Chapter 7: Rejoice
The two of them had always led a comfortable life. It was enough for them but she felt that her son sometimes missed the presence of an elder male influence. He was never vocal about it but in his younger years it was little obvious for her trained eye. But as he grew up, he saw her for what she was and from a mother, she had slowly tread through a fascinating relationship of friendship with her son. There was a comfort in the way they interacted and it gave her a huge sense of satisfaction when she saw the man her son was turning out to be.
And what made her even gladder were the name "Khushi" and that person's personality being quite frequently discussed in their house. The transformation that she was seeing in her son's behavior wasn't small or was it something she could easily ignore. The brooding young man took up a philosophical tangent when she least expected it and she yearned to spend more time with her son to understand him more and to experience the thought process of emotional bonding with someone hugely compatible. In her view, that was one thing which altered life the most and it was something one would treasure for the rest of their lives. And if everything went well, the person might even become a permanent fixture in her son's life. She honestly wanted someone like that in her son's life given the fact she had the first hand taste in loneliness and disappointment due to bad judgment.
Her eyes had widened when she saw a young girl standing in her doorstep and introduced herself as her son's classmate "Khushi".
And they hit it off once she came out of the mild shock seeing first ever girl, no scratch that, first ever Arnav's friend to enter her house once he started high school. It could have been because Khushi hugged her as soon as she set eyes on Arnav's mother without thinking too much about social etiquette. She sat on platform next to microwave, swinging legs and animatedly explaining about an incident which happened on her way to Arnav's house as his mom brewed coffee and responded equally animatedly. As the conversation shifted to much personal subjects like home, parents, siblings, they shifted their base from kitchen to Arnav's room. As his mom folded and ironed his clothes, drank coffee, Khushi sat at his desk and talked about growing up in small town. It was surprising that the real common factor which tied both women, Arnav, was never once part of their conversation. The two of them were talking like old friends met after decades of separation and were catching up with everything that has gone by.
Khushi's eyes had a faraway look in them when she reminisced about her late mom. It irked her that the memories got hazier with passing day and everything about her mom almost started sounding as myth. Was this how stories were born? She wondered with aunty. The young woman's melancholia was not lost on the older one. Like Khushi, Arnav had missed on a parental figure in his life and she wondered if Arnav ever felt the same way Khushi felt about missing a parent during growing up. It was hard for her to imagine that because not once Arnav openly mentioned about missing father figure in his life. When Arnav was old enough, as a mother, she had talked to him about being single mom. He had understood as much as a thirteen year old would and perhaps wondered for many years to come. But once he was fifteen he had completely let go of the fact that he was a fatherless boy. There was a sense of recluse about that which didn't sit with his mother very well but she could understand his predicament. She was immensely thankful for the personality of Arnav - his understanding attitude, above average maturity and the way he analyzed a situation with multiple perspectives, but there were times when she wanted him to be a boy; just another boy who threw tantrums when things didn't go that way or wanted something real bad. She wondered whether she would have tried to get back with the Arnav's father if Arnav threw in regular tantrums about missing his father rather than accepting the truth. When she said this aloud to Khushi, the young woman brooded for many moments. Khushi being in almost similar predicament of Arnav understood the man a little more than she knew him before visiting his house.
There wasn't a prescribed way of coping with loss of a parent. While some kids accepted the truth quickly and adapted to a lifestyle different from other kids, few had troubles in understanding why only one parent accompanied them to PTA. The complicated lifestyle of adults or their decision making process isn't transparent to kids for them to see and understand on their own. It was that simple.
It brought tears in her eyes and her heart wrenched when Khushi wondered out loud if this was how a mother-daughter interacted. There was hopelessness in the way she blatantly displayed missing mother figure and obvious reverence for Arnav's mother. She didn't look sad but only disappointed at her missed opportunity. The older woman laughed in the end and declared that she would gladly be the adopted mom for Khushi. Though Khushi didn't verbalize the sheer happiness she felt with that declaration, an errant tear caught in her eyelashes provided visual proof for Arnav's mom.
And then they took out Arnav's baby photos and made fun of him and his broodiness for the rest of the evening.
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A sense of content had enveloped her when Arnav's mother had hugged her on the doorway as she was about to depart. It was actually bittersweet, from the way she saw it. The older woman was wise, witty and absolutely non-judgmental. A surge of envy passed through her when she realized Arnav's predicament; no wonder he was such a good guy. Payal only raised an eyebrow and refrained from commenting when Khushi breezily said that she loved Arnav's mother and their home. Payal knew that if she analyzed this even further, Khushi would get hyper defensive about this situation and clamp up. She allowed Khushi to glide in this cloud of contentment and was little jealous of the fact that she missed talking to such a wonderful woman. But she was happy that the one thing that Khushi missed out the most after they lost their mother was slowly returning to them. People had always pitied her for not getting to see her mom at all. But she believed and knew for a fact that it was worse to lose people after knowing them and loving them rather than not meeting them at all. Khushi fell in to latter category thus she was more miserable about not having a mother than compared to herself. She shrugged off non-committal thoughts and grilled her sister for more details in a completely teasing tone at which Khushi blushed first and then avenged by teasing her sister back with the college basketball hunk.
