FF: New York times with Maan&Geet Thread 3 05/03 - Page 98

Originally posted by: pushpi

Hola?

Part 79: Displacement Update 1

"Ok...Geet calm down" He said, almost three thousand miles away from her, hearing her frantic voice.

He had left the next day, after having helped her settle in the apartment in the city, much closer to her office even by walk. They...actually it was only him, had decided she would take the tram for amusement or call up the driver incase she was physically worn out to walk down 3 blocks to her place of work. She had obviously cried incessantly and that was perhaps the first time he felt he had unnecessarily made her go through the theatricals at NY airport too. Good thing he had guilt, else he was sure he would have uttered unforgivable mockery at her cry-face she had carried around all morning. She had counted down time until he left her by the apartment reception, like he was some rocket about to shoot off to the skies. Every step of the way to the lobby outside, where his car awaited, they had stopped innumerable times to kiss and bid goodbyes. Crying was not an option this time, for she strongly believed in omens and a tear-jerking farewell to her husband was unthinkable.

Indeed he did take that flight, back to NY and that was also when he felt excruciating emptiness slowly move in with him. It crawled and limped at first but settled inside him eventually after he engaged with denial for a short while. The verdict was out right after the flight took off; he finally missed her. It was no joke after all, living and imagining were two different things and he was experiencing life without her by his side, and it had seemed far more endurable and less jilted than what he had envisioned the living moments would be.

While daylight lasted, she was in office, busy training and getting inducted with the office curriculum. Often she would snuck into any available meeting room and give him a call. There were a few times she would get lucky and talk to him, and then there were the times she would talk to his voice mail. But as twilight came by, it was nighttime already across the coast and she scurried to shop for the apartment and for her own closet that she was robbed off by him. By the time she would show up in the apartment, he would be affixed sometimes between his office calls and their own business back in India. She couldn't work out a schedule for their phone calls and it troubled her further. That is how the three days until Friday had passed by.

There was no doubt she would get through the next couple of days, given all the organizing she had to get done before another week started. Then there were the library of books she had brought to the apartment to read up on her new job. All this to attend to and it never could keep him off her throbbing conscious every breathing second. The lack of roommates made it hard more so. She dreaded the walks back home as she it never failed to remind her of the times they had ambled all of midtown NY to their apartment. Very much like a leaf in the wind, she was blown to and from the office to her loft in the city. Sometimes she moved ahead of time, she felt, when the passers by lacked her pace and at other instances she was the one being left behind. Was she ever going to be able to catch up?

The color was draining from her world slowly and the dark pink pillow or the green and magenta scattered in her room were mellowing with passing time. The walls grew farther and the furniture grew bigger every time she unlocked the door to get into her place. The food grew bland and nor did the spice burn her palate. The TV giggles, jingles and the laughter from sitcom were mere white noise that filled her void. No tea gave her the solace or sleep. Her aimless walks by the bay every morning and evening simply multiplied in minutes as she dusted and lived through memories of him. She wondered, how only mere three days without him could topple her world upside down. And yet when her phone rang, the chocking anguish never made it to her lips when she had him on the other line. There was no way she was going to tell him that is how his absence attacked her, when she was the one who had brought this upon them. She was stubborn that way, not to give into acceptance of being the cause of this effect that lingered a thunderstorm above her personal space when all of SF danced in delivering warmth and brisk sunshine.

When this is how she suffered of isolation from him, he was tortured no less. His attention span grew less and he moved to a different plane amidst the office discussions. The religious visits to Peet's for the 3.00'o clock coffee increased. He would pick the same booth they would sit by and unspeakably whisper his obsession over her. It was hard for him to come to terms that she mattered to an extent where life without her, was a vortex or a black hole. Everything lost meaning except the routines he kept up with her. Occasionally he would lift her comb off the bathroom countertop and momentarily stare at the curly silken strands that were still left on it. With a will of its own, his shirt buttons refused to move through the buttonholes. It was not their fault, for they were only used to her nimble finger's instructions every faithful morning. The king bed elongated in width and he was left cornered by the edge of the lengthy lonesome space at bedtime. White in his room shone whiter and it blinded him while it reflected the dearth of her presence.

All the gruesome evidence of the absence of each other's lives never showed up the few times they got together over the long distance calls. Laughter echoed and playfully sappy conversations filled them with glee for that short duration they were together. She would dutifully describe every soul she came across at office and he always intently listened like his world had a scarce for her voice and sound...her cheer and smiles. His meals and office news were kept to the last for he willfully hated her detailed enquiries. The impression they gave each other were nothing short of blatant lies, openly strewn with word play left for self-interpretation that each could do without the other until the next weekend.

Or so they thought, for when Saturday late afternoon arrived the greying storm outside grayed her world too. Simple prance around the living room picked up momentum and her nervousness to escape the solitary confinements increased exponentially. When her own ability to placate her urge to catch a flight to NY for one day with him, failed and her nerves frayed at the thought of staying away from him for another week, she gave in and called him.

"Maan...Sorry I cannot...I want to come see you" She cried without even waiting for him to greet her. It made him stop in his tracks as he sat in his study watching the stock market news.

"Ok...Geet calm down" He spoke instinctually. Her voice was stirring for concern and she got it before there was any time to lose.

They talked for another hour as he pacified her irrational angst. It was a trip he did not want her to make, not when she would lose 12 hours in the travel back and forth for a mere 13 hrs she would get to stay with him. Money was inconsequential when he thought of the tiredness she would accrue from the journey. While at that, she stepped out on a walk after the rains ceased and felt her ridiculous plan disappear into the moist laden air. His voice soothed her and lessened the sense of misplacement in the city. How much time does it take to live with reality? She questioned herself.

The call had gone for another 2 hours and his day had come to a close. She was returning home too from the long stroll that had come to save her weekend.

Her instant decision to fly out worried him gravely. Was she really doing all right? His being was overwhelmed with solicitude. An eerie feeling took over him as he rolled sleepless for another 3 hrs in the bed. He cursed mentally when he had somehow forgotten to check upon her return to the apartment. Well, he had been for starters taken back at her pleas to let her visit him. Her tear-streaked words had numbed him and his own misery had come out into play.

At once, he jerked to sit on the bed and picked up the phone to call her back. "It would be 9.15 her time" he mentally calculated the hours at her part of the country. There was no answer at the first four calls and when he attempted the fifth time, it was his turn to turn feverish. His imagination shot up wildly as he recollected the filthy and homeless souls that had scavenged the bins along route that connected the apartment to the main street. It was upscale and a snazzy place, he knew and yet his mind plagued with foreboding. He ran out of his room, for he could no longer stand the silence that touched him.

"Where are your Geet?" he screamed into the depths of darkness, his own sense of displacement reverberating in the lone hallway.

To be continued...

It is said... "absence makes the heart grow fonder"...

I feel for both of them as their hearts are aching to be together...
where time travels so slow when you long to be with each other...
lost in the memories of love which once stayed together..
and yet this pain of seperations will never part...
we may have this distance but never in heart...