Amulya Malladi - Serving Crazy with Curry

Suicide brings on many changes, And I can take or leave it if I please.

MIKE ALTMAN AND JOHNNY MANDEI THEME SONG OF THE MOVIE M*A*S*H

Eating is the great preoccupation of both primitive and civilized man. But the savage eats from need, the civilized man from desire.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, IE GRAND DICTIONNAIRE DE CUISINE

The Beginning or The End

The DOW was down almost 600 points the week Devi decided to commit suicide. The NASDAQ also crashed as two big tech companies warned Wall Street of their dismal next quarter estimates. But the only reason Devi was half-heartedly listening to some perky CNN Sunday news anchor prattle on about the lousy week on the stock exchange was habit. A long time ago she'd kept track, listened eagerly, checked the stock of her company online on Yahoo!, but that was when she had stock options that could have been worth something. The last two start-ups she hooked up with hadn't even made it as far as the IPO.

After Devi was laid off (yet again) a week ago, it started to dawn on her that she was not going to be able to change her life. Everything she ever wanted had become elusive and the decision to end her life, she realized, was not only a good decision, but her only option.

As a good tactician, her mind laid down two categories on a spreadsheet: the reasons to die and the reasons not to die. After filling the columns she practically went through all the reasons, struck out those that didn't make sense, kept those that did.

Ultimately, it didn't matter what the entries on the spreadsheet of her unbalanced mind were, because the decision was already made. She knew that the losses she incurred had eaten away everything joyous within her. In the past six months she went from being just slightly depressed to so sad and fragile that the passing of every day seemed like a wasted opportunity; an opportunity to not live through the day.

Devi's fingers moved over the remote control of the television and flipped through images, faces, and vacuum cleaners.

Wanting to delay her impending decision of death, she picked up the telephone and sat down on her sand-colored sofa (the one she couldn't afford), her Victoria's Secret white silk robe tightly secured at her waist. She'd been tightening her robe ever since she put it on at seven that morning, hoping it would settle her down, secure her mind and the uneasiness roiling inside her stomach. All night she had tossed and turned, going over the decision one way and then another. When finally sleep claimed her it was five in the morning and then sleep abandoned her again after just two hours.

Suicide was stressful business.

First, there was the question of how, which she'd pretty much decided on, but there were lingering doubts. Second, there was the question of when. Last night she thought she'd do it at night, in the quiet, but doubts kept her awake, alive. Now it was morning and even though there had been several such mornings in the past months that followed empty, contemplative nights, this morning was different. This morning nothing had changed with the break of dawn as it usually did. This morning her heart was as heavy as it was last night when she started to think seriously, once again, about death. And that's why she could feel that this was the day it would happen, the day she would make it happen.

Devi stared at the telephone and her fingers automatically tapped the numbers that would conjure up someone on the other end of the line at her parents home.

She turned the television off as soon as she heard her father's hello. Daddy, Devi, she said.

What's going on, beta} Avi asked in a groggy voice, like he'd just woken up, which he probably had since it was eight o'clock on a Sunday morning, too early for any of his children to call, definitely too early for party-all-night Devi to call.

Just wanted to say hello, Devi said, tears brimming in her eyes. She desperately wanted him to say that everything would be okay, that the world would not collapse around her, but that meant asking him for help, and the way things were she was too ashamed to hold out her hand.

This was her life, she was responsible for it, and the mess she had made of it was not something he could clean up for her. As much as she wanted to be held in the secure circle of Daddy's arms, she knew that would just underscore her failure. At least in this, she wanted to succeed, not back out like a wimp who could neither live nor die.

How's work? her father asked next.

Great, she lied instead of telling him that the company had closed its doors. She was out of a job again and this time there was no way around the facts. She was a loser. Had always been, especially compared to the successes in her family. Her father, Avi Veturi, had started a successful technology company with a friend and now was semi-retired, enjoying a privileged life in Silicon Valley. Her older sister, Shobha, was vice president of engineering for a software company. Her grandmother Vasu had been a doctor in the Indian Army, and retired as a Brigadier. Talk about overachievers, her family was loaded with them.