The Exorcism of Mrs. Sen

Raja wanted the ghost of his mother to be gone. But the firm which eternalized her had been sued into oblivion, leaving behind thousands of untethered souls stuck in digital limbo, cursed to exist in the cloud forever with zero customer support.

“Put on a sweater Babu. It’s cold today.” Her shrill voice rang through the house.

“Shut up.” Raja muttered.

“That’s no way to speak to your mother!” The voice sounded angry.

“You are not my mother.”

“Mohron. The rich and their fancy ghosts.” Raja’s cook mumbled to herself as she gingerly placed the plate with fish and rice down on the red oxidized floor, just outside the kitchen perimeter.

The sharp doorbell reverberated in the big house.

“Kay aseche?” The voice asked. “Who is it?”

Raja ignored her questions and his lunch on the floor and hurried downstairs.  

#

Dusty air rushed in as Raja pulled back the heavy wooden doors. A thick haze enshrouded the street outside. 

At the doorstep awaited the, supposedly legendary, hacker. 

“Wajid Ali. Subject matter expert.” He offered his hand.

“Raja Sen. You are an ex-employee of LiveForever Inc?” Raja took a good look at the small ferret like man who sweated profusely even in the winter. It caused his big round glasses to slide off his nose bridge and fog up his purifier mask.

“One of the very last. Just like it says in our company profile.” The man grinned and shook Raja’s hand heartily.

A lean young woman in a hoodie stood behind Wajid craning her neck to get a better look inside.

“My apprentice Rubina.”

 Raja stood aside and let them both in. “Any problems in finding the house?” 

“Absolutely none. A little art deco island in the sea of smart high-rises. One of the last ones from the 1930s, I presume.” Wajid put away his mask.

Raja drew in a sharp breath. “It’s part of the problem. She chose to bind her instantiation to the house.” 

#

Wajid walked around the living room with musty books stacked up to the ceiling. “A charming place. When was it built?”

“Early 1930s. My great-grandfather designed it.” A sudden weariness came over Raja. “You can get started.”

Wajid asked, “When was the house smartened?”

“Couple of years before she passed.”

“Everything connected to the cloud?”

“Everything.”

“So, this instantiation of Mrs. Sen has access to all appliances.”

Raja sighed. “Cameras, sensors, speakers, purifiers, internet. Everything.” 

“Let’s get to work.” Wajid rubbed his hands and nodded to his apprentice.

The young woman swiftly connected four laptops to the main transmission hub off the walls with peeling yellow paint. Unfurling rolls of green fiber optic cable, she plugged in data readers along the long verandah.

“Who is that?” The instantiation of Mrs. Sen asked again and again in an increasingly shrill voice.

“The electrician.” Raja yelled back.

“Hope he doesn’t give us shoddy switches like the earlier one.”

Raja’s cook, a small woman in a faded nylon saree, cleaned fish at an alarming speed by the kitchen sink and paid no attention to the visitors or the residents.

“Soma, can you get us some water?” Raja asked her.

As Soma washed her hands clean with deliberate slowness, Wajid entered the old kitchen. “I can help myself.”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING? Coming into the kitchen like a woman.” Mrs. Sen hollered at the top of her voice.

Wajid stumbled back into the verandah, eyes squeezed shut. His young apprentice stopped and took the neatly camouflaged pods out of her ear. 

“While she was alive, she believed the kitchen was no place for men.” Raja’s face tingled. He saw the apprentice roll her eyes while she typed up a storm on one of the laptops.

Wajid rubbed his chin. “Fascinating.” 

      #

“We have collected the data. Now we’ll analyze it and get back to you with a plan.” The hacker and his apprentice packed away all their equipment deftly.

“At least three other hackers have failed.” Raja crossed his arms.

“Well, they were not me.” Wajid met his client’s narrowed eyes. “Check our company profile. I spent my thirties working in the Bay Area. Like yourself, I moved back to India only in the last decade. Started my own consulting firm. Exterminated around fifty afterlife instantiations so far. One was in Ranchi. All expenses paid trip. A young man had bound his avatar to his girlfriend’s father’s gold iPhone 30.”

