The Gravity of Being Upright

I think it had started to happen a long time back—bit by bit—but I only noticed it this morning.

Gravity was dead.

Like Queen Elizabeth. Both of them.

Yesterday, it was just Anurag bhaiya’s little music box—a walnut cuboid with burnt-umber filigree on its corners, and a knob the size of my fingernail to play Christina Perri’s You Are My Sunshine—floating a few inches above his desk. Today, it was me.

I woke up to find myself levitating. It wasn’t as fun as Miss Dua Lipa may have led you to believe. It felt more like demonic possession than anything else. My cat floated past my head, equally confused—it had thought it had four lives left still.

My room was all up in the air with me—books, schoolbag, action figures. My bed, too, for God’s sake.

I groggily swum toward my floating furniture, grabbing at a possibly possessed chair to swing myself upright. My head felt heavy. I felt sick. Disoriented. Even the effort of making a sound was too much. I shut my eyes, took a shaky gulp and flattened myself against the walls of my room. I inched towards the faucet in my bathroom, desperate to wash this nightmare away.

The water gushed upwards. But not like how they show it in space movies, with blobs of water wiggling about in the air. It flowed upwards like it would if you clicked a photo of a running faucet, and turned it upside down.

Like gravity had reversed. Newton would’ve, quite literally, rolled over in his grave.

I gasped as the gush of water hit my face, going up my nostrils. I pulled away and catapulted into the new upright. There was water in my nose, in my eyes, on my face, and I—

I felt the throbbing in my head ease as if I’d just come down from a handstand. I breathed a wobbly sigh. I looked at myself in the mirror. The Beatles stared back at me from my print T-shirt. Why was I wearing my brother’s T-shirt? Ugh.

“Mumma?” I called downstairs. No reply. “Mumma! Papa?”

Nobody answered. A terrible thought suddenly struck. If…i-if gravity had reversed, wouldn’t we be pulled into the sky? And then where? Oh God, what happened to helium balloons? Did they leave the atmosphere or just…pop?

Nothing felt real. The air felt heavy. As if I was moving through something viscous. I stared at the walls of my room, at the Linkin Park posters, upside down according to my new perspective. The posters…wait, I didn’t have Linkin Park posters. Crap, I wasn’t even in my own room. Why the hell had I woken up in my brother’s room? As if all of this wasn’t already giving me a brain aneurysm, the posters seemed…farther away than I remembered? Than they logically should’ve been? It felt odd that I could run my fingers over them and feel the glossy paper.

It felt wrong that I could feel things. Oh God, was I dead? Oh God.

I called to my elder brother. “Bhaiya? Anu bhaiya?!”

Dear Lord, why wasn’t anybody replying? I grabbed the doorframe and pulled myself outside his room. Holding onto the banister for dear life, I dragged myself downstairs. I urgently needed to tighten my drawstring lest gravity pants me.

Downstairs, I saw my parents, also floating in the air. The living room was darker than how I remembered it. It looked overcast, despite the sun still shining outside.

“Hello?” I called out, “Mumma, what’s happening? Mumma? Mumma!”

I saw her eyes shift to me. Tired. Her lips moved. They shaped my name. She was saying something. But I couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t get through to me.

All around us three floating humans, I saw Anurag’s stuff suspended in mid-air. What the hell? I saw his gym shoes hover over the doormat stuck to the floor, and his jacket, still caught on the peg behind the door. His macaroni art—something he had made when he was in kindergarten fourteen years back and which had proudly been displayed on the refrigerator for as long as I could remember—had started to rotate clockwise to fit the new normal of gravity.

“Where’s bhaiya?” I asked, turning toward my dad. Anurag was four years older than me.

I started to panic. I filled my lungs with air, and yelled, “ANU BHAIY—”

I stopped abruptly when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I could have almost cried at the feeling. A hand. A warm, real hand that didn’t seem stuck and motionless and made noise as it rubbed against the synthetic of my T-shirt.

I spun around to face Anurag.

And my nose hit his forehead.

What?

Why was Anurag…not upside down? Why was he still…following gravity the way granddaddy Newton had declared?

“Anu bhaiya, wha- why- what’s happening?” I whimpered, digging my fingers into his shoulders and pulling myself into him. “Why am I upside down? Why can’t I hea— CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

I saw his gaze soften.

“Shhh,” said Anurag, his fingers slipping into the spaces between mine on his shoulder. “Look at me, monkey.”

Monkey. My name’s Mankrit. I desperately wanted him to call me monkey. To never stop calling me monkey. That was me. Not this floating person who couldn’t hear anything. Not this disoriented helium balloon with its thread all bunched up and tangled and messy.

“Look at me,” he said again, softer this time. I looked into his eyes, brown as maple bark, just as beautiful. “Breathe. With me.”

My breath came in short bursts, the lump in my throat beginning to ache. My eyes were scrunched up, flooding with tears. Why was I crying? Good God, what’s happening?

He put one soft hand on my cheek, fingers under my ear. “Do you remember how we used to play hide-and-seek? I always hid in the laundry and you’d crib that it was somehow against the rules when you couldn’t find me. Breathe, monkey. I’ll count—”

I started to stiffen up and utter a warbled protest.

