Loneliness in the city - tale of Noida sisters' self-imposed exile

This was a bizarre story, convoluted and tragic. As I stood outside their flat, I wondered what the city and its realm of public and private spaces can do to you.
An edited version appeared in The Indian Express on April 14, 2011.


Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 13, 2011

A hand would sneak out, grab the packet of grocery and the door would shut.
Once he peered inside but he could see nothing. He couldn't trace the hand to a face.
Birpal, the delivery man from Maha Laxmi Store in the nearby Ganga Shopping Complex, always took the same items to the sisters – milk, bread, biscuits, butter, tea and snacks. The cheque would promptly be handed by the 9th of every month. The bill usually amounted to Rs. 2500 for a month.
Last he went to drop off the items was on Feb. 16.
The sisters never called again. The phone connection was cut off. The outstanding bill was around Rs. 400. The electricity bill until December 2010 was around Rs. 10,000. Somebody had ransacked their mailbox looking for traces of their former lives. It only contained a few uncleared bills.
In the quiet neighborhood, everyone kept to themselves. Most of the army officials had come to spend their retirement here. No little children play outside, and the afternoons are bereft of much activity.
At the Kailash Hospital, an emaciated Sonali Behl lay on the bed. She hadn't been told her elder sister Anuradha had died of cardiac arrest in the morning after the two had been rescued from their Noida apartment where they had allegedly shut themselves for the last six months.
She asked for biscuits when the hospital staff brought her a sandwich. She chewed on one for a long time while looking at the ceiling. Someone asked if she would like to watch the news. She said no to the cacophony of her own tragedy.
“Please cover me,” she said.
The staff pulled over the blanket.
When she was rescued a day before, she had been wearing three layers of woollen clothing. Her teeth had stained, and her hands were mere bones. The deprivation she had imposed upon herself had taken its toll.
At 8 am on Tuesday, Usha Thakur was frantically knocking at the door of flat no. 326.
A few members of her NGO had alerted her about the bizarre case of the two sisters who had chosen to shut themselves in.
On Monday, the police had visited the flat once again. They came without a woman cop and so they returned after the sisters refused to open the door.
In the morning, Thakur went herself. She jumped over on to the terrace and peeped inside.
“I saw the two women. One was on the couch, the other was abusing us,” she said. “I called a carpenter and then we called the police.”
It was only when the carpenter started to break down the door, Sonali opened the door.
She was shrieking.
“Call the doctor. Help my sister,” Sonali said.
They were rescued and rushed to Kailash Hospital where Anuradha, 41, died of multiple organ failure at around 8 am on Wednesday.
The other is fighting for life in Room no. 163 at Kailash Hospital, oblivious of her sister's death.
“This raises a question on the society at large. What were they doing?,” Thakur said.
But in a neighborhood in a satellite town where mostly the retired army officials are staying, privacy is a given. They live out their lives behind their closed doors, and exchange greetings once in a while. On Diwali and other festivals, they sent sweets to their neighbor's houses.
A newsletter Community Samvad that raises neighborhood issues in Sectors 28, 29, 37, 21,and 25. It was started more than 10 years ago and it was started by a civilian Vinod Agarwal who stays in Sector 15 A.
The editor Kiran Bhardwaj came to Sector 29 looking to decode the mystery.
“Many people don't like intervention. These sectors are full of senior citizens and also floating population of students. In a few neighborhoods, they look after each other. We generally know about each other. They keep to their units,” she said. “They usually meet in clubs. Privacy is respected.”
So, the community newspaper is their connector, their social directory.
Thakur has lashed out against the RWA, the neighbors. The neighbors said they did their bit but the sisters denied them access, refusing all help. They checked with Vinod Kumar, the man who supplied the grocery to the sisters, and they knew they were ordering. They didn't want to intrude beyond that.
In the neighborhood this wasn't a new story. They had known about the sisters, the issues that plagued them but they chose to respect the space.
“It was not a new case,” H Sharma, the ward president, said.