“Is that her?” Rubina pointed to the black and white photos on the wall. An unsmiling woman in a stiff saree and bun standing next to a tall man in a suit. He had a sharp nose and a strong jaw. Next to his athletic stature, she definitely looked dumpy. In the adjacent photo, the same woman. Surrounded by dahlia flowers, with her long hair flying in the wind and with the biggest smile on her round face. 

A heaviness formed in Raja’s chest. “Yes, she loved white dahlias.”

#

Even under the dim lights, Anandi exuded a certain luster. She wore a shimmery dress in her favorite color, black, and an equally shiny lip gloss. Thick kohl lined her eyes. Her long hair fell in immaculate curls around her slim shoulders. Raja wondered if she still spent hours styling it. Then, he wondered if this was all a huge mistake. 

Even in the nearly empty restaurant, he could see men eyeing her. A slight chill washed over him and he gave an involuntary shudder. 

And she still took forever to order.

“So, what do you do nowadays?” He took another sip of water.

“I am a stylist on a couple of Bangla films.”

She chirped on and on about the film sets and the many parties she attended. He thought back to the final days of their marriage, her voice had begun to grate on him. 

But that didn’t stop Raja from being light-headed. Like he was drunk. Like he had felt at their first tryst after their rather hurried engagement. Anandi and he were finally alone. As the sun set into the gray Ganga, they nibbled on some spiced peanuts and stole glances at each other. Seated on the worn stairs leading down to the river, their bodies close but not quite touching. Raja had a hard time believing his luck. Why would a beauty like her agree to marry a plump ordinary man like him?

But there they were, two decades later, on the other side of the world, both in their fifties. In their time apart, Anandi had gone through a couple of more husbands and Raja had gone from living alone to cohabiting with his mother’s ghost. Anandi was still youthful whilst he had gone completely grey. 

He said, “I rarely ever check Meta. Seeing a message from you after all these years… It was quite a surprise.” His heart raced.

“Well, I am not one to hold on to grudges…” Anandi flashed him a smile. 

In the early years of their marriage, Raja always woke up to toast and poached eggs if they had fought in the night. A knot formed in his belly. Maybe the real mistake was letting her go.

She asked, “Anyway, did you call that hacker I found you? The latest one?”

“I did.” Raja said.

“How’s it coming along?”

“Too early to say anything.” 

“My cousin may have a buyer for you.”

“Already?” His eyebrows went up.

“I think I will have chicken sizzler. They have nothing new. Not even video menus. Park Street restaurants have gone downhill.” Anandi continued to look at the menu.

“What does this buyer plan to do with the house?” He asked. 

“He is looking for a heritage house. Maybe convert it into a boutique hotel or something…”

Raja forced a nod. His glass of water was nearly empty, yet his mouth remained dry.

“I can’t wait for us to be together again. A new beginning in a new house.” Anandi brushed her hands softly against his. Even though it was warm and familiar, Raja flinched in reflex.

#

On a whim, Raja had retired early and moved back to Calcutta. His neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. Tall apartment buildings had sprung up. Small family-owned grocery stores and eateries had shuttered. Only the house of Raja’s forebears stood still. 

The golden-yellow house with semicircular balconies, exquisite cornices and slatted venetian windows painted green. It continued to stand on Ashu Biswas Lane like it had for the last hundred years. Land sharks circled it viciously, eagerly awaiting its fall.

The house was Raja’s father’s only redeeming quality. And Mr. Sen barely spent any time at home. 

On the evenings, when he was not on duty, he would oil his hair, dab generous amounts of Old Spice and saunter out wearing bright shirts. In their neighborhood, college girls would flash him coy smiles as he revved his motorcycle and zoomed out to meet one of his lovers. It wouldn’t be earlier than eleven in the night before Mr. Sen returned and demanded a hot dinner. 

While Mr. Sen was home, the house was a minefield. Raja and his mother tiptoed quietly to avoid setting him off. No matter how hard they tried, Mr. Sen would end up exploding on some nights. One night it was the fish she had cooked wrong. Another it was his dresser that had been tidied up wrong. It was always something or the other. In the mornings, Raja found angry purple welts on his mother’s plump arms and face. 

