|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
They say that when someone goes out of your life, they go out of your memory. I will tell you that it is not true. I had convinced myself it was true, but it wasn’t. I can vouch for that. In that sense, my life has been a lie of some sort.
The woman in front of me dropped her wallet while walking on the pavement during lunch time last Wednesday. I wasn’t sure if it was unintentional. It had fallen one side open. I saw a photograph of a man staring at me from there. In one instantaneous flash, someone who I thought was out of my life and out of my memory came back. It had been eighteen years. I stopped and picked it up.
“Hey Hello,” I shouted in the direction of the woman. “Madam, your wallet has fallen.”
She turned around and looked at me. She checked her pocket and realised that I was right. She walked back. I sensed something amiss in her smile. It seemed made up. Something wasn’t right.
“Thank you,” she said on seeing it in my hand. I held on to the wallet for a few awkward seconds. She waited as if she expected me to hold on, before eventually asking for it. “Can I have it back?”
“Oh yes, of course,” I said, handing it back. She waited for a few awkward seconds after taking it, as if she expected me to ask her about the man in the photograph. And I did.
“How do you know him?” I asked. “The man in the photograph,” I clarified.
She wasn’t surprised. “He is my husband,” she replied.
“I see,” I shrugged my shoulders. “I am Aruna,” I introduced myself.
“I know, he is the Daniel you know,” she remarked before pausing a bit. “Or knew.”
Knew? My mind went back two decades. How can you say just knew? It revolted with scenes from the past replaying in my mind’s screen. My flowing white wedding gown. The candles being lit. Passages from the Bible, carefully chosen. The precious ring and the vows. All waiting for Daniel. It all came back in a flash. I thought it had gone out of my life with him.
“Aruna?” she asked, shaking me out of my thoughts. “I am Shirley.”
She was slim and had wrinkles on her forehead, dark circles under her eyes, a tired face, brown lips surrounded by crumpled cheeks that made her look many years older than she might have been.
“So now I get it,” I remarked in a hurry. “That was the reason.”
“No, it wasn’t. Not what you think,” she replied. “We married twelve years later.”
I looked at my watch. It was already 2 pm. Time for me to get back to office.
“How about lunch tomorrow?” Shirley asked. I hesitated. I didn’t want to open a pandora’s box. I thought I had already closed that chapter of my life. I didn’t want to revisit it.
“Maybe some other time,” I resisted, at first. Shirley looked at me closely. It was almost a gaze of scrutiny. I didn’t want to look at her in the eye.
“Are you happy?” she asked, again shaking me out of my stupor.
“What do you mean? Of course, I am. Tell Daniel that,” I lashed out at her. I rummaged through my purse and got my old house keychain out. Thank God I still had it. I was worried I had lost it.
“This is my husband and daughter,” I jumped down Shirley’s throat in ire.
“Very nice,” she said, in a serene voice. “Let us have lunch together. Just you and me,” she persisted.
I wasn’t ready, I felt. But then I thought, why not? This was my chance to show her how happy I was. So what if he didn’t turn up that day? My life went on. I nodded, almost against my wish.
“1 PM. Indian Kitchen. Then you can come home,” Shirley said and left.
**
All of the next twenty-four hours, the memories flooded my mind.
I had met Daniel just after college. Tall, dark, and handsome. Isn’t that what they called them? Knight in shining armour? The one who sweeps you off your feet? He was all of that and more. The centre of attraction everywhere he went. They were the best two years of my life till then. No, Ever.
If only I knew that he was what he turned out to be. If only I had listened to my parents who hadn’t agreed initially before eventually falling in line, for my sake. My father had two near heart attacks – once when Daniel turned up and once when he didn’t. My mother became a bundle of misery.
The next afternoon, I stepped out of my office before 1 PM. I had taken the second half off. This was way too important. I couldn’t miss this chance. A chance to get back after eighteen years.
Shirley was already there when I reached Indian Kitchen.
“You met after college?” she asked after the food was out of the way. What difference did it make? Why was she asking irrelevant questions? I didn’t answer, at first.
“I wish we hadn’t met at all. If I knew he wasn’t going to turn up for the wedding, I would have been better off not meeting him. He showed me dreams and broke them,” I said. The bitterness hadn’t gone away. They say time is the best healer. It is a mirage. It just puts things in the background.
“Are you happy?” Shirley asked again, glaring at me as if she was looking through me.