“I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry. I’m not the one hiding this time,” he reassured.

“Ten,” said Anurag.

I see him, eight years ago—a soft bowl cut; round, cherry cheeks and a chubby frame. Eyes like fallen pieces of dusk caught in his lashes. I’m a kid, too. I see him running towards the laundry room through the spaces between my fingers which were supposed to cover my eyes as I counted. He pounces into the pile of clothes: kitten hips wriggling into the basket.

At nine, I see him tell me about this girl from school that he’s crushing on, and at eight, I tell mom about this girl from school he was crushing on. I’m laughing. He’s red in the face.

At seven and six, I see him teach me things: How to solve a quadratic equation. How to make a PowerPoint presentation. How to delete my search history. How to open incognito mode. How to be more responsible. How to treat a woman. How to be a man.

At five, I remember the phone ringing. I remember Mumma wiping her hands on the kitchen towel to answer the unknown number. Her answering. The confusion. The silence. The confirmation. The phone slipping out of her hands and onto the floor.

Four: Papa howling at the accident scene. At the sight of Anurag dead. Killed by a drunk driver, currently on the run. I’ve never heard papa scream. I know he’s barely spoken anything after that.

At three, I can’t seem to comprehend Anurag not getting up from the pyre. Why wasn’t he getting up? Anurag couldn’t have died. Not yet. Not before he’d taught me everything. He couldn’t leave me with this grief, without teaching me how to handle it.

I feel numbness. Then anger. He didn’t get the luxury to just die and turn my world upside down!

“Two,” he says, and I can see my parents try to talk to me. Tell me that I still had a life. I see the grief counsellor’s beige room. It was too beige. I hear her telling mom and dad that I needed time. That I wasn’t just angsty. That grief comes in waves and I was allowed to hurt just as much even after eight months—

Anurag smiled at me. A pearly smile that only comes after a person has had braces thrice in his life.

I’m sobbing. A child again. Unable to find my brother anywhere. Not even in the laundry basket.

An upside-down me looked into right-side-up Anurag’s eyes, clutching onto his hands. His soft, glowing hands as my surroundings kept darkening.

“I can’t do this alone,” I whisper through tears, the words getting caught in my throat. “I can spend my whole life trying to accept this, and get used to being without you, but I won’t be able to. I knew since forever that there will be a time when mumma and papa won’t be here. Every kid knows that. But you…you’re my brother. We were supposed to be together for longer. You’re my best friend.”

Anurag stayed silent, listening.

“In everything I do, I’ll know that you’re missing. We were supposed to buy a bigger house for mumma-papa. You were going to be the best man at my wedding. The cool uncle to my baby. I can’t imagine a world without you that functions the right way. I’ve never lived in a world without you. I don’t know how to.” My tears flow up. I hold his hands tighter as the gravity strengthens, pulling me away. I say in the smallest voice, “I’m not ready. Please don’t go. Please don’t let me go.”

Anurag squeezed my hands tight for a moment. “Monkey… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I had to go. I’m sorry that you’re hurting. But nothing you do can bring me back. For the last ten months…you haven’t smiled once. You haven’t eaten well. It’s hard on mumma and papa also, monkey. It’s like they lost both their sons.”

He wiped a tear away from my cheek. “You’ve let my passing turn your world upside down for too long. Mumma and papa can’t get through to you anymore. I wish I could tell you how much time is time enough to grieve. But I can’t. Please be gentle with yourself. It doesn’t mean that you loved me any less if someday you wake up and my absence doesn’t hurt as much. You can choose to heal. You are allowed to hurt and let all that unspent love out as grief… but you’re equally allowed to let the light in,” he motioned to the overcast room. “Remember that you have a life.”

I see us—mumma, papa and me, the ones left behind—on the banks of the Ganga. We’re holding a small urn, which we tip into the gentle waters. As the ashes flow out, they glimmer in the sun. Sparkling and shimmery over the glittering, golden waves. For a moment, he becomes the stars in the night sky and the foam in the churning ocean, and the froth of the soil that the sinewy roots of deathless trees clutch onto. Some of him settles into the water and some of him is taken away by the breeze with a gentle sigh. The universe has retrieved him for good.

“One,” said Anurag as his face came back into view. I looked into his eyes and hoped he knew I wanted to tell him I’d miss him. That I loved him. That I could never stop loving him, even if life would be different now. That I wish I could’ve said it out loud more when we had the chance.

I looked at his hands. And let go.

I was pulled up by the ever-growing gravity as the roof of my house shot up into the golden sky. Sunbeams burst into the room, tenderly painting Anurag’s pristine face—without scars, without hurt, without sign of pain. I could see his feet beginning to submerge in glittering, golden waves. An ashy breeze swirled into the room as I soared higher and higher. A tiny Anurag waved from below. Monkey, I hear him say, one last time as the heavens opened up.

I open my eyes on the couch, snuggling between my parents under our blue duvet. We’re not floating anymore. I’m upright. I’m alright.

All of Anurag’s stuff—his music box, his shoes, his jacket, his T-shirt, his everything—sat loved and gentle and right-side-up in his room, packed in a neat congregation of cartons.

Bit by bit, my world is regaining order. I have known the grief of loss, but also the gravity of living.