His mother exhaled and mumbled to no one in particular, “These women are just throwing themselves at him. I am lucky to have him.”

Raja’s body trembled, his hands shook as he stopped himself from seeking out his father and punching him in the face. Like his mother always said, hitting a policeman wasn’t the best idea. 

Raja’s mother, on the other hand, was obsessed with the house. The oxidized stone floors were mopped to shine like red mirrors. White dahlias and marigold blooms lined the long verandah in the winter. White bed linen was washed daily and bleached with indigo. The cast iron railings were wiped clean weekly. Anything broken — bulbs, fans, roof, swiftly repaired. Every year, the fabric for new curtains was meticulously chosen in New Market. Every year, painters were summoned for a fresh coat of yellow paint on the walls. 

Mrs. Sen tended to the house with a devotion that was far more genuine than her feelings for her husband. Perhaps it was reparation for all the horrors in her marriage.

#

On the video call, Wajid frowned. “There is a complication. It doesn’t run on the usual schema. So, we can’t kill the process by depriving it of memory or CPU or any resources, it will just self-heal and reboot.”

Raja sighed, “And aren’t you supposed to be a legendary hacker or something?”

“It runs on a last wish schema. Self-terminate on the completion of the condition.”

“Great. Can we do that?”

Rubina shook her head. “It’s not that simple. It’s heavily encrypted. Mrs. Sen signed up for anti-tampering layers.”

“Ah! The anti-tamper layer. It was an engineering marvel back in the day.” Wajid rubbed his chin.

Raja leaned back, away from the camera. “Wonderful.” 

“It will take some time, but we will find it.” Rubina said. “But it’s static, so we can’t change it. So, whatever your mom chose as her last wish, it will need to be fulfilled to trigger the self-termination sequence.”

#

“Maybe this year… we can get the walls painted white?” Raja, fifteen now, looked up from his homework and watched his mother’s hands shake a little as she placed a cup of fresh tea in front of his father. 

Her husband remained engrossed in the newspaper, she added. “They say white promotes peace in the home.”

“Are you forgetting that I own this house?” Mr. Sen looked up with an angry glower. “Get it painted yellow, like it has always been.”

 The next morning, the maid furiously scrubbed at a patch of blood on the white bedsheet.

Bile flooded his mouth and Raja looked away. His head throbbed with the heat. He barked at his mother, “Why do you even put up with this?” 

She closed her eyes. “In his own way, your father still cares about me.”

Raja groaned. “That’s foolish Maa. You should­—”

“I should what? Let another woman take this house away from me? After all that I have endured?” Her cold red eyes glared at Raja.

Mrs. Sen spent her days in mortal fear of one of her husband’s lovers turning up and casting them out of the house.

“I will never let her seize the house.” She would fume.

Her son was often tempted to ask, “Which one?”

Raja had hated the house of his ancestors and the days and nights it reminded him of. He couldn’t wait to grow up and move out and away. 

#

In his fifties, Raja’s homecoming wasn’t smooth sailing. He had no siblings. All his relatives stayed away. Most of his old friends had moved away after college. Everybody wanted out of the apparently dying city. 

Once Raja got used to it, his mother’s instantiation was a comfort. He spent his days listening to her throw a multitude of advice at him like he was an eight-year-old.

“Wear a hat, Babu.”

“Drink your milk.”

“Switch to auxiliary power.”

“Go to bed.”

“Notification from the fridge— it’s out of milk.”

“Don’t slip and fall on the wet stairs.”

“Babu, lock the grille.”

“Change the purifier filters.”

“The lights upstairs are busted. Buy new ones.”

His mother’s voice was all Raja heard on some days.

#

While the other maskless guests raved about it, the opulence of taking a deep breath of fresh air outdoors made Raja uneasy. The canopy of fairy lights over the lawn couldn’t camouflage the murky gray skies which spanned beyond the newfangled purifier dome that enclosed the club property. 