“I told you yesterday. Why are you asking me again and again?” I tore her off. Why was she bent on making me uncomfortable with myself?
“Really?”
“Yes, I showed you the photographs yesterday.”
“Then why are you here?”
I looked up with trepidation. Had she come to know? I wondered.
Daniel had messed up my life. I wasn’t able to keep my marriage intact due to him, especially after my daughter died seven years back in an accident. He had broken my marriage and my life without being there. Or perhaps, because of not being there.
“I know,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I shoved it aside and scowled at her.
“I don’t need any of your sympathies. I am fine,” I said.
“We should have met earlier,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” I countered. “We shouldn’t have met at all. And I shouldn’t have met your husband at all too,” I howled. “I wasn’t always like this.”
“It might have saved your marriage,” she mused. “But I didn’t know where you were. Till last week.”
And I didn’t care where Daniel was any more. I didn’t want to engage any further with her.
The wife of the man who had been responsible for my failed marriage and wretched life wanted to save it. How outrageous? Was my life so miserable that I had to live off that? I stepped out from the table and decided to leave.
“Wait,” Shirley held my hand. “You need to come home,” she pleaded.
I had no reason to be a toy in her hands anymore. I didn’t want to. No chance I wanted to meet Daniel again in my life.
“Where do you live?” I asked, despite wanting not to.
**
Shirley had a two-wheeler that she took through the wretched lanes of the city to reach what looked like a hutment. Or a slum. I didn’t know the difference. She stopped in front of a door and opened it.
“Come in,” she said.
I cringed as I lowered my head to enter the room. It was a dark, dishevelled neighbourhood, the likes of which I had only heard about but never seen myself. I had never been to something as grim as this place in my life. When Shirley switched on the light inside, I cowered back in fright.
In the centre of the room was an unkempt man on a wheelchair with his neck falling on the right. He had a long beard that extended almost till his chest and hair falling on his back. He wore old, thick-rimmed spectacles, and a white flowing dress that covered his entire body, like a hospital gown. His feet were floating in the air, and he had an expressionless face.
“Daniel,” Shirley said, pointing to the man.
I quivered back in fear. This was not the man I knew. My Daniel was the cynosure of all eyes, the centre of attraction wherever he went, the life of every gathering. This was someone else. I moved closer with trepidation and looked into his eyes. That’s when I recognized him. It was Daniel.
My baffled, rattled state was broken by Shirley who put a calm hand again on my shoulder. I shuddered at the sight and asked her questions with my eyebrows, gesticulating my fingers.
She started saying something and then stopped. This happened a couple of times. She wasn’t telling me everything. There was no reason for her to hide anything. I was ready for anything. I persisted.
And then words came out like a flood. The story of the last eighteen years flowed as if a dam had burst, and the water of a bound river had found its path down the mountain.
She told me about the diagnosis in the days before the wedding and the accompanying hopelessness of recovery. She told me about his debilitating, deteriorating illness and the sheer helplessness of having to live with it. The first few years of anger desperately seeking an answer to why it happened. The later years of resignation and broken hearts of how it was destined. The lost jobs and money and the practical problems. The plunge into poverty and the reality of being deserted by everyone. The starkness of being left all alone and taking shelter in God.
And finally she told me about the nurse who saw it all and who was still with Daniel. Shirley. His wife.
All along, while she spoke and I heard, Daniel was unmoved. There was no movement of hands, no movement of legs. No expression on his face. No sign of life.
When she finished, without knowing it, I found myself shedding tears. I didn’t know whom they were for. Were they for Daniel? For his fate? For his illness? For his love? For his life? For his walking out of my life? For Shirley? And most of all, were they for myself? For my bitterness? For what could have been? I didn’t know and didn’t care to find out. I just let them flow.
Shirley was right. We should have met earlier.
“He is counting his last breath,” Shirley said after a while. “Since last week, he has been whispering something. That’s why I found and tracked you down,” she added. “Come closer.”
I put my ear near his stirring lips. After a lot of effort, I heard him murmur, “I am sorry, Aruna.”
I fell on my knees with hands folded in prayer. I held his hand softly. I thought there was a slight flutter. Or maybe I imagined it. I wasn’t sure. And then there wasn’t any. I pressed his hand again. There was no response. I put my hand on Shirley’s shoulder.
Then I quietly walked away and closed the door behind me.
***
This story was first published in the Potato Soup Journal. You may also read it here.