✨Celebrating 'The Other Sister'

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Celebrating Amrita Tripathi's bold and enigmatic novel, The Other Sister

How do I introduce Amrita? She is at once:

i) A pioneer of independent mental health storytelling in India with The Health Collective, which she started a staggering 9 years ago, when most won't even touch this topic with a barge pole
ii) A superstar former TV journalist and social media bigwig
iii) The author of a zillion brilliant experimental novels and urgent non-fiction books on mental health
iv) Serial entrepreneur
v) Founding member of Sanity
vi) A dear friend and a college senior (though we never met there) with whom I can talk about anything, who's had a weird belief in me even when the word 'belief' has tasted funny on my tongue, and who's the only person in the world to have allowed me to send her copious 11:11, 16:16, and once, even a 23:23 screenshot from my phone screen.

Waddid I miss, Amrita? 😄

Amrita's latest novel, The Other Sister, had reviewer Mandira Nayar say this on Scroll:

"Urgent, keenly observed and deeply felt, Tripathi captures the unbearable emptiness of loneliness. And taps into it. The book speaks for, and certainly to the generation that is lost desperate to be found. As Maya observes, happiness is worth chasing – all the Instagram love gurus say so. It is this chase that Tripathi captures evocatively. The desperation of trying to find connection, living virtually and needing people in real life, grabbing it and trying to hold on to it. This is not an easy story to tell. But it is an important one. Tripathi conjures up Maya’s vulnerability – and her fragility – and handles it with sensitivity and without judgement."

I'll be honest: I'm not objective enough to review Amrita's work. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't believe me when I say that I agree with every word above.

Chapter 6: Social, Anti Social

Much like Maya’s mood swings, one of her social media pages has taken a melodramatic and then decidedly unpleasant turn. It escalates quite quickly from there on, from the usual ‘Where are you, baba?’ sort of messages to ‘God, I’m really worried now, Maya, and why is your phone off???♥’

Someone posts, ‘You gaizzz do you think Maya’s ok?!?!’

Somebody using the handle BhaktofGod writes, ‘We can help, Maya. You’re not alone.’

This is followed almost immediately by ‘Where’s the party at?’ and ‘I’m coming too!’ by two other users.

But it’s the next post with an ‘#IamMaya’ hashtag that triggers the furious comments from her friends Megha and Farhan.

‘With you, Maya!! #IAmMaya,’ BhaktofGod writes. #IamMaya some other acquaintances chime in, because everyone loves a hashtag. No logic required. ‘What the …?’ Megha WhatsApps the friends’ group. ‘How shady is this?’ asks Farhan.

‘It’s some sick joke,’ Megha says. ‘Aren’t these the hashtags they use for victims?’

Akira is not too worried, sitting in her silk robe at her table, a bowl of her favourite peppermint candy in front of her. It’s like watching a show. She smiles as she scrolls down the TL. Her own profile is on another page, of course. She’s got her own friends. Whatever, Maya.

Farhan gets agitated. ‘WTF? Who are you?’

‘Why?’ BhaktofGod asks Farhan, proclaiming that he/ she is her friend too.

That’s smacked down with the brutal ‘Oh really? Never heard of you,’ from Farhan and ‘Just who the hell are you?’ from Megha.

‘#Soultwin,’ sums up BhaktofGod, going for a second hashtag along with #IamMaya. He’s hit a nerve.

‘Just super weird, man!’ says Farhan on WhatsApp.

‘I’m calling the cops, you sicko,’ Megha writes. ‘You better not be a stalker.’

‘+1’ is Farhan.

Megha decides to call Farhan to talk through what they need to do.

‘Who do these guys think they are?’ wonders BhaktofGod halfway across town and starts a furtive check of their socials.

Meanwhile, back in Gurugram, Farhan is fuming. ‘We can’t ignore this bullshit. Who the hell is this chap?’

‘Must be some rando she met, yaar,’ Megha drawls. ‘He probably has nothing better to do than sit online all day. Loser.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Well, you know what? I think it’s that fellow she mentioned once? From work? Or somewhere?’ Megha starts thinking, taking too long as usual.

A slight pause as he digests this tidbit, but then Farhan says, ‘A new friend? … Is he her …’ His voice is a croak at this point.

‘What? What?’ Megha asks. ‘Oh God, not you too!’

It’s a good thing he doesn’t see her rolling her eyes.

‘Not that it matters,’ Farhan snaps a little, surprised at her condescension and that ‘you too’. Is ka kya matlab? Uff.

‘What do we do now? What if something is seriously wrong?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’s fine. Let’s not jump the gun like this psycho,’ Megha says, though she’s sounding increasingly unsure of herself.

‘I wonder if Maya’s brother has seen this.’

‘Her brother, man. Shit!’ Megha hadn’t thought of that.

‘What should we do? We should take it down, we should totally delete these posts, don’t you think?’

Megha says, unnecessarily, that they should add Rohit to their chat, in case he has an idea. Though she knows he doesn’t.

