply involved with music. Infact, he was everything I was trying so desperately to become. What bugged me even more was I wore heavy metal band T's, had about 10 piercings and 7 tattoos but when people met me they still asked me what I did!

A part of me decided not to like him. And this decision made me something Jayant would never be, malicious.
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The Rhoserchan Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Centre in Mid-Wales is one of the better facilities in the UK, and it was also the most recent. Its 100 acre landscaping makes for excellent and colourful viewing, especially in spring. Every now and then, it's manicured lawns manage to attract a tourist or two who want to spend a summer afternoon doing nothing.

I remember when I first came here 12 months ago for two weeks of intensive counselling. I wasn't an addict then, I was just experimenting. My only mistake was that I had been caught with amphetamines and skunk in my study drawer. I realised then, that even if you're 22 years old and reading chemistry and music at the university, your Mommy's gonna put your ass into rehab if she thinks you're on drugs!

However, this time I was in for long. The brown sugar had thinned me down to a point where my skin looked like someone had stretched a rubber over my bones in a desperate attempt to make me look human. Having said that, I didn't mind my physical situation at all as long as it was my ticket to unrivalled attention, from friends and family alike.

Since I knew it would be a year before they would let me get out of here, I figured the sooner I got used to my surroundings, the better. I walked through the corridors. The halls of residence were no less luxurious than The Plaza in Cardiff, about 100 kilometres from here. There were 24 rooms, and all were on the ground floor. Each room was about a 150 square feet with wall to wall carpeting which was beige in colour. The rooms were equipped with state of the art facilities. There was a remote for almost everything, even the window screens. The walls were white. The furniture, in contrast was laquered to a near perfect black.

All rooms had a study table, expensive stationary, a 52 inch plasma screen and if you wanted one, a laptop. The washrooms were surprisingly common, monitored strictly by the security guards stationed at all six of them. The far end of the building had a small theatre with a screen just big enough for you to get the cinematic thrills.

When I climbed up the stairs, following the signs that said library I was thrilled to see that the entire first floor was the recreation hall. There were snooker tables, chess and checker boards, and video games like the ones at the malls. Smooth jazz echoed through the announcement speakers, lending an eclectic feel to the setting. One corner of the hall had a sound-proof glass enclosure where they had made a library and a reading room of sorts. For anyone with nothing to do, this place was second only to paradise (I say this because they tell me paradise is full of beautiful women who want to have sex with you all the time).

I spent the first one month reading Bob Dylan's autobiography called Chronicles, perfecting my breaks on the snooker table and beating Mr.Smith at checkers. He was a middle aged family man. A business loss and unemployment had prompted him to take up drinking alcohol full time. However, his recovery was remarkable, aided of course by the expert doctors and counsellors we had at our disposal here at Rhoserchan.

By the second month, surprisingly, I was bored of entertaining myself. So after consultation with my counsellor, I decided to start writing a diary.

The only thing I missed here was wind, the absence of which was attributed to a weather phenomenon called 'perennial high pressure zone.'

They had only recently WiFi-ed the entire facility, because the 'patients' had requested to be able to sit in the lawn and chat/write/browse etc. Now I could sit in the warm comfort of the sunshine and pen down the happenings of the day. The food was catered by the nearby Four Seasons, and there wasn't a fancy they couldn't entertain.

Put simply, it was more resort than rehab where the rich and the famous came from time to time to get conveniently de-addicted.
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That Monday afternoon, when Jayant first approached me, was like any other. It must have been around noon, because the shadows were trying to hide desperately. I sat cross legged in the open field with the laptop. I was writing my first diary entry for the day, narrating to the text file how I had almost fallen down after slipping in the shower. If you think slipping in the shower is uneventful, you haven't spent enough time at a rehabilitation centre.

Jayant came and sat right next to me, but he didn't utter a word. He was wearing a regular white T-shirt today with light blue jeans that were visibly faded. Instead of shoes/slippers, he was wearing what I later found out were called juttis in India. He had bought them from a place called Jaipore. There was a visible stubble on his face. What scared me was the scar on his left wrist, carefully hidden under the Omega that he was wearing. There was a red thread tied on his right wrist. I had seen many Indians in London wearing it, especially during fall.

He stared into space for the twenty odd minutes he sat, occasionally glancing at my laptop screen. Then he got up left, almost suddenly.

The next day he came around the same time, in his kurta and jeans and jutti. He repeated the previous day's behaviour. This continued for three more days. He came, he sat and he left me wondering. On Saturday, I looked up at him before he sat down and said,"You're welcome to sit here, but comfort doesn't come for free. If you wanna sit here and absorb all the positive energies I'm giving out, you're going to have to do something in return nigger!"