She logged into the website hoping to see a comment from library guy. Though she appreciated and acknowledged other comments she received his comments were something that always hit her the most. Was it because there was a sort of conversation going on at a personal level rather than keeping and maintaining a detachment between writer and a reader? And she could not believe when things had gotten this complicated with a simple online comment system. She wrote down the words that had bombarded her mind when she had hugged Arnav's mom when she was about to leave her house.
I bask in her warmth
And her glow tinges my cheeks pink
My sigh gets absorbed in her womb
My tears get enveloped in her cocoon.
The hands that molded him
Now traces the crevices on my neck.
The archetype and the surrogate
Mix and blur
Who is who is such a slur
Once the sky clears
a face emerges
Foster it is, my mind cries
Thank you God! My heart rejoices.
She felt happy once she finished writing her verse. It summarized many things to her, her position and also the way she has started to see things. She wondered if the guy had left her any note. To her utter delight, there was yet another comment from him for the last monsoon related verse she had posted. And this time she was in a dilemma. She didn't know if he was being a waxing poet or was he seriously hinting at something. It seemed as if every word he chose to comment for her verse was thought of very carefully and beaded together with a string of companionship which was getting more and more evident with each of his verse and his comments. But there was something holding him back. She was sure of it.
Or was it someone? Her heart dreaded.
Bottle that memory in a glass jar, lock it in a treasure chest, bury it deep in sand in a faraway land and throw away the key. Draw me a map, give me a compass, whisper the puzzle of missing key; I will be the sailor searching all of the seas for that treasured memory.
Library_Guy
Her throat clamped. There wasn't any reason to, she was sure of it. Heck, his comment wasn't even emotional one yet she couldn't help but cry for something she had a feeling she wasn't going to have. The man who was commenting on her post was an aberration in the mundane that she was stuck in.
It was then she realized that she was actually having feelings for a guy with whom she had had less than a dozen interactions in virtual world.
And again wondered why things got this way in her life.
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His mother talked mile a minute when he arrived home little late. The reason for her happiness had been Khushi who had dropped by to return the cell phone he had forgotten that day at college. He wanted to tell his mother that there were less than one dozen contacts in his phone and no one might probably miss him if he didn't return their call, if at all they called him, that is. But his mother was apparently on an altogether different plane and he allowed herself to be. He listened to what his mother got to say about Khushi and finally realized what the whole deal was all about. She was smitten with Khushi.
With that realization, he sighed knowing what repercussions of this would be. It would mean that his classmate would now be a regular guest at his household and which also meant that his mother might share all gory details about his adolescence with Khushi. With that thought, he sulked. Yet he could not understand the reason why there was a part of him which was suddenly content of his mother's approval of Khushi. He hadn't even considered as a friend yet he was hoping that his mother would like the girl. He shook his head to shake away illogical thoughts and concentrated on eating dinner.
Writing verses and dropping odd comments to small town girl was getting into a habit. It was as if he wanted to summarize the day using all the emotions he had felt in those few words and tell her; just tell her about it. It was oddly scary when he realized that it was something he had started to look forward to.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw the comment the girl had made about the verse he had written in memory of Khushi dancing in rain.
I had the breeze telling me when you splashed first puddle of rain water. Was it synchronous with the other pair of feet which splashed water and jingled anklets?
Smalltown_Girl
He couldn't understand how the girl had arrived at that conclusion. There was no way that small town girl actually felt what he had felt. It took his breath away and made him sweat a little. The girl was uncanny in her perspective and didn't hold much when she commented. She had obviously guessed that he was talking about a girl and it was also something that he had never done before; watching a girl dance in rain without music or without much worry in the world. And also the fact that somehow the small town girl knew that he was part of the whole exercise.
He suddenly wanted to see her, this small town girl, shake her till she shook like a young leaf caught in windy evening breeze and tell her. But tell her what, he didn't know. He didn't know why he wanted to defend his actions. He didn't know why he wanted to justify his words, his verse and him drenching in rain. And most of all he didn't know why it bothered him when he understood, realized and saw the underlying melancholia in small town girl's words.
Without giving too much thought, he dropped a comment to her latest verse, which he found extremely endearing and logged off from virtual world. As he slept, the last thoughts were about a girl whose face he couldn't see fallen asleep next to a laptop with his college website open.
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Cricket
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