Their father Colonel (retired) OP Behl had passed away in Agra in December 1992 after a road accident. Their mother died in 1995 and the elder sister left her job in 1997 to take care of the family.
When the brother moved out, they withdrew choosing isolation and deprivation.
Nobody knows why the sisters shut the door to the world. They could only speculate and that's what they did, rummaging through their memories of the family that lived a secluded life, rarely opening the door to let others in.
“The elder one had given up her job in Dehradun to manage the house after they lost their parents,” one neighbor said.
Every morning, when she got up to make tea for her husband who left to play golf at around 5 am, Mrs. Chadha would see the light in the kitchen across the street on.
Anuradha would scream, throw the dishes and that became a daily affair until a couple of months ago when the lights went out.
“They weren't very interactive but I used to see Anuradha come down and buy vegetables from the vendor but that was quite sometime ago. A few months ago, I saw them stocking up on onions and potatoes,” she said. “There are all sorts of theories. They had chosen to shut themselves. We tried to help but they refused.”
The house remained out of bounds. Sonali had carried the keys with herself to the hospital.
The rescuers had to jump on to the terrace of the first floor apartment to break into the house. Through the glass, they saw one woman lying on the couch, and the other screaming, growling at them, asking them to leave.
When they tried to break open the door, Sonali finally let them in.
She even took out a diary and gave the police and the RWA member Col. H Sharma their brother Vipin's number.
Anuradha lay on the couch, dying. Sonali picked up a file and allowed her to be rescued.
When Brigadier Jagdish Singh stepped inside the living room, he could see nothing. The odour that emanated from the two humans that lived in the closed space for six months, the curtains drawn, the furniture covered with sheets, was too much to bear.
He lived upstairs with his wife. The couple who moved to Sector 29 in 1999 had known the family. They had even attended the brother's wedding in 2007 when the sisters had come to invite them with a packet of sweets and a card.
“We sensed something was wrong when they stopped putting out the garbage about the month ago. The house always remained dark. We didn't know the electricity had been cut off. We assumed they were saving on the bills,” Poonam Singh said.
A few of months ago, the couple had alerted Col. Sharma, who in turn sent a guard to check on the sisters.
Then the police was called in February.
They came to the door that led into a living grave of sorts and knocked. No answer. They went back. The next day when they returned, a frail voice answered from the darkness “We are fine. Please go away.”
The door shut again.
A couple of times Dr. MJU Khan's wife had attempted to gain access into their lives that remained a mystery to the neighbors. Sonali, who used to work as a store manager in a complex in Sector 63, had quit in 2008. They lived quietly, seldom going out.
“They had imprisoned themselves two years ago,” Bigadier Jagdish Singh said. “They hardly spoke to anyone. Nobody came to their house.”
Poonam Singh tried calling the landline a couple of times to check but nobody answered the calls.
In the neighborhood, where mostly former army officials live, not many know each other. Consumed by their own routines, their television sets drowning out the other human voices, they could never predict that it would come to this. Till the time, they spotted the delivery man carrying the supplies upstairs, they knew the sisters were alive. Beyond that, they gave them their privacy.
On one of the windows, the bees had started to make their home. The dust had accumulated in layers.
Nobody hung out any clothes to dry on the terrace that looked out on the main road.
Isolated in their time warp, the younger sister had once asked a neighbor what time it was. Again through an opening in the door.
A doctor who has been monitoring Sonali said she spoke about negative energy that had crept into their lives after their mother died in 1995.
“She said they were feeling insecure,” the doctor said. “She is delusional but she is relevant at times.”
Anuradha gave into depression much earlier. Once the brother moved out with his wife, the elder sister became quiet. Then they lost their family dog Chhoti six months ago.
The vacuum in their lives was spreading, consuming them.
They stopped taking calls, abandoning the world, shutting themselves in. The losses kept piling, and finally the debris of their lives claimed one of them.