I had read somewhere that writing your feelings is like expressing them in silence.
I don't how much truth is there in this but I decided to give it a try.
I have always been such an emotionally constipated person. Expressing my innermost feelings has always proved to be quite an arduous task. So like every other man who doesn't want to make the effort I just kept them hidden inside myself. Locked them in a box and threw the key in a lake.
But I guess I might have unknowingly done something which though evidently being convenient to me was not so to the love of my life.
My love, my life, my wife...
My Pallavi...
Such a drama queen she is!
Tell her something and she will keep on chattering and chattering for the entire evening without a breath. And that was more fruitful in my endeavour as I had nothing to do than just to listen. And thought I am hopelessly inadequate to contribute or even understand anything in her incessant chatter about the idiotic track of the current show she watches with Amma, I love the sound of her voice.
I can keep listening to it for hours and hours if required.
And maybe.. maybe I should've just told her this instead of bottling it up inside me.
Because her first complaint against me was always, I didn't listen.
Then her antics! Sometimes I feel she has only physically grown up and her mind is still veiled in that sweet haze of a childish innocence. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see her behave like a kid.
How I loved the way she would complain getting up in the mornings! Grumbling in that heart warming, sleep dishevelled look!
How I loved the way she would more smear the ice cream all over her lips instead of actually eating it! I wished nothing more than just to kiss her senseless during that time.
How I loved when she would sit and focus hard while I taught her the basics od business economics and the nitty gritties of the stock market, trying to understand everything in one go, that characteristic frown on her pretty face!
And maybe I should've just told her this instead of keeping it locked in myself as usual.
I don't know how to describe her beauty.
Pallavi looks ravishing in anything she wears. Just anything! God the woman could wear a gurney bag and yet look seductive. But you might laugh if I tell you in which looks do I find her the most beautiful she ever has. And you might laugh only because you aren't lucky enough to see her like that.
When she has those occasional bouts of lethargy during off days she would wear my oversized sweatshirt and her bobby printed shorts and trail around the house sleep cranky and hair in a mess....
When she is angry at me and wears the most drab saree she has just to annoy me and prove a non existent point...
When she is wearing her printed palazzos and the infamous mickey mouse t shirt which she refuses to throw even after a button had come out and the stains of Aisha's milk drinking disaster is still faintly present, her hair done in that messy bun...
You might think I've gone mad.
Maybe I have..
But I've read somewhere love does that to you
And maybe if only I had told all this to her instead of writing this down on this useless paper.
Pallavi has an innate quality of healing. Her touch, her words act like a balm to a wounded soul. Some days I wanted nothing other than crash and burn out. Overload of meetings and fighting with fate on a daily basis coupled with a dangerous lifestyle does that to people.
She would come and just put her hands around me and I'll feel like taking on the world the next second itself.
But alas, if only I would've told this to her instead of burying it underneath my heart.
Life has taught me many things and the foremost amongst those being that the most priceless thing we have is time.
Time never stops for anyone and once it passes, it would never come back again however much we plead and beg and cry.
My time for rectifying my mistakes has passed to and all I can do now is sit and regret.
I will never be able to tell her I love you.
Cause three words could never justify neither encompass all what I have ever felt for her yet could never express the way she deserves.
The love of my life..
My love, my life, my wife..
My Pallavi...
My saree ka dukaan....
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She had been cleaning his room after what seemed like centuries. They had forbidden her to enter in his room for the past two years thinking that she'll not be able to handle the pain.
But now that her children were out she had coaxed and literally blackmailed Farhaad to give her the key. And she had found this piece of paper kept inside the folder containing their divorce papers.
The afternoon sun filtered through the window, illuminating a path in that dark musty room still having a lingering presence of nutmeg, spices and a whiff of whiskey and landed on the photo frame on his desk.
Their wedding photo...
She picked herself up from the edge of the table against which she was leaning while sitting on the carpeted floor with much effort and took it from there.
She wiped the dust collected on it with her hand and brought it to her lips.
And placed a gentle kiss on his picture.
Twenty years of marriage, five years of their divorce and three years since his passing, Pallavi Rao finally allowed the sobs buried in her chest to tear out from her heart...
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Jhanak
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