He was glad he had a jacket. There was a nip in the air. Raja looked at his watch again. His stomach rumbled loudly. It was only seven. 

Beyond the lawns, a sprawling white colonial building loomed in the dim lights – one of the most exclusive private clubs the city offered. As a teenager, Raja would have been thrilled to just see the inside.

Many men, old and young, with drinks in their hands, surrounded Anandi as she regaled them with tales. Some of these tales Raja had heard before, the older, less embellished versions. 

After an hour or so, she finally sauntered up to him with a glass of scotch, a few wrinkles still visible under her flawless makeup. “Your first film party. Are you having fun?”

He held the glass of club soda close. “I haven’t done anything social in a long time.”

“Let’s head inside and get some dinner?” She asked.

Somehow, Anandi always knew when he was hungry. Maybe she did care. The rumble in Raja’s belly turned into a flutter.

He cleared his throat. “I was thinking maybe we could go to the riverfront next time, have some chaat and peanuts by the Ganga. Like old times.”

“The air is too bad to be outside.” Anandi took a long, deliberate sip. “We can go to this new restaurant in ITC. Authentic Mexican street food. I’ve heard my friends raving about the tacos.”

“Right.” Raja glanced around at the youngsters with VR glasses scattered on the lawn. All talking to no one in particular, probably with the latest skin pods.

“Anyway. The buyer we have, he is in a bit of a hurry. He will pay you well above the market price, but he wants the deal done before he leaves for London, in ten days.”

His heart raced under the blow. “Just ten days?”

“We can start our new chapter, together, in just ten days… Maybe we can go on a little vacation after the deal. There is this new luxury beach resort in Tajpur. They have a new state-of-the-art purifier dome over their private beach.” She looked into his eyes.

Raja’s insides roiled as he got flashbacks from their last vacation together in Cancun a lifetime ago. He had spent days drinking alone in the hotel bar while she lounged by the pool. It was the first time he had known for sure that they would not last.

#

“What kind of son wants his mother gone? To think what I gave up for this ungrateful boy.” Mrs. Sen’s wails filled the house.

“Apparently she knows now.” Raja sighed as he opened the door.

Rubina shrugged. “The instantiations were programmed to process audio input.”

“She is not taking it well. Tried to lock me in this morning.”

Wajid stepped in. “Well, we have some good news and some bad news. Good news is we finally found the last wish. Bad news – she wanted to speak to her husband.”

Raja plopped into the nearest chair. “He passed a couple of years after her.”

“How long were they married?” Wajid asked.

“Thirty-five years.”

“Did she love him?” Rubina’s eyes were wide, like she expected bad news. 

“They hated each other.” Raja rubbed his temple. “Well, now you have ten days.” 

Wajid peered through his round glasses. “What’s the rush? You have lived with her for so long.”

Raja looked away. “I need to sell the house. Soon.”

“Ah. The house.” Wajid straightened up. “I get it. No one wants to buy a house with a resident instantiation… Unfortunately, I can’t promise anything. This is an edge case from all the data we have seen so far. I will refund you fully, of course.”

Raja’s heart sank. “Ok.”

“But we won’t give up before we have to. Rubina will work overtime and try to figure this out.”

Rubina made a sour face and stared at her boss.

#

“Bunch of Musalmans. Plotting my demise. Suor-er-bacha.” Mrs. Sen’s voice was full of rage.

“My apologies. She never cursed in real life.”

“Maybe you just didn’t know about it.” Rubina walked around with rolls of fiber optic cables around her shoulder and a screwdriver behind her dainty ear.

“Babu…” Mrs. Sen called out. “Wear the monkey cap. It’s cold today.” 

“For heaven’s sake, I survived three decades of Canadian winters.” Raja mumbled and shook his head. “Mothers.” 

Rubina forced a smile. “At least she didn’t sign up for the premium version.”

“What was that?”

“It included a holographic projection.”

“That would have been quite the spectacle.” He chuckled. “How long will it take?”

“Just getting some archived data we missed last time. She is definitely not making it easier, slowing down IO transfers.” Rubina pushed her glasses up. “But I will be out of your hair soon.”