‘Let’s add him,’ says Farhan.

‘Yeah, typical,’ Rohit says on the phone, which isn’t particularly helpful but sort of telling in its own way. ‘You know she loves the drama.’

He sends Megha a quick text on the side saying that she owes him a ‘b00ty call’, anytime next week, but that’s just his general vibe.

‘Let me hang up and try her again,’ Farhan says.

‘I’ve already tried, from the landline even. Not just the cell. There’s bilkul no reply,’ Megha responds, though she’s starting to get annoyed. Maya’s always such a buzzkill.

Maya’s socials have become a matter of much curiosity within her circle. The comments keep coming, though no one has a clue as to what’s happened to her.

Well, her brother does, but one, he’s gifted and two, he’s also managed to reach Maya, though there’s no way for her friends to know that.

Halfway across the city, the boy who goes by the moniker BhaktofGod starts typing, then deletes the words. His handle isn’t ironic or post- or meta- or anything. Since he created his original handle, he’s quit the Guru he worked with and lost God. But he can’t be bothered to change his name on social, that would be too drastic somehow.

Having lost his newest and brightest friend, Karthik is feeling particularly bereft. He starts to type again: ‘Death was in the building because of me. You won’t understand, none of you know anything of reality.’ Thinking better of posting that rant, he deletes the lines.

She knew the absolute futility of everything, he knows in his bones. But didn’t she see things changing? Weren’t they looking up?

He’s not even sure why he’s convinced she’s dead except for her morbid conversations, slight depression, four days of unanswered texts and phone calls and subsequent lack of online activity.

That and what he calls ‘the Cab of Death’.

Maya did take two rides in one of the fancy family owned taxis, the Audi and the Benz, no less, as Karthik  remembers darkly. He thinks back to the night she skipped out of his house, when was it, a month ago? Happily accepting a ride from the head chauffeur K, who drives the car Karthik refers to — with no real basis in anything remotely empirical unless you count dreaming (can you count dreaming?)—as the Cab of Death.

‘I should have stopped her!’ He would have stopped her too, but she had laughed off his theory. Karthik’s father also tends to laugh derisively whenever he brings up the subject of negative energy. Not quite able to articulate his Cab of Death theory, Karthik had mentioned it to his father hurriedly and then gone on about bad mojo and tantric tricks.

‘Hundred per cent sure that’s not his real name even,’ he had said about ‘K’, as the chauffeur had started calling himself.

His father would have none of it. He declared that Karthik was only welcome at their Greater Kailash home if he left behind all that nonsense he had learned from the fraud godman, who incidentally owns half the posh fifteen crore-rupee flats a stone’s throw from their home.

‘Seven years,’ Karthik’s father sputtered, working himself into another rage. ‘Seven years you wasted there.’

This was bad form since Karthik had swallowed his pride and returned home after the decade-long stint only at his mother’s insistence and ‘God promise’ that he wouldn’t be tormented about this phase.

‘Bas karo,’ Garima had stopped her husband. She couldn’t bear to lose Karthik again. Not after all they’d been through! She still remembered—and never ceased to remind her husband—how Karthik was nearly blind at birth and got his vision back only after a miracle blessing and surgery.

‘Only a second miracle brought him back to me after all that hera pheri,’ she told her husband sharply. ‘We can’t count on a third.’

So it was quite clear that there would be no insulting the holy men who had held Karthik in thrall since childhood, she was quite firm on the subject. That didn’t stop his dad from mocking him. A little lighthearted taking the piss never hurt anyone, right?

‘Wake up, kiddo. These are luxury cars, top of the line, and only for a very exclusive clientele,’ Karthik’s father told him with a hint of a wink. ‘You can take your special friends out once in a blue moon.’

‘Argh!!’ His father knew he had very few friends, let alone ‘special’ ones.

‘But who, after all, would say no to a free Beemer or a Benz?’ His father couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Apart from this boy of his, that is, who had become a total head job after his years in the ashram. Till date he had steadfastly refused the Audi and the S Class. His father had earlier thought it was because these were increasingly common cars and was amused, but then learned it was because Karthik was obsessed with some weird death theory.

Doesn’t this Maya episode kind of prove it? Karthik asks himself, on the verge of losing himself again in thoughts of destruction. He reaches for his phone to send one more text, one last attempt at being lighthearted.

‘Ki haal? Wanna meet?’

Desperate though he may be, he needs to play it cool.

She mustn’t know—if she’s still around—that he’s already a little panicky. He’s grasping at the remnants of a connection but is starting to realise now, in this very moment, that he never fully penetrated Maya’s universe, doesn’t know all that much about her, and wouldn’t know how to go about reaching her, not to ask her out, but in case of an emergency.

The important stuff, they never talked about. Where the hell does she even live? he wonders. How did I share so much and yet not figure out anything about her beyond the weird stuff?

Excerpted with permission from The Other Sister, Amrita Tripathi, Tranquebar/Westland