He smiled, amused with my choice of words maybe, and asked,"What kind of help dude?"

The fact that he said 'dude' almost startled me. I tried my best to hide the surprised expression and continued.

"I'm chatting with this chick who has wanted to do me ever since she realised I was ugly, depressed and paranoid. And she's insisting on visiting me sometime next week."

"So?", he asked, wondering why I wasn't making sense.

"I'm not allowed visitors dude!" I announced.

"Why?", he contested, looking surprised.

"That's none of your fucking business. But if you really wanna know, DUDE, the last time my blokes came n' visited me here they brought me some stash which the matron found out about. She called my mother up and they decided it was best that only family be allowed to visit me!"

"I still don't get it. How can I help you there?", he said, now completely puzzled.

"Well, when this chick comes next week, her name is Cathy, I want YOU to sign her in as your guest so that she can come into the halls of residence and then she and I can fuck like rabbits till kingdom come!"

"Uh, ok!", came his reply, stinking of callous indifference. He sat down next to me and looked straight into my eyes for the first time. I could tell he must've been much better looking than he was now. I wanted to be nasty but curiosity got the better of me.

I started a conversation with him and dug out the following details:

Jayant was 24, and had just been shifted here from the Government Clinical Rehabilitation Facility at Glasgow, where he was kept in a padded cell for almost two weeks. In the last one year he had developed many an addiction. It started with cocaine, and when he couldn't afford it he moved on to heroin and finally to crack.

I asked him who was taking care of the rehabilitation expense to which he replied that he was associated with a record label and it was they who had sent him here.

If you saw him from a distance, you would perceive him as a regular Indian boy walking in the streets of London, rapping in Punjabi and saying Ain't it in that peculiar Indian accent. Except that his face told a slightly different story.

He told me almost everything. His beginnings, his interests, his dislikes and how he had transitioned from one drug to the next.

Our conversation ended abruptly when I asked him why he was so determined to kick his habit. He said he'd rather not talk about it and got up and left immediately.

For the next one week we spoke about almost everything, dissecting aspects of our lives, arguing about music, commenting on political affairs. I did not ask him about that which he feared most. Cathy came and went. I even offered Jayant the opportunity to do Cathy, which he declined politely, looking a little violated.

Within a couple of weeks we were inseparable, or so I thought. He and I had a lot in common, apart from being the only 20 somethings at the facility, music being the obvious front runner in that list. I hate to admit that I had grown to like him a lot, even at the cost of becoming the white boy who hung out with the 'Indian' kid. Every now and then, I couldn't help but pray that he would lose his looks, his charm and his sense of creativity with melodies. But a couple of minutes later I would take my words back and apologise to God for having said that.

I had my room changed so that he and I could be in adjacent rooms. This way he could stay till late in my room and we could sit on the laptop, writing lyrics and composing music. He introduced me to a very different genre of fusion created by these guys who called themselves Midival Punditz and I returned the favour by getting him hooked on to Vast, a gospel rock band.

I always spoke of how we should start a band together once we got out of here and he always responded with that smile of his. I know now that the smile was more in response to 'once we're out of here' and not the 'we should start a band together.'
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A month or so later, one night after supper, Jayant and I were taking a short walk just outside the residence halls. I noticed that we had nothing to say to each other. Such an obvious and deliberate silence unnerved me. Had we exhausted all possible conversation or was this just a chance occurrence? An indication perhaps that we no longer required words to communicate.

I looked at him and suddenly blurted out,"What's the matter?"

He looked at me and said nothing. He looked visibly distraught. I asked him again, urging him to confess to me. For once I was genuinely concerned about another person in this world.

He turned away and said,"It's a year since I last saw her. It's been ONE FUCKING YEAR!"

"Saw who???", I asked, almost shouting.

That's when he told me his story, his real story. Everything in his life right now was centred around one particular night, exactly one year ago. That night of broken glass and broken hearts. And I realised everything he had said to me before this day was inconsequential. I didn't know whether to curse him for not opening up to me earlier, or to embrace him for finally having done so.

"You're one helluva guy I said", suddenly feeling the need to weep myself. I hugged him tightly and wept. He just stood there, saying nothing. A gentle breeze began to blow. It was cool, refreshing and very uncharacteristic for a Rhoserchan evening.

A few minutes and many a tear later, we walked back to our rooms in silence.

We didn't wish each other our ceremonial "Good night, and good luck!", a habit we had developed after watching a George Clooney movie about three weeks ago.

I really wish that we had, because when I woke up in the morning he was gone. And that's the last I ever saw of him.
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