“Don’t worry about it. I could use some company.” Raja regretted the words as soon as he uttered them. He saw Rubina stiffen up and then scan him with her narrowed eyes for a creepiness check.

“Do you want some tea?” He asked.

“Are you expecting me to make it?” She raised one brow.

“No,” A hot flush crept into Raja’s face. “I was just going to order some online.”

“You seriously never step into the kitchen. Not even to make tea?”

“You have heard her scream. She hates it, and that’s why I have Soma.”

“Do you have any kids?” She asked.

“My ex-wife wasn’t into kids.”

“Oh.”

“Ten years of marriage and then one evening Anandi just left.”

“Ah.” Rubina nodded matter-of-factly.

“My mother had nothing to do with it.”

“Of course.”

“Anandi? Who mentioned that lying whore?” Mrs. Sen screeched her displeasure.

Raja let out a small smile as he watched Rubina stifle a snigger and look away.

#

“Your mother was right.” It was almost ten in the night and Rubina was on the doorstep, out of breath as she yanked off her purifier mask.

“About what?” Raja let her in.

“Kay aseche?” Mrs. Sen’s voice asked. “Who is at the door so late?”

“She was saying it literally.” Rubina sat on the edge of the couch, her legs fidgeting. “I am probably breaking a million rules here… While trying to find her last wishes, I was running some regex searches on all the correspondences, all the social media content which she had submitted to LifeForever Inc. to build and train her instantiation.”

“Ok.”

“I stumbled upon something.” Rubina’s face darkened. “Your wife got together with her second husband while she was still married to you. It was in one of Mrs. Sen’s text conversations with her sister.”

Raja gazed away and exhaled. “Ok.” 

“You knew that already.” Her eyes widened.

“What I didn’t know was that my mom knew.”

“She probably wanted to protect your feelings.” Rubina got up to leave.

Mrs. Sen complained loudly, “Abhadro. They don’t even spare us in the night.”

#

Anandi left the major portion of the American Chop Suey she ordered untouched. Like always. Then she gestured to the server to bring the check over to Raja. 

“You forgot your wallet again.” Raja said.

“Left it on the set. Clumsy me.” She laughed.

“Bank cards have been on phones forever.” Raja’s head throbbed as the server scanned his card.

“Mr. Neotia has promised us the penthouse in his newest luxury high-rise in Tollygunge. Can you imagine the parties we will host there, Babu? The crème de la crème of South Calcutta on our terrace with cocktails in the purified-”

No one had called him Babu in ages. Raja stopped mid-bite, with his fork in the air. “Mr. Neotia? As in Mr. Girish Neotia of Neotia builders?”

“The same.”

He put down the fork. “So, he IS going to tear down the house?”

“I didn’t know, to be honest. I thought he wanted to convert it into a boutique hotel or something.” Anandi shrugged.

“That’s not what we discussed…”

“Don’t be silly Babu. You’ve always hated the house. And we do need a new place for our new beginning.”

Raja crossed his arms. “I don’t want it razed to the ground.”

“This way, you no longer have to bother getting rid of her. She… the instantiation will be gone when the house gets demolished.”

“This is so typical.” His stomach hardened up. He could barely breathe.

Anandi put her cutlery down with a loud clang. A few diners gawked at them. Her face contorted, Raja always thought she was ugly when she was in one of her rages. 

She glared. “Are you seriously going to screw us up again?”

#

Wajid and Rubina looked positively giddy. “Rubina has an update.”

“I did some research, searched again in the codebase and all the metadata. All subscribers at LiveForever Inc were forced to give two options for the last wish. It was mandatory. So, there is a private backup variable with another of her last wishes.”

Raja didn’t stir from the couch. “What else did she want?” 

Rubina smiled. “Why don’t we ask her? She can’t exactly lie…”

 “Mrs. Sen, what’s the value for parameter ins_last_wish_secondary?” Wajid called out.

“Oita ki?”

“Come on, Mrs. Sen. Browse through the parameters in the instantiation_last_wish schema. There are two ins_last_wish parameters. Ins_last_wish_primary and ins_last_wish_secondary. What’s the value of the ins_last_wish_secondary?”

