|DMG FF|Scared of DarknessP4pg18 RIDRAHUL Marriage - Page 13

next update will be in May only since i have my exams now

PART-4

It was such an unpropitious beginning, maybe I should have been warned. There were despairing moments, days of unbearable tension and anxiety. I had come away from my parents in a fever of excitement after the last battle. The die was cast, the decision was taken, my boats burnt. There could be no turning back. Then, this ridiculous anti-climax. To defy your parents and family, to resolve to get married in spite of them, and then to be obstructed by the lack of home!

It was Rahul who had been adamant about that.

'I'm not going to have us live apart', he said.

'I refuse to continue this way, meeting an hour or so each evening. We must have a place of our own, even if it's just a room.'

And that was all we had finally. That too seemed a miracle. His face, when he came to me in the restaurant that day, told me the news before he did it.

'I have got it', he said. Dragging the chair closer to me, he sat straddling it, staring at me as he spoke, as if to watch every expression of mine.

'But promise me you won't refuse it.'

'What's the catch?'

'it's just one room, in a chawl. Want to back out?

I never dreamt of such a life. I mean I Love RAHUL but to live with him in a chawl was definitely not something that I wanted. Rahul guessed what I was thinking.

'Wait Rids, think it over. We might not get place for months or years, with the little I can afford to pay. I have been hunting house for so many days and this is all I could manage. We can move in next month. What do you say?'

He looked at me carefully. And at the look in his eyes, I suddenly panicked. I was sixteen again and trapped in that strange room with two strange boys and that friend of mine.

What was her name? I just can't remember. But she was three years older than me and ours was one of those condescending (on her part), adoring, worshipping (on my part), friendships that blossom so suddenly and unexpectedly between girls.

She once took me to a boy's hostel with her. We sat on that untidy bed with boys sitting on the sofa nearby. They were two of them. One of them was Armaan Mallik and the other one was MOHIT Joshi.

It's so strange that I remember the name of those boys but not my friend. I was 16 then and my friend was 19. She was in college and me still a school going girl. My friend and MOHIT were chatting. ARMAAN was getting bored. He was my classmate whom I never noticed; neither do I have any desire to do that. He was always interested in books. What a CHAMPU! Yes! CHAMPU that is what we used to call him at his back.

Suddenly my friend's phone rang and she too went away. Her boyfriend had come to pick her up. She left me didn't even bothered to ask me of dropping me back home. I called her yes Muski…MUSKAAN that was her name.

'MUSKAAN, wait how will I go back home?'

'Darling please manage, I have to go right now.'

I was petrified. Going alone that too on a winter evening was damn scary. But ARMAAN helped me. He dropped me back home. That was sweet gesture from his side but I still disliked him. He was not of my type.

But why am I thinking of all these things right now? I'm not sixteen anymore. Then why did I feel trapped when he spoke of our marriage? Is this not what I want?

'When we are together, its heaven, wherever we are', he said.

It was silly, it was absurd, it was ridiculous, I thought. I sometimes felt like I was a fraud. It was impossible that I could mean so much to any human being. It was impossible that such things could happen to me. And yet, I could not doubt his love. He cared for my feelings as no one had ever done.

'It's going to be painful for you', he said to me one day, looking at me with what seemed like compassion.

'What?'

'Cutting yourself off from your parents.'

'No'. My response was instant and brusque, like that of a rude child.

'That's not possible, Rids. I know you must be suffering. I only hope I can make up to you for it.'

Suffering, painful? I was impatient with those words because they meant nothing to me. After my last confrontation with my parents, I had totally detached myself from them. For me, they were already the past and meant nothing.

'Shall I tell you something?' I said.

My hand was on the table between us. He held it and gently turned it over. And with the opposite end of his pen wrote my name again and again.

'Tell', he kissed my hand and smiled at me.

'Have you seen a baby being born? Do you know, Rahul, how easy it is to cut the umbilical cord and separate the baby from the mother? Ligate, cut and it's done. There's scarcely any bleeding either. It's as if nature knows the child must be detached from the mother. No, RAHUL, for me there will be no trauma, no bleeding.'

'So long as you aren't hurt……….'

Yes, he loved me. Why then this fear, this trapped feeling?

Why?

Clinically, rationally, I analyzed my own feelings. It was not sex, not fear of sex. I was after all a medical student and know what goes on between a male and a female. But then what else? What was that feeling? Gosh! I'll go mad. I better leave this.

When we got married it was totally different. It was never like I had ever imagined. We had always stayed physically apart before our marriage. It's my painful middle-class inhibitions, I told myself, making marriage the open sesame of all enjoyment in life. After the first moment of apprehension……a purely physical response or lack of it, rather…there was never any withholding in me. In an instant I became a physically aroused woman, with an infinite capacity of loving and giving, with a passionate desire to be absorbed by the man who I loved.

His hands and mouth exploring my private parts made me moan in pleasure. I didn't want that to stop. He kissed me all over. The kisses were soft and unbearably sweet. The embraces were hard and passionate and there was an intense joy. It was as if little nerve ends of pleasure had sprung up all over my body.

Suddenly the phone rang and RAHUL got up to pick the phone.

'Oh Rahul, don't'.

'Don't what'

'Don't stop'.

He disconnected the phone. I was insatiable, not for sex, but for love. Each act of sex was a triumphant assertion of our love. Of my being loved. Of my being wanted.

It was heaven, in spite of the corridors smelling of urine, the room with it's dank sealed in odors, women with inquisitive, unfriendly eyes, men with lascivious stares. But we were happy.

But why is happiness always so unreal? Why does it always seem an illusion? It is grief that has a bulk, a weight, a substance and stays real even after years. Happiness is so evanescent, nothing is left. Except sensations and feelings.

The outside world passed by us soundlessly, invisibly. No one ever spoke to us. We were left severely alone.

And then, one day, things changed. It was the day there was an explosion in a factory. Burnt mutilated bodies poured in, in a horror so vast that it seemed meaningless. Feelings were blunted by the very immensity of the catastrophe. There was no time, anyway, either to think or to feel.

At last it was done and we were free to go home. A friend gave me a lift in her car. I got in, too tired even to take off my bloodstained coat. I got out of the car and walked through the refuse line avenue, unaware even of the stink. I noticed one or two people smiled at me. I smiled back, not really caring, the only thing I wanted right now was a good night's sleep. I passed a group of women and they stopped their talk and stared at me. As I closed the door of our room, I heard the words 'lady doctor, lady doctor.'

The next evening, I had scarcely got home when there was a knock at the door. Rahul opened it. I heard a lady's voice,'s the doctor at home?'

There was a pause and then Rahul called out, 'Rids, someone wants you.' It was a woman whose child had diarrhea. I examined the child and wrote out a prescription.

The next day happened again. And the day after. And the day after that.

And then came a day when, hearing a knock on the door, Rahul said, 'Open it, Rids, it must be for you.'

I could not see his face but his tone was certainly odd.

An affected indifference….yes, now I know that is what in his tone then. But I didn't stop to ponder over his tone at that time. I was too busy, too tired, I was too exhilarated with the dignity and importance that my status as a doctor seemed to have given me. I was young and callow, and so unused to my profession still, that to have real patients come to me gave me a thrill I could scarcely hide.

And now, when we walked out of our room, there were nods and smiles. But they were all for me. He was totally ignored.

I did not notice it then. But I do remember how he once said, 'I'm sick of this place. Let's go somewhere else.'

But he was still the same. Always eager to make love to me. I found myself shrinking from his love making. But why? I couldn't find the answer then.