Rubina turned to Raja. “You should ask her? Her instantiation trained all these years to respond better to you and your needs.”

“Maa, what was the value for ins_last_wish_secondary?”

“Paint the house white.”

Raja’s breath quickened.

“Mrs. Sen, can you confirm the value of ins_last_wish_secondary?” Rubina asked.

“Paint the house white. Confirmed.”

Wajid blinked. “That’s it?”

Rubina scratched her head, “Maybe she didn’t have time to pick something better?” 

Raja’s body tingled. “My father always had the house painted yellow.” 

“Fascinating. Maybe she loved white. As a married woman, there would have been no opportunity for her to wear white ever.” Wajid said. “I know some painters if you need-”

“I will paint it myself.” Raja saw both Wajid and Rubina’s eyebrows go up.

#

Raja got the brushes and rollers at the local hardware store. He chose the shade “Absolute White” and got to work. 

First, he took down all the old photos of his ancestors and the old calendars. He moved the old teak furniture away from the walls. Waves of huge translucent plastic sheets covered everything. He primed the walls with a roller. Then, Raja started painting. He did the insides of the circular balconies, painted over his scribbles behind old wooden almirah, his father’s hair dye stains in the bathroom and the discolored spot on the living room wall where his mother leaned back against to read newspapers. He covered every corner and crevice with a smaller brush.

#

When Soma begrudgingly finished the last paint stroke over the mustard oil splatters in the kitchen, Raja stretched his tired limbs and smiled. It looked nothing like the house he had grown up to hate. Then, he summoned the hacker and his apprentice.

Rubina looked around. “You have actually done a good job. The house looks new.”

“I wasn’t a complete amateur. In Canada, it was cheaper to do it yourself.”

“Whenever you’re ready.” Wajid stepped away, towards the white walls.

Raja didn’t think he was ready. He took a deep breath and summoned the instantiation anyway. “Maa? Maa?” A huge lump formed in his throat.

“Look at the walls. They are white. Like you always wanted.” His voice shook a little.

“It looks beautiful. Peaceful.” Her voice sounded serene for the first time in days. 

“Self-termination sequence initiated.” Some other female voice with a Boston accent announced.

“Bhalo thakis baba. Stay well.” A longing tinged his mother’s voice in her final message. Probably recorded decades ago in solitude in her bedroom, Raja thought.

“Mrs. Sen? Mrs. Sen?” Wajid called out to confirm. There was no answering yell. She was gone. 

“Now, you can sell the house.” 

Raja gave Wajid a weak smile. His phone rang. 

#

“Babu.” Anandi’s voice was smooth as butter. “Come over. I have made your favorite shrimp curry.”

Raja said, “It’s kind of busy today.”

“Mr. Neotia is expecting an answer today.” Urgency took over and her voice was smooth no more.

“Well, Mr. Neotia can fuck off.” His own words filled Raja with a thrill.

“Let’s be reasonable. It is a lot of money.” 

He could sense the restraint in her words. “And that’s what brought you back to me? Mr. Neotia didn’t fall for your charms and just give you the penthouse you wanted so badly.”

“You are as stupid as you were twenty years ago.” Her voice rose. “I will not let you disrespect me again.” 

“Same. Piece of advice – you are too old now for expecting your lovers to pay for everything. Get a job.” 

Raja hung up and took a deep cleansing breath. 

#

It was odd not to hear his mother’s screeches when Raja stepped into the kitchen. His insides were heavy, but he smiled. He washed the tiny grained rice carefully. Next, he crushed the deep amber hue-ed block of date palm jaggery.

“Already stepping into the kitchen, I see.” Rubina’s eyes twinkled in mischief.

“You know, we believe after someone dies, on the thirteenth day, the soul breaks the earthly bonds and departs. And for the parting we make their favorite dish. In winters, my mom loved nolen gurer payesh.”

Her head jerked back. “You DO know how to cook.”

“I wasn’t a total mama’s boy.” Raja grinned as he turned the stove on.